Ceilidh On The Carribbean? Why Not?

By Gwen Orel

An Irish music cruise isn't about sailing around Galway Bay, or crossing the Wild Atlantic. Think parasailing, suntan lotion, Alaskan glaciers. It's what happens on the ship that makes a cruise an Irish music cruise. They are non-stop hooleys.

Says musician Máirtín De Cógáin, "It's great to be playing on the high seas. You'd be in the middle of the gig and there'd be a wobble." He performed on Mary Rowley's Irish Festival Cruise last year, and will sail with Debra Casey's Irish Music Cruises "Sessions at Sea" to Alaska this spring.

Says Conor Makem, of the Makem & Spain Brothers, "at first it did seem strange. Why go to the Carribbean to listen to Irish music? Then I realized, why wouldn't you be able to love a cruise and Irish music?"

"Irish music is the most international music in the world," says legendary singer Brendan Shine ("Do You Want Your Old Lobby Washed Down"). He sails with Gertrude Byrne's All-Star Irish Charter Cruise to Bermuda 2011 in May.

"The Irish, and Irish-Americans, have always been great travelers," says Tony Jackson, Byrne's Emcee and radio host of "Irish Country" on WRHU, Radio Hofstra University, 88.7 FM.

Great travelers, but not so great at sunbathing. Professor John Gleeson, of the University of Wisconsin, points out, "Irish people are not enthusiasts of the sun. We're white the first day, and red for the rest of the week." He gives workshops on Mary Rowley's ship on Irish language, culture and history, and acts as emcee. But ports of call aren't entirely devoid of Irishness: "St. John and St. Thomas have Irish bars."

Though Simon Cowell on "Britain's Got Talent" puts down talent by sniffing "cruise ship", cruising musicians include some big names: Mary Black; Alasdair Fraser; Archie Fisher; the Conquerors. "They're all dying to get on!" says Byrne.

Debra Casey remembers that the late Liam Clancy phoned her up out of the blue. "He said, 'I hear you're doing a cruise and I'd like to join you. Did I have room!" He came every year. Gabriel Donohue sailed with Irish Festival Cruises with the Clancy Brothers on their first ship out in 1992, and now sails with Casey.

Cherish the Ladies' Joanie Madden is going on her 19th cruise. "I love the Hell out of them," she says. This year she and the band sail with Andy Cooney's Cruise of Irish Stars; she's also sailed with Mary Rowley. Joanie loves cruises so much she's planning to start her own in January of 2012-a Folk N'Irish cruise, with 45-50 musicians.

"You won't find a cheaper holiday! You wake up, look out the window and you're in a different place." She swims, gets on banana boats, windsurfs, and has even learned to scuba dive. "If you go on those cruises and have a bad time there's something wrong with you." At 5am, the bar is full.

"You can't stop singing!" says comedian Fiona Walsh, who emcees and performs with Debra Casey. "There's always a session - some are scheduled, some not."

"It's all about entertaining and having fun," says Grainne Diver of the Irish rock band Screaming Orphans. "We want to play for people. I couldn't give a toss if people say it's not rock and roll. To be rock and roll anyway is to do the opposite thing." The Orphans perform on Cooney's cruise.

The cruises are all a little different. If you love to dance, Gertrude Byrne's All Star Irish Charter Cruise might be for you. She, alone among the cruise organizers, charters an entire ship - and that allows her to put a wooden dance floor down in every public room.

Ballad singers might particularly enjoy Debra Casey's folk-oriented ship. If you want to be a musician yourself, you'll probably love Pat Moran's "Celtic Music Cruise Alaska," which is subtitled the "Fast Fiddling Foot Stomping Ceilidh - at Sea" or Mary Rowley's Irish Festival Cruise, both of which offer music workshops. But every cruise has dancing, singing and learning. All the cruises focus on music. And on the experience for the passenger.

Says Cooney, "I'm pretty careful to make sure to hire entertainers that like to be around people. I hire people who will run over to you at the bar and give you a big hug." That includes Ronan Tynan, Cherish the Ladies, the band Stephen's Green, and Tom Comerford, as well as the irrepressible Orphans. Andy generally brings on 1500 people or so, about half of a cruise ship.

"I look for personality. First." says Byrne. Her passengers say she knows them all by name - first and last - and that's thousands of people. "I have somebody playing at the pier, when they get out of the taxi. They come in dancing. The adrenaline is unbelievable!"

