#lessons from scott scanlon

[celtfather]

St Patrick's Day #451

Happy St Patrick’s Day! Two Hours of St Patrick’s Day music and a free Celtic album that you can download today on the Irish & Celtic Music Podcast.

Xavier Boderiou, Stringer's Ridge, The Selkie Girls, Kennedy's Kitchen, Gillian Boucher & Bob McNeill, Beyond the Field from Single, Lissa Schneckenburger, Kinnfolk, Jesse Ferguson, Vicki Swan & Jonny Dyer, Catherine Koehler, The Kissers, Stephanie Claussen, KALOS (McKasson & McDonald), W Ed Harris, The Rowan Tree, Fir Arda, Celtic Conundrum, Avourneen, Tami Curtis, Pauline Scanlon, The Flailing Shilaleighs, The Wild Irish Roses, Kilmaine Saints, Ockham's Razor, Onde, Skeleton McKee, Battlelegs, Hugh Morrison, Eileen Ivers, Jiggy, Wolf Loescher

I hope you enjoyed this week's show. If you did, please share the show with ONE friend.

The Irish & Celtic Music Podcast is here to build our community and help the incredible artists who so generously share their music with you. If you hear music you love, buy the albums, shirts, and songbooks, follow the artists on Spotify, see their shows, and drop them an email to let them know you heard them on the Irish and Celtic Music Podcast.

Remember also to Subscribe to the Celtic Music Magazine. Every week, you will get a few cool bits of Celtic music news. It's a quick and easy way to plug yourself into more great Celtic culture. Plus, you'll get 34 Celtic MP3s for Free, just for signing up today.

VOTE IN THE CELTIC TOP 20 This is our way of finding the best songs and artists each year. Just list the show number, and the name of as many bands in the episode as you like. Your vote helps me create next year's Best Celtic music of 2020 episode.  Vote Now!

THIS WEEK IN CELTIC MUSIC

0:08 - "Wedding Reels" by Xavier Boderiou from Laimm

2:58 - WELCOME

4:45 - "Pikeman's March / Who'll Be King but Charlie? / Cliffs of Moher" by Stringer's Ridge from Handmade

10:57 - "Smeorach Chlann Domhnaill" by The Selkie Girls from Running with the Morrigan Pronunciation: Smear-Rock Clan Dow-ohl

15:32 - "Tootsie's Flowers, Money In Both Pockets, The Whiskey Of Truth" by Kennedy's Kitchen from The Whiskey of Truth

20:20 - "Race for the Sun" by Gillian Boucher & Bob McNeill from Race for the Sun

25:35 - "Three Hugs for Luca" by Beyond the Field from Single

30:22 - CELTIC FEEDBACK

34:35 - "The Fair Maid By the Sea Shore" by Lissa Schneckenburger from Song

37:49 - "New Rigged Ship / Lady's Cup of Tea / Drag Her Round the Road" by Kinnfolk from Kinnfolk

41:01 - "The Sally Gardens" by Jesse Ferguson from The Sally Gardens

43:45 - "Jiggle the Old Bones" by Vicki Swan & Jonny Dyer from Sleep Deprivation

48:30 - “May Morning Dew” by Catherine Koehler from Stone Upon Stone

52:07 - "Foggy Dew (feat. Monica Martin)" by The Kissers from Three Sails

56:38 - "Ae Fond Kiss / Rory Dall's Port" by Stephanie Claussen from The Road Home from Skye: Scottish and Irish Tunes

1:07:07 - THANKS TO PATRONS

1:04:18 - "Geordie" by KALOS (McKasson & McDonald) from Harbour

1:07:36 - "Crowley's/Johnny D's" by W Ed Harris from Turas Ceilteach Pronunciation: Tour-ahs Kell-tuk kell-tach

1:11:40 - "One And All" by The Rowan Tree from Kolar's Gold

1:13:59 - "O'Carolans Welcome" by Fir Arda from Greenhouse Sessions Part 2

1:18:26 - "A Chance" by Celtic Conundrum from The Promise

1:22:17 - "Sparrow" by Avourneen from Sparrow

1:25:55 - CELTIC PODCAST NEWS

1:28:55 - "Hills of Connemara" by Tami Curtis from Caird Cavort

1:31:04 - "The Eighteenth of June" by Pauline Scanlon from Gossamer

1:35:13 - "Old Man Colm" by The Flailing Shilaleighs from Yours to Discover

1:38:37 - "The Adventures of a Young Rose" by The Wild Irish Roses from Full Bloom

