Artist description Irish American Pub band

Music Style Irish American Pub Music

Musical Influences Chieftans, Johnny Cash, Rolling Stones, Dubliners, Hank Williams, Bob Dylan, Seamus Egan, Commitments

Similar Artists Clancy Brothers, Van Morrison, Pogues, Elvis, Christy Moore, Wolfe Tones, Black 47

Group Members Jim Guy, Dan Guy, Judy Guy Ed Tatum, Henry Robb Sajji Hussain, Martin Creighton, Don Bowman

Instruments guitar, fiddle, recorder, penny whistle, bodhran, bass, vocals, harmonica

Albums The Rare Olde Times Bootleg

Press Reviews Celtic Hysteria Good times are the norm at Rare Olde Times Stephen Conroy Richmond.com Friday June 21, 2002 Cross the threshold at Rare Olde Times and you'll take a welcomed trip out of the mass-produced scenery of suburbia into a lively brand of Celtic hysteria. The heads in the dimly lit audience bob to music that induces a Jameson craving. The servers smile and speak with a brogue. The band engages the assembly in multiple socials and gladly accepts drinks sent from the crowd. The drinks seem to come as often as the band switches instruments. Such was the scene at 9 p.m. on a recent weekday night at the intersection of Patterson Avenue and Pump Road in the West End. Pub regulars Uisce Beatha (pronounced ishkey baha) set the cadence with crowd-participating lyrics and energetic acoustics on traditional Irish mediums. "Now of the places I have seen from China to the Caribbean, are all like bronze to gold compared to Ireland." The folk song "Changing Your Demeanor" is a staple from Galway to Goochland, and fits in well with the aura at Rare Olde Times. With an atmosphere like that you can get away with so-so food and service quality, but Rare Olde Times goes all out in both aspects. The menu mixes customary Irish (or Irish-American) pub fare, from the appetizers to the entrees, with some generic dishes for the unadventurous. Appetizers range from $5.95 to $6.95, sandwiches from $4.50 to $7.95, and entrees from $9.95. The main courses vary from shepherd's pie ($9.95) to crab cakes ($12.95). The serving sizes aren't for the faint of stomach - prepare to wage war against large portions. We commenced battle with the chicken wings and potato boats, a plate full of baked potato halves topped with diced tomato and Bermuda onion. The vegetable topping complimented the spuds with additional flavor and helped cool the tongue from the wing sauce. We split the shepherd's pie and corned beef and cabbage ($10.95) and had the same for lunch the next day. If you ever crave a bowl crammed with every food group, look no further than the shepherd's pie. It's a crock full of seasoned ground beef, mixed with peas and carrots and gravy, and topped with mashed potatoes and cheddar cheese. The corned beef and cabbage will give any steakhouse an inferiority complex. The beef part of the concoction was a pair of long, 1-inch thick slabs, each of which rivaled a 14-oz. New York strip in size and packed as much flavor. And don't worry, the cabbage tastes a lot better than you remember your kitchen smelling when mom boiled her own batch. If you're feeling guilty, the meal also includes mashed potatoes and mixed vegetables. The menu is as exciting as it sounds, but simple enough to cater to anyone from the meat-and-potatoes generation to someone with a proclivity for pickiness. Why drive all the way to some place near where addresses start to shed Richmond ZIP codes? you might ask. Because Rare Olde Times is there. And once you do, you won't need a reminder why Uisce Beatha chants, "There's nowhere else on Earth quite like this island." A service of richmond.com All material copyright © 1999 - 2002 Richmond.com and Partners. _________________________________________________ RICHMOND MUSIC JOURNAL, November 2000, page 9 What's the name of this band, how did it get such a crazy name, and when did it start? The name of this band is “Uisce Beatha”, which we thought would be pretty unique, given that it is fairly unpronounceable and is in a language spoken by only a couple hundred Irish people. Uisce Beatha is Gaelic for “water of life” but basically means whiskey. We’ve since learned that there are tons of bands named Uisce Beatha all over the world. We’ve found them in Germany, Belgium, Canada, and, of course, Ireland. The Canadian guys seem to be the one’s who’ve done the best, we get passionate e-mails from Canadian girls all the time, gushing about the band and asking where to get CDs. The Canadian Uisce Beatha got so fed up with the prevalence of the name that they changed their name to “Red”. Can you believe that? “Red” is less generic than “Uisce Beatha”? We should probably change our name, too. Maybe “Taupe” is still available. Who's in the band and what do they play? What previous bands (we'd recognized) has everyone been in? Uisce Beatha is pretty big for a pub band. On any given night we could have anywhere from three to six members on stage, plus a parade of special guests and audience victims. Jim Guy and Dan Guy are brothers, and do most of the lead vocals. They both play rhythm guitar and bodhran (the Irish hoop drum), as well, and Jim fills in on pennywhistles and occasionally harmonica. Dan also fronts the Northern Virginia based 80’s revival band “Farsi”. Jim used to host open mike night at the now defunct Irish House on Grace Street and played solo and in a couple of bands around Charlottesville in the 1980’s. Jim is married to Judy Guy who plays recorder & tamborine and also sings. Judy & Jim met in the church folk group at St. Thomas Aquinas in Charlottesville in 1983. Henry Robb plays fiddle, and sings a little. He is also a tenor with the Richmond Symphony chorus, and plays fiddle on Susan Greenbaum’s latest single. Henry also played violin with the Princeton Symphony. Ed Tatum is the lead guitar player. Like the rest of the band he also sings both lead and back-up. Ed brings an eclectic breadth of musical styles to his leads, and, an engineer by training, is the only band member with any discipline whatsoever. I don’t know what it is about bass players, but we need, and have, a pretty deep bench. Don Bowman, who used to