Young Dubliners set to rock the folks

Ringing electric guitars, soaring fiddle, a driving beat.

Young Dubliners ain't your usual folkies. Oh, they deliver on traditional Irish music -they just do it with a rock-and-roll heart. And audiences from L.A. to Europe go wild for it.

The Celtic rock band will take the stage at the Sisters Folk Festival - including a set on Sunday, September 13, at 3 p.m. at the festival's free public stage at Fir Street Park.

The band's founder, Keith Roberts, is looking forward to the band's sojourn in Sisters. He's anticipating the festival's unique format, with multiple venues within walking distance throughout the community, where "all the town's a stage."

"We've never played a festival for three days on four stages," he told The Nugget.

Roberts hails from Ireland and he emigrated to the United States to chase his musical dreams, landing in Los Angeles, where he formed Young Dubliners.

Raised on the folk music of his homeland and the powerful drive of rock and punk, he found something profoundly satisfying in a mash-up of influences.

"I loved it better than I loved them both individually," he said.

He was inspired by bands like Big Country, The Waterboys and The Pogues: bands that took traditional Celtic-influenced music in a new direction, who "showed that it could be rocked up."

The Pogues, led by the quintessential drunken poet Shane McGowan, were the progenitors of the sort of music Young Dubliners play. In the 1980s, The Pogues blew fellow musicians and a loyal audience away by combining traditional music played on traditional instruments with a punk rock attitude and pace, driven by bass and drums and fueled on McGowan's seedy, beautiful poetry, delivered in a growling whisky-soaked slur.

Young Dubliners gave The Pogues a tip o' the cap, recording McGowan's "If I Should Fall From Grace With God," and a masterful rendition of "A Pair of Brown Eyes."

But Roberts did not want to fall into the trap of imitation.

"I just thought it was the kiss of death to jump on that bandwagon completely," he said. "I wanted to be original."

All members of the band write, and they don't fret over whether a song fits in the "Celtic Rock" box.

"We don't put any boundaries around ourselves," Roberts said.

The band's sound, honed over hundreds and hundreds of live dates, contributes to the writing. That combination of electric guitar and fiddle, Roberts says, "is like handing a songwriter a weapon."

The way they wield that weapon may take some folkies aback -for a moment, before they get up and dance.

"We play more folk festivals in Europe than we do in America," Roberts said. "We sort of felt that we were a little too on the rockin' side for many of them."

That won't be a problem in Sisters. While the Sisters Folk Festival continues to deliver plenty of contemplative songwriting, beautiful harmony singing and acoustic interplay, the audience has shown that they also like to throw down to New Orleans jazz, rockin' blues -and spirited Celtic music.

For their part, Young Dubliners are looking forward to participating in a festival with a unique culture that has built a big reputation in festival circles.

"When do you get a whole town behind something like this?" he said. "It's not common."

For a complete Sisters Folk Festival schedule, visit www.sistersfolkfestival.org. For more information on Young Dubliners, visit www.youngdubliners.com.

Author Bio

Jim Cornelius, Editor in Chief

Jim Cornelius is editor in chief of The Nugget and author of “Warriors of the Wildlands: True Tales of the Frontier Partisans.” A history buff, he explores frontier history across three centuries and several continents on his podcast, The Frontier Partisans. For more information visit www.frontierpartisans.com.

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