Mike Austin makes friends and connections at the fifth Magners Irish Session

Well, friends, we are halfway. Last night was the fifth of ten Magners Irish Sessions in Chicago, that leaves five more to go. If you haven’t yet been to one not to worry you still have time to catch up with the rest of us.

The Session made its way to The Curragh on the Northwest Side of Chicago last night, in the tidy Edison Park neighborhood. The bar is named after the legendary horse racing track in County Kildare, not the fishing vessel so often seen catching the wind of Galway Bay. The track and the boats are pronounced the same and often spelled the same, but more accurately the boat is a currach. It’s a fine line but there are fine lines in all things Irish. And there are connections everywhere you look. Like in the songs that the Holy Hour House Band sang last night.

Early in the night, after a few sets of jigs and reels, Aidan O’Toole launched into a stellar version of “Wichita Lineman,” the song that Glenn Campbell made famous in the ’60s and ’70s. “I am a lineman for the county…” he sang. It might as well be an Irish song. Fine line. O’Toole lives in Cook County now, but County Galway is where he grew into his knickers and first learned to sing. He said it was his third time singing “Wichita Lineman” but if he would have said it was his 103rd time, I would have believed him. He nailed it.

Mike and Mary Margaret Prindiville agreed. The Curragh is their neighborhood local and to have seen them clapping for O’Toole you would have thought Glenn Campbell himself had just sang for them in their own living room and was about to pull out the Hoover and straighten things up a bit.When the Magners Session comes to your bar, things change. People linger after dinner, connections get made.

Later, the HHHB’s Frank Quinn sang “Fisherman’s Blues” by the Irish folk-rock band The Waterboys. I had visions of a poor Irishman soaked and cold, sitting in an empty currach in the middle of a stormy Galway Bay. Sometime later, Erin the waitress showed up. Shift change, sea change. She grew up in Edison Park and was just home from an extended trip to Ireland, where she and a friend went to work after graduating from college. She worked at a café in Galway.

This would have been a footnote on the evening had Frank Quinn not started in on Steve Earle’s gem of a song “The Galway Girl” just then, it might as well have been written about Erin, our waitress. “My dad says I should get a real job,” she told us. “Nah,” I said. “Not yet.” I looked at the other two guys at my table, both in their early 40s. They were slowly shaking their heads. There’s not such a fine line between “job” and “real job.” It’s actually a rather thick line.

I think we got through to Erin. I think she’s going to stick it out for a while. I think she’s going to keep delivering pints and bottles of Magners at The Curragh for a while. Nothing wrong with it; it’s good honest work.
To Erin’s dad, we apologize. But come on, let the Galway girl have her fun. And let us have ours, at least five more times. See you next Wednesday at The Kerryman in Chicago’s River North neighborhood. Erin won’t be there, but there will more connections. There always are.