On Saturday, June 1st, I went to Awful Al’s Cigar Bar to see a band. .. There wasn’t one. So me and Amy went cruisin’ the bars in the Armory Square district looking for some live entertainment…(I know you’re saying: “Taste of Syracuse had bands all day!”—but I stayed in to avoid the rain…besides, I like the nightlife baby!).

Well, we did find some great music and a great time too! After dodging the proverbial “occasional thundershowers” by popping into the nearest establishment and enjoying a frosty brew during the stay—music or no music—on one rain dodging effort, we jumped into a bar on the corner of Fayette @ Franklin called Kitty Hoynes — an Irish pub that features live Irish music…when I first heard that, I thought to myself, “oh my god, a night of river dance!”…boy was I pleasantly surprised by the band and the bar.

The band was an Irish and traditional folk duo called The Dady Brothers and sported the obligatory acoustic guitars and banjo plus an assortment of oddly shaped string instruments I will not even pretend to know the names…when the bar switched from the stereo to the live performance, I only noticed because people were clapping at the end of songs…the sound was that good—not too loud and wonderfully mixed…for the most part the songs sounded familiar but upon further listening, I realized that the songs only sounded like songs I knew…there was a song that sounded like the deliverance movie theme “Dueling Banjoes” and several that reminded me of well known bluegrass and country songs…this leads me to believe that much of traditional American folk music has some strong ties to Irish folk music.

Amy & I continued to drink Guiness and really get comfortable in the bar…a woman sitting on the barstool next to us was celebrating her graduation from S.U. ..she was a student teacher with the bartender…a short loud woman of Asian dissent insisted on taking everyone’s picture and grabbed us along with just about everyone at the bar for personal candid snapshots…it was a fun night…even though we didn’t know anyone when we got there or most of the music, by the time the time we left, it sure felt as if we had.

I wonder if the music had anything to do with it.

--Zoe

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