Two months before March 17, musician Patrick Halloran still hasn't decided where in Pittsburgh his irreverant irish band, Ceann na Caca, will play it's official St. Patrick's Day homecoming show. With a doubt, these prodigal sons' fans expect them to spend St. Paddy's day in the city of their alma mater and beloved former neighborhood of South Oakland. But after a few years of succesful shows in several states, this band has made good on a national level, and winter 2004 finds the group on a multistop tour. "We plan to play every state that touches the Atlantic Ocean," vows the bands official web site, "and we plan on returning to any state that touches our hearts."

In addition to wowing live audiences with a 300-plus song list of Irish standards, the occasional cover tune, such as Snoop Dogg's Gin and Juice" and some wacky love songs to Pitsburgh with titles like "Top of the O", Ceann na Caca (Irish-Gaelic for head of, uh caca") is busy recording a new album with an assortment of guest musicians. Meanwhile, the band's broad success allows Pittsburgh's wildest irish rovers to be selective. "We found that if we wait longer, we get better offers for the shows on St. Patrick's Day," Halloran explains. Fortunately for our calenders, Ceann na Caca hasn't waited to book the week leading up to the holiday: The group will perform first as Finnegan's Wake on the North Side, then follow up with a "blowout" concert at Bootleggers in South Oakland.

Expect a three-hour set and a packed audience, many of whom will know all the lyrics to "The Wild Rover," "Cockles and Mussells," and "There Is No Good Beer In North Oakland." There might even be a a few truly ardent Ceann na Caca groupies present, Halloran predicts "There are about 10 or 11 guys in their 40's who buy us shots and scream at us," he explains.

The band wasn't always so succesful. Halloran and buddy marc Wisnosky founded the group 5 years ago in typical Pittsburgh fashion: "We decided kind of at the same time to laern our instruments and to play Irish music," Halloran admits. Though trained as a drummer Halloran signed on as a guitarist, while Wisnosky, A Pitt linguistics graduate who wrote his master's thesis on "Pittsburghese" tackled the bodhran and tin whistle. He was a novice at both. A few years later, the musicians added James Telfer, a New Yorker, to the group; Telfer, though trained as a bassist, harbored aspirations of playing the fiddle. . "James just had a fiddle lying around his house, I think," Halloran remembers with a chuckle. "And just when he started getting good, Marc decided to pick up the Banjo. He has not rhythym at all, you can print that. But we've established this precedent that if someone wants to learn flugel horn, they can learn onstage in our band."

To compensate for their beginners status, Wisnosky and Halloran penned easy to play parodies and celebrations of Pittsburgh life ("Ahrn At This Bar", "Christmas in South Oakland") and played them along side of the few Irish folk tunes they knew. Though musically underdeveloped, the novelty numbers were sure-fire crowd pleasers. This didn't do much for their Irish-folk street cred, however. "We couldn't get booked at the bigger Irish pubs," Halloran says. "They said we were too silly or not good enough - both were probably true."

When Halloran's day job moved him to New York, the band followed, landing a steady stint at a bar called Iggy's, which gave Ceann na Caca ample performance time to polish their act. Time OUt New York magazine lauded their weekly performances witha story focusing on the madness that must consume any band that plays for five hours straight. "Iggy's turned us from a 25-song band into a 300-song band," Halloran says. "Now instead of repeating tunes, it's about what we have to cut out from a set."

Ceann na Caca began attracting press in several states, won the respect of national acts and built a biffer following outside of Pittsburgh. Such success did not come without a few awkward bookings, Halloran admits - like the bar in suburban Boston that "was sort of like Roadhouse, short of the chickenwire, where it took 40 minutes just to get the crowd to stop staring at us." Or the severely under attended gig in Allentown, PA., Halloran's birthplace. "My dad didn't even show up," he remembers. "We couldn't stop laughing the whole time." The spirited three-some still played for nearly four hours for six people and ended up giving most of their wage to the waitresses.

Halloran insists that songs about Pittsburgh bars usually play suprisingly well to a national crowd. "Pittsburgh does a have a universal appeal," Halloran says. People pretty much get it, even if they're not from Pittsburgh. And there's usually someone in the audience who has some kind of connection - they used to live here or they went to school here."

Regionalism aside, musicianship and a spirited sense of humor are always an easy sell. Be it a gig in South Oakland or South Florida, be the patrons "s'gach" on their fifth Guiness or merely "ar meisce" on their first, who could resist applauding for "Danny Boy" when it's followed by a brand-new Irish classic called "Erin Go Bra-less?"

Elena Passarello
Pittsburgh Magazine