Paddy Keenan house concert

[Richard Katz]

I had the pleasure today to attend a local house concert featuring Paddy Keenan and his friend from London (whose name I did not get) on guitar.
It was nice to hear Paddy live again and to chat with him. He was in great form and his pipes sounded brilliant. He was playing his Williams set with his Quinn and Koehler boxwood chanter.
As usual, he asked me to bring my pipes and sit in at the end to play a couple of tunes with him.
Always intimidating playing seated next to him, but great fun!
I got to play three tunes with him and he was very gracious.
I have put up a couple of pics on my website at: http://katzwerk.com/infopage.htm
Cheers! Richard

[MTGuru]

Good show, Richard. The guitarist is probably Fionn Ó Lochlainn. They'll be here next week.

[Richard Katz]

Right you are! It is Fionn Ó Lochlainn.
I totally forgot to get his name spelling when I was talking to him afterwards.
He is an amazing guitarist and compliments Paddy very well.
Cheers! Richard

[BoneQuint]

I'm just visiting for a few days, and happened to hear about this concert at the last minute. It was amazing to hear Mr. Keenan completely unamplified in such a small space. What fun to hear him playing around with the Harvest Home hornpipe, throwing in a torrent of triplets, and ending with "shave and a haircut" and a laugh. The tunes on whistles were very nice as well, I particularly liked the one he wrote for his son. I'm glad he had no reverb! He was funny, gracious, humble, and welcoming.

I played bones for a few tunes as well, a mixture of exhiliration and fear not to be matched by any rollercoaster. Especially when he motioned me to start in the middle of a tune set...quite an honor.

[MTGuru]

Right you are! It is Fionn Ó Lochlainn.
I totally forgot to get his name spelling when I was talking to him afterwards.
He is an amazing guitarist and compliments Paddy very well.

Yes indeed ... he's definitely got chops, playing a Gibson sunburst with a real punchy sound in double dropped-D tuning. I'm told he also plays a mean rock/jazz guitar, piano, and organ.

Paddy was in good form, very mellow. Of course, I noticed his whistles: an aluminum low-D Cillian O'Briain, and a low-F cocobolo Grinter.

Fluter extraordinaire Ben Power joined the boys for the last 3 or 4 sets, and they finished up with Paddy's signature set, the Kesh Jig set from the Bothy Band 1975. A fine evening.