Because she has the entire boat, she can choose the music that is piped into the cabins - and it's Irish music, of course! Byrne, originally from County Mayo, was working in the music business when she launched her first cruise with 80 people, 24 years ago (watch for the January announcement of her 25th anniversary cruise in 2012).

It's true that passengers on cruises might be a bit older than those at an Irish music festival, especially when they sail from Florida. But, says Diver, the old ones are "party animals! It's nothing for then to stay up to 3 or 4 in the morning and get up for breakfast at 7. I'm exhausted. The older ladies in the room opposite my sisters Joan and Angela told them 'you're so boring, you haven't been in the late night bar once.'"

Flutist Shannon Heaton, who performed Casey and will be sailing with Pat Moran this spring, says that on Casey's cruise there were also "surfer dudes who just really dig Irish music and going somewhere warm and like to chillax."

At 24, Kieran Murphy, was a younger passenger when he first went, with his father, four years ago. "If I was just going on those cruises I personally might find it a little old for me, but when you're on the cruise specifically for Irish music then you always have something to do at night so it makes it great." Session cruises like Moran's slant a little younger, but all the cruises have extended families. "People from 2 to 82," says Madden.

Shay Black says "There's a great sense of loyalty on these tours. Michael's kids are between 10 and 14; many people returning have seen those kids growing up from babies in arms to now performing, singing and dancing." He's visited some of the passengers he's met, in different states.

"Reunion" is a favorite word with passengers, performers and organizers.

"You oughta see the Christmas cards we get and I'm not exaggerating, it's hundreds," says Marvin Peschel, a repeat passenger with Cooney. Of three hundred people at a wake of someone he had met on a cruise, "at least 75% were people we had met aboard."

"I meet people out from Ireland I wouldn't see except on the cruise. Including entertainers. The joke of the week is, Ireland is empty," says Mary McGarry, a repeat traveler with Gertrude Byrne.

Many passengers end up bringing along groups of their own - like Jim Houlihan, who owns Farrell's bar in Brooklyn). He regularly brings about 40 people along on Cooney's cruise.

Madden says Cherish has had up to 70 people come with them - some fans, some family, some fans who become like family. Becoming "like family" to legendary performers is something special.

The Black family on Mary Rowley's cruise include Shay, Michael, Frances, Mary and her children Danny (lead singer of the Irish rock band the Coronas) and Rose O'Reilly, a beautiful singer whose voices sounds eerily like her mother's.

De Cógáin remembers a friend who was a Mary Black fan, thrilled that "he got to see her every day, talk to her, take a picture with her, and not be waiting forever after a gig."

"How often can you go and have supper with the Irish Rovers?" says Joan McDermott, a repeat traveler with Debbie Casey. The Irish Rovers sail with Casey this January. McDermott lives in Canada, but originally comes from Dungarven. "It makes me feel like I'm home. In Ireland you can hear Irish music at any pub, any time of day."

"The cruise to me is like Christmas for adults, only it lasts all week," Casey says. English legend, singer-songwriter Jez Lowe cruises for the first time with Casey this year.

Despite the fact that his songs have been recorded by the Clancys, the Dubliners and Robbie O'Connell, he's relatively unknown by Irish folk fans. Casey is excited: "I love to pick someone that's going to wow people. They will thank me once they get off the ship!"

Lowe hasn't done a cruise before. "I sing a lot of songs about the sea and ship building!" he says with a laugh from his home in England. He's looking forward to "a lot of interaction with the audience," as he would find at folk clubs, with the audience at close quarters. Professor Gleeson explains that that intimacy really suits suit traditional music. In a big festival, sometimes sound can be "manipulated and murdered by guys in leather jackets and trousers."

Rowley is bringing Girsa, a popular group of Irish-American girls who are all in college. "Their friends can't take off, but some of their grandmothers are coming!"

For aspiring musicians, being around the top musicians can be more than just fun. Pat Moran - who also hails from the music business, and used to organize folk festivals in Southern California - plans to survey the needs and levels of the passengers in March. Cellist Natalie Haas will be on the ship, along with Alasdair Fraser, and thinks it will be "like fiddle camp at sea!"

And Kieran Murphy made a professional connection when the owners of a major Irish bar in Honolulu heard him singing at a Session. "I have been out to Hawaii to do a run of shows now six times in four years with no end in sight! All thanks to Debbie Casey's Irish music cruises."