be the guy inside the Cavalier costume at UVA football games, brings a high energy, personal dynamic to performances. Sajji Hussein is our more traditional, phlegmatic bass player. Once in a while, Martin Creighton, bar manager at Rare Olde Times Pub, and former musician about Dublin also steps in. Describe your style of music in one sentence. Include influences if applicable. We play Irish American pub music. We do a lot of Clancy Brothers, Wolfe Tones, and Christy Moore, along with some Chieftains, Saw Doctors, Christy Moore, Van Morisson, Dubliners, and Commitments. We also go off genre. A lot. TV Themes, blues, roots. We mess around a lot. Our show is aggressively interactive. If the audience misses their part, we often stop, go back, berate, harangue and rehearse them until WE’RE satisfied with their performance. It’s a little obnoxious, but in a most beautiful way. Favorite venue? Easy question. Rare Olde Times Pub. We’ve played most of the pubs in town, and love them all. Festivals and parties are fun, too, But there is no place to play like Rare Olde Times. Andy & Cindy Jennings who own the pub are musicians themselves and set the place up with the music as the first consideration – not an afterthought where you’re squeezed into some corner. There’s a well placed stage with a fantastic, brand new sound system, lights, mics, cables. There are even guitar stands hung on the walls behind the stage. The only gear you have to haul is your guitar. Plus the crowd there is great. We play every Thursday and it’s always full up with people who want to have a good time. Most encouraging moment as a band. We’ve got one fan, about ten years old with a pronounced disability. His parents bring him in a couple times a month, and his eyes shine when we play. He dances in his seat to every song, and heckles us to sing more if we talk too much between songs. In my day job I talk for a living, but there is not one thing I could say to connect with that kid half as well as the the music does. That’s the best thing we do. Most discouraging moment as a band. Once, we were booked to play this pub, or so we thought. When we showed up, the staff had never heard of us and didn’t expect us. We set up our gear and played anyway. The place filled up with people who had come to hear us. We never got paid. We never got thanked. And they charged us for our drinks. We did get a song out of it, though. Who writes the songs and what is their primary inspiration? Other people mostly. We don’t do much original music. We do have one original song, “The Bad Gig”, which Jim wrote based, in large measure, on the gig recounted in the last question. Our fans call it “The Ba-Head Song” because it mentions them, the Ba-heads, our fans. Our favorite cartoon character is . . . . . . the martini swilling dog on the family guy because we want to seem more erudite than we would if we gave the true answer, Homer Simpson. Our secret method of ensuring we have the best show possible is to . . . . . . mock each other ruthlessly. If we are screwing up, we point it out, turn it into screwing around and it becomes part of the schtick. Our best original song is . . . . . . “The Bad Gig/Ba-Head Song.” It is our only original song. The cover we play the best is. . . “Finnegan’s Wake.” It took practice, practice, practice. Actually we never practice anything. Finnegan’s Wake is just fun. Everyone plays. Everyone drinks, then we take a break. The best audience you ever had was . . . our Sunday afternoon set at the 1999 Richmond Highland Games and Celtic Festival. It was like everyone who had ever enjoyed the band came out together for that set. They sang every chorus, shouted every response, and laughed at every throw away. We seriously considered breaking up the band at the end, cause we can’t imagine ever topping it. What is the most unusual piece of equipment in the band? Jim’s half-banjo half-guitar. Nobody in the band can play the banjo, but sometimes you like to have just a little. Jim’s “bantar” or “guitjo” is played like a guitar, but sounds kind of like a banjo. One night this guy comes in to the pub and sits down at the table right in front of the stage. He’s a really accomplished banjo player. He notices this thing and he’s all put out that it’s not a real banjo, it’s an abomination, etc. Later in the evening, he offers some “advice” about the sound. Jim snaps something like “don’t start with me” so the guy stands up, makes another, biologically impossible, suggestion with accompanying gesture and storms out. Most horrible transportation story. We were booked to play the MidAtlantic Land Rover Rally. A bunch of really nice people who have some kind of deranged attachment to their British SUVs. I guess part of the fun of the rally was supposed to be finding and getting to the site. Unfortunately, Jim’s Caprice sedan wasn’t really equipped for the terrain. We finally gave up in the mud, and a guy with a 60’s vintage Land Rover truck picked us up with all our gear and drove us the rest of the way in. What's the worst place you've ever had to sleep? Blacksburg. But that’s another story. The official food of this band is . . . Guinness. Our biggest equipment nightmare. Running out of Guinness What does this band fight about the most? Dan stealing Jim’s Guinness The one thing that makes our band different from all others is... Well, not the name, obviously. We are the only Irish American Pub band in Richmond that has two lawyers in it. Our band philosophy is . . . Pog Mo Thoin. We are currently selling both the new t-shirt and the original t-shirt. They are available out of the back of Ed’s truck. We plan to have the CD out by St. Patrick’s day, and will also introduce Uisce Beatha logo Mehndi Tattoos before too long. Possible also logo kazoos. We play every Thursday night at Rare Old Times Pub. We’ll also be at the Richmond Highland Games on October 28-29. We’re also booked at Rare Olde Times and the Main Street Beer Company for St. Patrick’s Day 2001. Our website is www.geocities/thetropics/1646/uisce.html

Location Richmond, Virginia - USA

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