Emerald Magic by Andrew M. Greeley

Author:Andrew M. Greeley
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: McMillian Publishing
Published: 2007-03-31T16:00:00+00:00

THE MONTH WENT BY quickly.

We finished up our gigs in the Southwest, did a week that took us up through Berkeley and Portland, and then we were back in New-ford and it was time to start the two-hour drive out to Harnett’s Point for our opening night at the Harp & Tankard.

Harnett’s Point used to be a real backwoods village, its population evenly divided between the remnant of back-to-the-earth hippies who tended organic farms west of the city and locals who made their living off of the tourists that swelled the village in the summer. But it had changed in the last decade, becoming, like so many of the other small villages around Newford, a satellite community for those who could afford the ever-pricier real estate and didn’t mind the two-hour commute to their jobs.

And where once it had only the one Irish bar—Murphy’s, a log and plaster-covered concrete affair near the water that was a real roadhouse—now it sported a half dozen, including the Harp & Tankard, where we were playing that night.

Have you ever noticed how there seems to be an Irish pub on almost every corner these days? They’re as bad as coffee shops. I can remember a time when the only place you could get a decent Guinness was in Ireland, and as for the music, forget it. “Traditional music” was all that Irish-American twaddle popularized by groups like the Irish Rovers. Some of them were lovely songs, once, but they’d been reduced to noisy bar jokes by the time I got into the music professionally. And then there were the folks who’d demand “some real Irish songs” like “The Unicorn,” and would get all affronted when first, you wouldn’t play it for them, and second, you told them it was actually written by Shel Silverstein, the same Jewish songwriter responsible for hits like Dr. Hook & the Medicine Show’s “Cover of the Rolling Stone.”

Miki and I played an even mix of bars, small theatres, colleges, and festivals, and I usually liked the bars the least—probably a holdover from when I was first trying to get into the music in a professional capacity. But Miki loved them. It made no sense to me why she kept taking these bookings—she could easily fill any medium-sized hall—but they kept her honest, she liked to say. “And besides,” she’d add, “music and the drink, they just go together.”

When we got to the Harp & Tankard that afternoon, we were met out back where we parked our van by a Native American fellow.Miki introduced him to me as Tommy. I thought he was with the bar—after all, he helped us bring in our gear and set up, then settled behind the soundboard while we did our soundcheck—but he turned out to be a friend of hers and in on her secret plan. After we got the sound right, he lit a pair of smudgesticks, then he and Miki waved them around the stage until the area reeked. They weren’t sweetgrass

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