Band ready to share Irish tunes on St. Patrick’s Day

Published 12:15 am Sunday, March 14, 2010

Lawrence Countians have the opportunity to celebrate the St. Patrick’s Monday with traditional Irish music.

The Briggs Lawrence County Library will host Celtic band Kelley’s Bridge Monday at noon at the Ironton branch and 6 p.m. at the Southern Branch Library in South Point.

The band has an hour of music planned for the two concerts.

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“Most of it is Irish or close, and not the typical American Irish, this is the stuff from the island over there,” Brown said.

The band will also be playing a classical sonata by Mozart.

“We’ll be playing almost entirely Irish music,” Bruce Brown said. “Some of it we’ve got to do a little extra to make it Irish.”

The band, which typically plays not just Irish but all sorts of music, include members Brown, Christine Hunt, Tim Lester and Hub Rose.

The quartet takes their name from a bridge on Highway 93 near where the old Rock Hill High School used to be, Brown said. But the name has another meaning for the group, who considers itself a bridge between different types of music.

“It’s a metaphor for the kind of thing we do,” Brown said. “We are not there or here, whatever comes along we try to do.”

The band started with Rose and Brown a few years ago. The pair played at the Vesuvius Iron Furnace Festival, where they met Christine Hunt.

Bass player Lester joined the group about three months ago.

“I met Tim at church,” Brown said. “He was a new member of our church choir. I thought, ‘gosh we need a bass player.’”

Besides the Vesuvius festival, the band has played some small events and at the Festival of Trees in Ashland.

“We’re not really what you consider a band trying to be famous,” he said. “We’re more people playing because we enjoy it and if we’re lucky someone will ask us to play.”

This is the second year the band has performed for St. Patrick’s Day at the South Point library and the third year it has played at the Ironton branch.

“They were here last year and they were very, very good,” said Alda Wagner, branch manager at the South Point library. “Everyone just really bragged on how good they are.”

Brown encourages anyone who knows how to do any Irish dance to come and do so.

“If you do Irish dance, we ready to dance,” he said. “We sure could use some good Irish step dancers.”