Mark and Mike drove in from Detroit for the Irish Festival in Dublin, OH. This festival is HUGE. Our first temptation (after refreshments) were the harps of Candyce and Ben Dunham, Burke Whistles, and Copley & Boegli Flutes. It is so cool to be at a festival where you can purchase high quality musical instruments. After getting more refreshments, the music of The Kells Band soon lured us into the audience. Brian McCoy is the Pied Piper of the group and he plays jigs and reels with such clarity and speed that it takes your breath away. While Mark went to a bouzouki workshop taught by the masterful Randy Clepper, Mike and I went to a border collie sheep herding demonstration. The only time I remembered to take my phone out of my pocket and snap a photo was when the collie was herding six ducks through the obstacles created by the many children attending the festival. Ducks are the animals that are used when border collies are first being trained. After some Jeni's Spendid Ice Cream, the all-female group Girsa caught our attention with the driving fiddles in their group. I was delighted when they sang "The Rolling Hills of the Borders". That is a song I need to learn! As we strolled further I said, "I hear a harp!" But it wasn't just one harp. There were two harps on the Dublin (Main) Stage where Moya Brennan sang her dreamy New Age versions of many well-known Irish songs. Later, from a shaded distance we listened to the tight sonorous sound of Lunasa until we could battle the heat and our exhaustion no longer. We left just as newcomers were arriving for the evening when they'd be able to hear Solas, Natalie MacMaster, Scythian, Changeling, and many others. The website for this festival is
www.dublinirishfestival.org/