Professional musicians find new fans, as well as new friendships with colleagues, on board.

On Cooney's cruises, some concerts happen poolside - which means the other cruise passengers on the ship get to hear just a little bit of the Irish sound too. And some of those people who just happen to hear the Screaming Orphans book with Cooney for the next cruise. Tom Brosnan, a passenger with Cooney, loves to look up and see them "falling in love with the music."

And some people just fall in love. Mary Rowley says she's had a couple get married on board, and had people marry who met on the cruise.

Casey says, "I've had a few women fight over a couple of men. Male performers! And that's all I'm going to say. We have some very handsome performers." On her ship, as on the others, passengers have met and fallen in love. And there have been weddings on board (and ports of call) as well.

Cooney laughs, "Ronan was so in love with Joanie Madden; he kept trying to get her to marry him. He told her she's a female version of him!"

Well, Joanie admits, she did wear his ring. His diamond-studded Yankee World Series ring, that is (Tynan sang for the Yankees for many years).

"A cruise is something you don't need a partner to go on," says Byrne. "Everybody mingles together; it's easy to meet somebody." All the cruises assist with finding roommates if you go solo.

Says Rowley, "It's neat to see friendships build. There was a guy from Massachusetts and a guy from New York who ended up rooming together for years." It turned out they were only about 21 miles away from each other, and during the year drove once a week to have lunch together.

On land, the audience for Irish music is very diverse - with many fans without a drop of Irish heritage in them. It's not quite as diverse at sea, in part because the Irish cruises don't tend to advertise widely. But if you're worried you might not fit in for any reason, either because of your age or your background, fuhgeddabout it.

"Who's friendlier than the Irish? They so don't care what you are," says Mary McGarry. She met a couple on another trip who were, she thinks, Polish descent with maybe some Irish way back, and encouraged them to join her. They had a great time, and have gone back every year since. Several boats offer Daily Mass, but you won't feel out of place if you're not Catholic. Rowley remembers a Jewish couple from Washington, DC: "Frances Black asked one guy to dance. He didn't know the dance and had stepped out of the set; by the time she found him she lunged to him and started spinning him! He'll never forget when Frances Black tackled him on the dance floor."

Says Shine, speaking to us from his home in Roscommon, "There's such a diverse, large program; nobody would ever feel left out. Unless you were a complete and utter recluse, you couldn't be on a cruise without meeting people. He knows some people who loved the weather, the music, but will not be going this year because they met too many people they know.

Is there a downside to the cruises?

Seasickness - Madden says she was seasick once, in 19 years. It was a particularly bad storm. Rowley's faced the worst - harbors closed, luggage missing, even death - and lived to tell about it. "I've had to shorten the itinerary due to a virus, I've even had a cruise to nowhere." Nobody complained!

"You can waste all sorts of time," says Conor Makem, what with "shopping, pools Jacuzzis, workout facilities.

Shine says that performing for Byrne is "like working for the fire service!" because "she never tells anybody when they're on. We get a leaflet under the door the night before. The artists are as much at sea as the people on the cruise!" But he laughs. "It keeps people on their toes."

"Getting out of bed in the morning" can be challenging, says Jackson.

"You could eat from morning to night," says Diver. "Joan's always hanging out where the food is. She says 'you'd be fat as a fool if the boat were small!'"

Drinks are not included, and most ships don't take cash - that can be a bit dangerous.

And one of these cruises can spoil you for other trips. Theresa McDermid and her husband love to travel, but after going on a non-Irish cruise, "we couldn't wait to get off the ship. At the sailaway party my husband and I looked at each other and said, 'this is like a funeral.'" She sails with Byrne's Irish cruise for the craic. "Honestly, we don't care if the ship leaves the port!"

Gertrude Byrne's All Star Irish Charter Cruise sails to Bermuda May 22-29.
gertrudebyrnepromotions.com

Debra Casey's Irish Music Cruises sails January 29 - February 5. Check back for details on spring trip.
www.irishmusiccruises.com

Andy Cooney's Cruise of Irish Stars sails from January 28 - February 4.
www.cruiseofirishstars.com

Pat Moran's Celtic Music Cruise sails to Alaska June 4-11.
www.celticmusiccruise.com

Mary Rowley's 20th Annual Irish Festival Cruise sails from January 20 - February 6.
www.irishtours.com