1:40:23 - "Off the Wagon" by Kilmaine Saints from Off the Wagon (Acoustic Sessions)

1:42:47 - FREE MUSIC

1:44:01 - "The Moving On Song" by Ockham's Razor from Songs from Potter's Field

1:48:22 - "Le Metamorphose" by Onde from Maelstrom

1:53:42 - "Streams of Whiskey" by Skeleton McKee from Edinburgh Underground

1:56:25 - "Ability Scores" by Battlelegs from Save the Humans

1:59:40 - "Ballad of Thomas Higgins" by Hugh Morrison from The Other Side

2:04:09 - "Shine" by Eileen Ivers from Scatter the Light

2:08:35 - “Man of Aran” by Jiggy from Hypernova

2:12:59 - CLOSING

2:13:52 - "Legacy" by Wolf Loescher from Sheep's Clothing

The Irish & Celtic Music Podcast was edited by Marc Gunn with Graphics by Miranda Nelson Designs. The show was produced by Marc Gunn, The Celtfather. To subscribe, go to Apple Podcasts or to our website where you can become a Patron of the Podcast for as little as $1 per episode. Promote Celtic culture through music at http://celticmusicpodcast.com/.

  CELTIC PODCAST  NEWS

WELCOME Helping you celebrate Celtic culture through music. My name is Marc Gunn. I am a Celtic musician and podcaster. This show is dedicated to the indie Celtic musicians. Please support these artists. Share the show with your friends. And find more episodes at celticmusicpodcast.com. You can also support this podcast on Patreon.

Marc Gunn St Patrick's Day Music Shows

FRI, MAR 13: Interstellar Ginger Beer & Exploration Co, Alabaster, AL @ 7:00 PM

SAT, MAR 14: St Patrick's Day at 5 Points, Birmingham, AL @ 2:30-5 PM

SAT, MAR 14: The Camp, Huntsville, AL @ 7:30 PM

If you haven't done so yet, Subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts. It is free. Yes. All 450 episodes are FREE to listen to. So go listen and download the show right now. And if you want a free podcast app, you can find a link to it in the shownotes as well.

THANK YOU PATRONS OF THE PODCAST! Because of Your kind and generous support, this show comes out every week. Your generosity funds the creation, promotion and production of the show. It allows us to attract new listeners and to help our community grow.

As a patron, you get to hear episodes before regular listeners. When we hit a milestone, you get an extra-long episode. You can pledge a dollar or more per episode and cap how much you want to spend each month over on Patreon.

A super special thanks to our Celtic Legends. These amazingly generous folks pledge $25 or more per month. Thanks to Shawn Cali, Hank Woodward, Annie Lorkowski, Tiffany Knight, robert michael kane, Lynda MacNeil, Kevin Long, Nancie Barnett, Miranda Nelson, Carol Baril, Scott Benson, Marianne Ludwig, Patricia Conner

You can become a generous Patron of the Podcast on Patreon at SongHenge.com.

The Irish & Celtic Music Podcast is a for-profit endeavor that is funded by you. I cannot pay royalties to artists because of the nature of podcast. It’s cost-prohibitive. You can read about that on my website.

So I found a different way to give back. A portion of the money raised from compilation CD sales and from your Patreon donations is donated to Celtic Non-Profits. We already donated money to the Savannah Irish Festival to help some of the artists featured on this podcast. We are also sponsoring the Texas Scottish Festival in May. And now in September, we’re also sponsoring Middle Tennessee Highland Games & Celtic Festival. We have donated over $35,000 to Celtic Non-Profits.

But I want to stress, that’s not me. That’s all of us. Everyone who supports this podcast is supporting Celtic culture through music. These festivals bring our musical heritage alive. So thank you for being a part of that.

CELTIC PODCAST NEWS While you’re there, I want to ask you to post a review on Apple Podcasts. Right now, we are 37 reviews away from 1000. That’s incredible to think about especially considering I haven’t asked anyone to post a review in a long time.

