They Call Me Mum

Russell Crowe.  Wait a minute, that is Russell Crowe!

So, the kids and I went to Shamrock Fest yesterday to see Carbon Leaf and Great Big Sea.  TOH was supposed to go with us, but wasn’t feeling up to it.  So, it was just the three of us, instead.

Driving to downtown DC is always an adventure.  Luckily for me, the HOV lanes were open northbound, because the main lanes were jammed up like a rush hour.  Once we got there, and drove around the stadium to find parking, we joined the throngs of drunken faux Irish people and made our way to the “festival grounds”.  Which translates to the parking lot.

I was in no way drunk enough to put up with that many drunken morons. 

We made our way over to the stage that CL and GBS were to play, and wormed our way as close as we could.  Carbon Leaf was excellent.  I’m really enjoying seeing these guys, and wish I had started listening to them sooner.  What pissed me off, however, was people crowd surfing.  How do you crowd surf to Carbon Leaf?  Especially during “The War Was in Color”?

The band between CL and GBS played a bunch of songs that I couldn’t understand.  To me it sounded like the singer was just barking into the microphone.  There was a lot of “Oi! Oi! Oi!” in there, but otherwise, I was lucky if I understood 1 out of 5 words.

Then Great Big Sea came on.  We’d made our way even closer to the stage, and were about 2 or 3 people back from the fence.  Between shows, we actually spent some time talking to some other people who’d been on the cruise.  They put on a great show, as usual.  But then when the encore came, they brought out a “special guest”.  As Alan Doyle said, “O.k. we’d like to bring on a friend. You might know him as an actor, but we know him as a damn fined lyricist. Russell Crowe!”

And he came out and played Folsom Prison Blues.  Then all the guys from Carbon Leaf came out and they all played “Molly Malone”.  It was something else!  It totally made putting up with all the drunks worth it.

In other music/entertainment news, I’ve been lining up our summer shows.  So far I’ve got Gaelic Storm at the Birchmere in April; Eddie Izzard at DAR | Constitution Hall at the beginning of May; Hootie & The Blowfish at Wolf Trap in July; and then Great Big Sea again at Wolftrap in August.  We’ve got lawn seats for Hootie and orchestra pit seats for GBS.

In sewing news, my client stopped by this morning for a fitting, and things are just fine.  All I need to do now is hem everything, and apply trim to collar and cuff edges.

So, things are going fairly well right now.  Life seems to be settling back into a routine, and I like it.