THE VOLUNTEERS
Miami's New Times says:
"Put this crew and free-flowing alcohol in a club setting and you never know what will happen next ... This is a band capable of raising the roof in the best Celtic tradition."
Street Magazine says:
"I can't remember a good St. Paddy's Day that didn't end in a tearful sing-along with glasses held loftily in the air as spilled beer baptized all below. Only one band brings that species of drinking-joy to venues year-round, wherever they play, and that band is the Volunteers."
Small wonder then that The Volunteers have more than a decade of packed out shows in the US and abroad to their credit!
The Show - "American Celtic"
The Americas were hugely populated by peoples of Celtic extraction - from the Scots, Irish and Welsh, to the Celtic English (notably Cornwall and Northumbria) and the Celtic French (who settled parts of Canada and whose descendants were exiled from "Acadie" to Louisiana). All of these brought their native musical traditions from their ancestral homelands to the new. It is therefore a peristent Celtic beat that pulses through the home-grown musics of the Americas - Country, Cajun, Bluegrass, Rock-a-Billy - and Rock-and-Roll.
In their stage show, The Volunteers take the Celtic musical inheritance of the Americas into a new century. They start with a base mix of much-loved Celtic traditionals; fold in their mistreatments of the Celtic baroque classics; whip in a healthy dose of brand new soon-to-be-Celtic-classics from the "catalog of 18th century folk-songs we wrote last week;" and then leaven the whole heady brew with rip-out, stomping, fiddle break-downs, jigs and reels. Kids get on stage and dance. The crowd sings and laughs along with the band - and everyone goes home happy!