If you listen to podcasts, I want to recommend a couple that I enjoy and are Celtic in nature. Irish Music Stories is put out by Irish musician Shannon Heaton. She looks at the bigger stories behind traditional Irish music. It’s extremely well-produced and well worth subscribing

Erin’s Isle is a short travel podcast. Erin brings you the delightful parts of Ireland in intriguing stories that’ll make you want to learn more. Her show is even syndicated on Aer Lingus and British Airways. It’s that good. And a lot of fun!

If you want more St Patrick’s Day music, check out the St Patrick’s Day podcast. It’s a 7-part series I released years ago. It’s music with minimal chatting. It’s perfect for playing in the background of your own Paddy’s Day party.

I’d be negligent if I didn’t tell you about my own personal podcast. The Pub Songs Podcast is the virtual public house for Celtic Geek culture. I put together several St Patrick’s Day episodes including the latest which is a Sci Fi St Patrick’s Day. Because, well, I’m a geek.

You can find more podcasts by me and others in my Mage Podcast Network or when you subscribe to the Celtic Music Magazine. Because I tell you what’s new in the Celtic podcast world in every issue. And it’s still free!

TRAVEL WITH CELTIC INVASION VACATIONS Every year, I take a small group of Celtic music fans on the relaxing adventure of a lifetime. We don't see everything. Instead, we stay in one area. We get to know the region through its culture, history, and legends. You can join us with an auditory and visual adventure through podcasts and videos. Learn more about the invasion at http://celticinvasion.com/

LEARN IRISH DANCE Irish music, dance, and culture have global appeal, but not everyone has the opportunity to access lessons in their neighborhood.

Online Irish Dance offers courses for people who want to learn the basics of Irish dance for fun—no matter where they are in the world!

The course called Irish Dance Basics for Ceili Dancing is specifically designed to teach students the basic movements required in ceili, or group, dancing. The moves are taught with music of varying speeds, and modules are included that introduce stretches and strengthening exercises to keep students’ bodies safe while they practice.

Sign up today at online-Irish-dance.teachable.com and use the code SPD2020 for 25% off any course in the school through March 31, 2020.

I should point out. They are not a sponsor of the podcast. And I have no affiliation. They asked if I’d share. It sounded like something I thought you might be interested in.

FREE MUSIC How would you like a free album of Celtic music? Every year, I compile the 17 Free Celtic MP3s for St Patrick’s Day. In fact, if you listened to and enjoyed show #250, then you can now download every single one of those songs for free. Follow the link in the shownotes.

There are NO STRINGS ATTACHED. The download page is on our Patreon. It’s open to the public. So you can just click and download the free MP3s. You don’t need to sign up for a single thing.

Now if you want MORE FREE MP3s, you can also subscribe to the Celtic Music Magazine. Every week, you will get a few cool bits of Celtic music news. It's a quick and easy way to plug yourself into more great Celtic culture. Plus, you'll get 34 Celtic MP3s for Free, just for signing up today.

And if that’s not enough… I want you to have a Free CD of mine. It’s an album of Irish songs called Happy Songs of Death. I actually featured it on episode #83 of the podcast. But you can have the physical CD. I will swallow the cost of the disc. You just have to pay for the shipping. Follow the link in the shownotes. I don’t know how long this offer will last. So get it soon!

#celticmusic #irishmusic #celticpodcast

I WANT YOUR FEEDBACK

What are you doing today while listening to the podcast? You can send a written comment along with a picture of what you're doing while listening. Email a voicemail message to celticpodcast@gmail.com

David (Daithi) O'Brien emailed: "Hi Marc. I live in Mn, and have always enjoyed the St. Patrick's day performances at the Landmark Center in St. Paul. I remembered that your birthday is on the 17th, and thought you might enjoy our Minnesota Nice celebrations. 2 of my old Step Dance groups will be performing along with I don't know how many Indie musicians. Sorry I didn't think about reaching out to you until the end of February, but if you have the chance, give the frozen north a try."

Bernard Nieuwendijk emailed: "Dear Marc, I just found out about this band, does it fit your show? http://www.auli.lv/en Love your show btw, promoting it whenever I see a chance!"

Jeff Peterson wrote on our blog: "Thank you again, Marc. Nice music to listen to while at work. :)"

Stacia Ahlfeld wrote: "My son and I listened to this while we worked on his schoolwork. He really liked it! I did too, of course. It's fun to have a kiddo who enjoys Celtic music like me. Hope you have a great day!"

