Special Guests

Special Guests
Saturday, November 10, 2001

Stewart and O'Beirne

ANDY M. STEWART and GERRY O'BEIRNE have been over a good part of the United States in just the past week, and before that they've traveled a good part of the known world. Stewart was born in Perthshire, Scotland; O'Beirne in County Clare in Ireland. They overcame the language barrier and teamed up in 1991; they are both songwriters. Critics have said Stewart is a 'heartbreaking' singer and arranger and O'Beirne is a 'superlative' guitarist on both the six and the twelve-string, and far be it for us to try to top that.

They have cut two albums together, "Man in the Moon" and "Donegal Rain," but Stewart's work has been on 21 others, both solo and in groups, and O'Beirne, who has 'opened for the Grateful Dead and played electric guitar with Marianne Faithfull,' has produced ten first-rate CDs, with various artists. They will perform at Keiran's Irish Pub in Minneapolis Saturday night after our show; they will also be at Keiran's on Sunday.

Nashville Bluegrass Band

THE NASHVILLE BLUEGRASS BAND brings to town it's heavy burden of accolades, awards, critical acclaim, peer approval and storied past, not that we need any of that to enjoy the music or that we think it makes the experience any more fulfilling; but it sure doesn't hurt anything either. We just hope it doesn't bother the musicians that we already know stuff about them before they even get here.

The band was assembled in 1984; it's collective pedigree goes directly back to Bill Monroe and includes connections with the Tasty Licks, the Dreadful Snakes, the Phantoms of the Opry, the Monroe Doctrine, Lost Highway, Flatt and Scruggs, Bela Fleck, Peter Rowan, Larry Sparks and the usual host of others. They put out their first album in 1985, "My Native Home" on Rounder, and in '86 were the first bluegrass band to play in China. In 1988 they did a Middle Eastern tour, including a stop in Iraq; we expect that by now they will have been thoroughly debriefed, even though we didn't hear all that much about it at the time.

Pat Enright - guitar, Alan O'Bryant - banjo , Stuart Duncan - fiddle, Dennis Crouch - bass, Mike Compton - mandolin.