For a Celtic band, St. Patrick’s day can be a blessing and a curse. You’ve got the raucous audiences ready to sing along. But it also means performing songs over and over and over, from dawn until dusk. Kalamazoo band Belfast Gin knows it well. This year, they’re pulling a double-header, heading from a morning show in Battle Creek directly to Bell’s Brewery in Kalamazoo. It's a challenge, but the band says it's worth it.
Belfast Gin's lead singer, Laurie Laing, remembers the first time she heard Celtic music. She was in high school, a teenager hooked on classic rock. But then she started hanging out with a French foreign exchange student after school. One day, sitting on the living room floor, her friend took out a cassette from the Irish band Clannad, dropped it into a player, and pressed play.
“I remember very distinctly sitting there, hanging out in the living room, and all of the sudden, I went, 'What is this?' And in the process of researching music, it developed out of that," Laing says. "And when I got to college, one of my first jobs, one of our mail room attendants, he was into Celtic music as well. So we would talk on our breaks about Clannad this, and Niem Parsons. That developed into my first band, Dagda's Harp.”
That band broke up, but the passion stuck. Soon, Laing and a rotation of others formed the group Belfast Gin. Each member has taken a winding path to the band, with musical backgrounds spanning from blues to punk to classic rock.
So when they got together, they had to shape their sound. Would it be lilting folk tunes, or Gaelic punk? Eventually, they decided to pull out centuries-old Irish tunes and remake them as rock songs, each with a little bit of a twist. Laing describes it as kind of like "a 300-year-old cover band."
“You can pick out a certain key of a tune and the subject matter of the tune, and in that listening, if your ear perks a little bit, we’ll kind of take it apart and deconstruct it and kind of create that modern edged tune with that," Laing says.
Laing gives an example -- Belfast Gin's song "Matty Groves."
"We’ve heard many different versions, bluegrass versions. A lot of these songs have come over from Ireland, from Scotland, and people when they come to America," Laing says. "Tunes that come over and their name changes, their melody changes, but their storylines are the same. And this one tune, in particular, Matty Groves, the first version that I heard was from a 70s group called Fairport Convention, and it’s amazing how it sounds remarkably similar to another bluegrass tune called “Shady Grove.”
"It’s wonderful to see how these songs get passed down," she says. "You can easily hear seven or eight different versions of the same song.”
When you hear Belfast Gin's version of "Matty Groves," you hear another completely different version, too.
“We added a bass line, for starters," says Laing. "There’s a bass line, the kit drums, and Aaron does this beautiful thing with the kit drum. And he actually has a maraca that he’s shaking as well while he’s playing, so he gives it this almost reggae-ish flow to the song while he’s playing it. And then you have these very blues-y lyrics going on top of that.”
For eleven straight years, Belfast Gin has followed the St. Patrick’s Day circuit in Kalamazoo, playing from nearly dawn until dusk at museums, bars, you name it. For the most part, Laing says, it’s great. But, she says, some of the songs they’re forced to play this time of year can get a little repetitive.
“Yes, we refer to them as green beer songs," Laing explains. "'The Wild Rover,' certainly. 'Whiskey in the Jar.' 'Nancy Whiskey' is one of ours, one of our major favorites from our fans. And, I mean, it’s wonderful to go out there. The thing about Celtic music is the people that follow Celtic music, they are fierce, fierce, followers. We get a slew of people that come, dress up, crazy people. And I love them dearly. And yes, they come out and request the same songs year after year, and sometimes you just gotta roll your eyes and roll with it.”
Despite the occasional inconvenience, Laing says, the St. Patrick’s Day crowd is like nothing else, with nearly everyone trying to dance or song along. That makes it worth it.
“It comes and goes in spurts, because it is a very niche type of music. But there are certain periods that it’s just, it’s just amazing. It’s amazing to be a part of. It certainly gives a lilt to a voice of the Kalamazoo music community for sure.”
You can catch Belfast Gin all over the area on St. Patrick’s Day, on Tuesday, March 17th. They’ll be at Griffin Pub in Battle Creek from 12 p.m. to 3 p.m., then back in Kalamazoo at Bell’s Brewery from 5 p.m. to 9 p.m.