Amy Hineline sent a photo: "Recovering from total knee replacement surgery. Waiting to go home."

Barb Spears emailed: "Hi Marc!  I'm a newbie to podcasts and just downloaded an APP. I searched music and found your podcast - my first!  I love Celtic music having green blood in my veins and am a Ceili dancer who enjoys our Irish culture and community here in St. Paul MN.   As I listen to this great music, I am digging out of a very cluttered home office. The upbeat music is keeping me going as I tackle this rather daunting task.  No pics - nobody should see the mess I have!"

Helen Withers emailed: "Hi from Helen Withers in Falcon, Colorado. We attended the Larkspur, Colorado Renaissance Festival in the last two years. We have repeatedly sat in the audience to see, sing with(from the audience) and enjoy a musical trio called "Music the Gathering Band" They have at least one CD, & recently finished at the Brevard RenFaire. You may like them for one of your podcasts."

She sent another email: "Also, there's a band from one of the Carolina states, called Syr. We saw them live in Estes Park, Colorado & really enjoyed their music too. Thank you, Helen Withers in Falcon Colorado."

  Check out this episode!

[democratsunited-blog]

Trump Won Pennsylvania. Democrats Want the State (and His Voters) Back.

https://uniteddemocrats.net/?p=8088

Trump Won Pennsylvania. Democrats Want the State (and His Voters) Back.

CONWAY, Pa. — The rules are workable enough in the right hands, in the right corner of a right-leaning region of a state like this one.

Avoid the jacket-and-tie look, so voters — wary enough of Democrats — do not think they are looking at a Jehovah’s Witness. “That happened,” recalled Representative Conor Lamb, now in a polo shirt.

Pivot to safe subjects. After a local here loudly mocked the idea of “Russian collusion” with President Trump to a peer, Mr. Lamb, 34, moved in to introduce himself, telling the man (who said he was Russian) about falling in love with Russian cuisine when he was in the Marines.

And if all else fails — and it will, often — there is always prayer.

“I was reading a little Isaiah this morning,” Mr. Lamb said at a town festival recently, approaching Paul Strano, 69, whose hat read, “F.B.I.: Firm Believer In Jesus.” The two bowed their heads.

“A man of faith, backing the party of abortion, homosexual promotion,” Mr. Strano, a Trump supporter, said afterward. “But the man sold himself.” Mr. Lamb had his vote.

In his 2016 victory, Mr. Trump swiped several states that Democrats had assumed were theirs: Michigan, Wisconsin, Florida. But perhaps no outcome matched the psychic toll of losing Pennsylvania, where the past Democratic coalition of city-dwelling liberals, racial minorities and white working-class voters in union towns had long defined the party’s identity as a big-tent enterprise.

Two years later, a return to power — winning the House in November, winning the presidency in 2020 — will hinge in large measure on how effectively Democrats can peel off voters who migrated to Mr. Trump. The challenge is real: Unemployment in the state is below 5 percent, and Mr. Trump’s approval rating, while underwater over all in Pennsylvania, remains high among the Republicans who populate districts like Mr. Lamb’s. But in candidates like him and others across the state, national Democratic officials believe they have found a model, with a curious signature feature: Democrats in no rush to remind certain audiences that they are Democrats.

Best known for his special election victory in March in a district that the president carried by nearly 20 points, Mr. Lamb has sought to reach both college-educated suburbanites dismayed at Mr. Trump’s excesses and union workers who defected to Republicans in 2016, when the president won the state by less than a percentage point.

The balance is delicate. Mr. Lamb speaks of labor rights and economic fairness, in the Democratic tradition, but stakes out more conservative ground on social issues like guns. He begs off questions about national politics, but makes clear that he wants to see Nancy Pelosi replaced as the leader of House Democrats. He observes that “heroin kills both Democrats and Republicans,” the only mention of the D-word on his campaign website’s home page.

He claims to have few strong feelings about Mr. Trump’s job performance.

“I’m not real concerned about it,” Mr. Lamb said in an interview. (After the chat was over, he wanted another pass at the topic. “It’s not that I’m not concerned about job performance,” he clarified. “It’s that I don’t think it’s my role to be a speculator or analyst.”)

