Whiskey Galore at the Fitz in Downtown Vegas: St. Patty Party - by N.L. Belardes

Did you know that State Line, Nevada (Primm) is 26 miles from Las Vegas? That's one marathon race to you and me, which is about the same amount of energy, plus an encore or three, that Kevin Briley and his band Whiskey Galore put into their show St. Patrick's Day night at the Fitzgerald's Casino. If you don't know, the Fitz is located in downtown Las Vegas. That's the eye of the storm in Las Vegas history. Near the recreation of the Old Mormon Ft. where streams ran along Indian trails and the Mormon trails, it was once called Block 16. That was just around the time trains passed through. That was the Old West. Back in those days if a certain Sherriff Sam saw you fighting (He was as big as Marky Pope, if not bigger) he would literally take you and the other guy and smash your heads together and then make you kiss and make up. Of course when Sam was drunk he'd wander the old block past the Golden Nugget, past the old Golden Gate (the oldest casion downtown) and shoot out lamp lights...Nowadays old Fremont Street is home to about 13 casinos, thousands of nightgoers and the Fremont Street Experience over a jammed promenade.

So here's what Kevin had to say:


vegas rocked! At the end of our last show on 3/17 we were asked to
stay over and perform again on 3/18... Exhausting. We did three sets
on 3/17 and two sets on 3/18 at the fitz. I"m pretty sure we'll be
back next year. The lungs were wrecked still, but are now on the
mend. Jeff got a great picture of me near passed out with exhaustion
at the end of the show... I"ll send it to you when i get it. The
first night we had extra security guards cause there were SO many
people watching. After the end of each set we said goodnight, but
the crowd just howled out for more. We did a few encores and called
it quits. Some guys in the front row wanted more. I asked if they
could get the band a round of beers and we'd do it. When i said one
more, they said 3!! So i said if you can handle three, why not four?
The beers arrived and we played 5 more. I collapsed, end of night.

Night two went pretty much the same way.

I pride myself on making each show just a little different. For this
show, mike sang a song called "paddy murphy's wake." We actually did
this at the noriega hotel on 3/15, but that was the only other time i
had heard it from mike. We did a reel called, "the dusty millar"
that we hadn't done before. I can't remember the real set lists
because we just called out whatever we felt like. I remember that we
did many, many versions of "hag at the churn." Other tunes that we
did that i know for sure are: (in no particular order)

pig
parting glass
wild rover
gypsy
maggie in the woods-sliabh luachra
wild rover
black velvet
mason's
thunder
atholl
cork hill
molly and the cops
county down
pumpkin
health
5 drunken nights
donnybrook/jack walsh/ donnybrook
cead/jigs
lark
brain boru
paddy murphy's wake
dusty millar
hag at the churn
derry
galican/grumpy
drunken sailor

that all she wrote!
kevin

This entry was posted by N.L. Belardes, on Sunday, March 20, 2005. You can leave your response.