Other Democrats in Trump-supporting areas have tested their own modulated message. In northeastern Pennsylvania, Representative Matt Cartwright, whose district Mr. Trump won by 10 points, is quick to recall Democratic triumphs of generations past, like Franklin D. Roosevelt signing Social Security into law. Like Mr. Lamb, he emphasizes the need to secure affordable health coverage and tend to moldering roads and bridges. Unlike Mr. Lamb, he won his office by initially challenging a conservative incumbent Democrat from the left in a 2012 primary, declaring himself a member of “the Democratic wing of the Democratic Party.”

But direct criticisms of the president have been relatively sparse. Though Mr. Cartwright, 57, said in an interview that he wished Mr. Trump would “act more presidential,” he reached for empathy when explaining his own constituents’ choices in 2016.

“They voted for the change candidate, and you do that when you are hurting,” he said. “And I try to remind them that it is the Democratic Party that cares about the people who are hurting more than any other party. And I say to myself, I have to redouble my own efforts because these are my people who are hurting.”

Across the state, candidates have been similarly introspective. Perpetually a bellwether — with bipartisan representation in the United States Senate currently and seesawing control of the governorship for decades — Pennsylvania has assumed an especially prominent place in the present political moment. Not only are Gov. Tom Wolf and Senator Bob Casey, both Democrats, fighting to keep their seats this November, but congressional districts have been rendered more competitive under a redrawn map, making the state central to any Democratic path back to a House majority in Washington.

Mr. Wolf, a businessman from south central Pennsylvania, will face Scott Wagner, who owns a waste-hauling company and served in the State Senate. Mr. Casey — long an understated senator, now emitting more fire in the Trump age — is running against Representative Lou Barletta, an immigration hard-liner and early Trump supporter. Polls have shown both Democrats with double-digit leads, buoyed in part by deep antipathy toward Mr. Trump in urban areas — enough to make Mr. Casey entirely comfortable opposing Mr. Trump’s recent Supreme Court pick before his identity (Judge Brett M. Kavanaugh) was even revealed.

And under the redrawn map, several Democratic women are running in congressional districts that are either leaning in their favor or are solidly blue, including Madeleine Dean, Chrissy Houlahan and Mary Gay Scanlon in suburban Philadelphia, and Susan Wild in the Lehigh Valley. Democrats see at least a half-dozen potential pickup opportunities in the state this fall, when they will need to flip 23 seats nationwide to take back the House.

This jumbling of the boundary lines has also coincided with a wider upheaval in the state — demographically, economically, socially. Democrats have clustered ever more tightly in major cities. Pittsburgh, so synonymous with steel that the word lives in the name of its football team, has transformed into a haven of “eds and meds,” with greener medical complexes, a Google campus and a test track for autonomous cars.

A surge of immigrants has spawned resurgence and resentment in equal measure in some long-flagging labor towns, where blue-collar white voters have often felt left behind, their grievances reflected back in the racially-hued message and zero-sum populism of Mr. Trump.

“Two things can be true at the same time: There is xenophobia and nationalism and racist undertones,” said John Fetterman, the longtime mayor of Braddock, outside Pittsburgh, and the Democratic nominee for lieutenant governor. “But there’s also people that are reachable.”

Often, success is as much a matter of emphasis as policy. Rick Bloomingdale, the president of the Pennsylvania A.F.L.-C.I.O., said that despite a “great economic plan” from Hillary Clinton in 2016, the piece of her platform that broke through most was “how awful Trump was.”

“People don’t want to hear you tell them how bad Trump is,” Mr. Bloomingdale said. “They either know or they don’t care.”

Though Democrats hope to erase the memory of Mrs. Clinton’s race statewide, regions like Mr. Lamb’s and Mr. Cartwright’s have been a particular focus of the political reclamation project. The party once ruled many of the labor strongholds of the southwest, where the river’s edge is pocked with brownfields and shuttered taverns and roadside sunflowers that tilt backward, like a boxer dodging a punch, when a truck cuts a curve too sharply.

And northeastern Pennsylvania has long carried particular significance for Democrats as a point of electoral pride in an increasingly cosmopolitan party. Mrs. Clinton’s father came from there, as she liked to tell her Pennsylvania crowds. She learned to shoot a gun, she said, at her family’s cottage on nearby Lake Winola. Mr. Casey is another Scranton man, like his father — a two-term Democratic governor — before him. So is former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., from whom Mr. Lamb said he learned a crucial lesson about grip-and-grin hustle at parades.

“I watched him do it once,” Mr. Lamb said. “He had to change his shirt afterward. That was the metric of success.”

So perhaps nowhere was Mr. Trump’s success more striking than across the northeastern ZIP codes where Democrats had long held firm. In Luzerne County, which includes Wilkes-Barre, President Barack Obama defeated Mitt Romney in 2012 by five points; Mr. Trump won it by 19. In neighboring Lackawanna County, which includes Scranton, Mr. Obama won by 27 points; Mrs. Clinton beat Mr. Trump there by only three.

Mr. Cartwright’s Republican opponent in the area is John Chrin, a former investment banker who has pumped more than $1.3 million into his campaign. Mr. Cartwright is seen as the favorite, but he is one of a small number of incumbent House Democrats nationwide whose races are viewed as competitive. A recent ad from Mr. Chrin’s campaign accuses Mr. Cartwright of supporting so-called sanctuary cities and “protecting criminals,” while also voting in lock step with Ms. Pelosi.

But the congressman has strained to avoid such typecasting as a liberal shill. Among other flourishes, he has been eager to share word of a new hobby with prospective voters: deer hunting.

“My job is to get to know people and learn about their passions,” he said in the interview.

There is another upside. “It helps me talk to Republican members of Congress, too,” Mr. Cartwright said. “It’s a nice way to say, ‘You know, I don’t hate you.’”

Some skeptical voters have commanded extra care from Mr. Cartwright and his team. Outside the bingo tent at a church bazaar in Tannersville, Mr. Cartwright encountered Duane Grady, a Trump voter who owns a home heating oil business and expressed fondness of the Republican tax cuts. He said he used to support Democrats.

“You heard it from Uncle Matt: We want you back, man,” Mr. Cartwright told him.

Soon after, a Cartwright campaign worker offered his own pitch to Mr. Grady. The congressman, he noted, does not support “open borders” or abolishing Immigration and Customs Enforcement, an idea that some liberal Democrats have embraced. (Last month, both Mr. Lamb and Mr. Cartwright voted for a symbolic resolution supporting I.C.E.)

“Don’t let that far left-wing fringe, like antifa and stuff like that, make you think that they control the entire party,” the worker said. “Don’t think that we all belong to that side.”

Mr. Grady, it turned out, lived outside of Mr. Cartwright’s district, but he is the sort of voter Democrats need just the same. And he remained ambivalent. “I’d love to go back,” he said of voting Democratic. “But they got to get a whole new wave in there.”

Mr. Lamb’s campaign has likewise required a hard sell at times. At a neighborhood parade in Bairdford — where a State Senate candidate passed out Steelers schedules with his face on the top — Mr. Lamb drew a mixed reception.

“Gripping and grinning,” a man grumbled from his folding chair as Mr. Lamb passed.

A baby began to cry. “I get that reaction from a lot of people,” Mr. Lamb said.

But Mr. Lamb, prone to sports metaphors and coaching wisdom, does not discourage easily. He recalled a quote attributed to Bill Russell, the basketball legend: “Hustle is a talent.” And often, voters seemed to remember him from the ubiquitous advertisements during his special election. This has made him at least as recognizable as his Republican opponent, Keith Rothfus, a three-term incumbent whose new district lines are far less favorable. (A recent poll showed Mr. Lamb with a solid lead.)

Some fellow Democratic candidates, eager to emulate Mr. Lamb’s performance in conservative-leaning districts, have reached out in recent months for advice. There is little to give, Mr. Lamb suggested.

“There really is no playbook or master plan or strategy,” he said.

But Mr. Lamb has pursued a hobby of his own, as needed.

When two seniors began dancing beside an inflatable bounce-house at the festival in Conway, Mr. Lamb joined them — all limbs and peer pressure — twisting and kicking to the beat.

“Are you allowed to just do whatever you want with your hands?” he asked, mid-shuffle.

Yes, he was told. There was no playbook or master plan or strategy.

Matt Flegenheimer reported from Conway, Pa., and Thomas Kaplan from Tannersville, Pa.

Read full story here