Boston with Méara Meara

Silly kids!

Making music with friends is a lot of fun!

Haley and Dylan have been enjoying Monday afternoon music making sessions with uilleann piper, Keegan, for the past few months. Keegan has been cyber-schooling since January which leaves him more time for his music and Monday evenings they all enjoy a session from 7-9pm. Haley has a violin lessons in Philly in the afternoons so in the between time, they all get together to share tunes, arrange sets, and laugh together.

Around March, when they had a few gigs come up together, the kids decided they needed a "band" name. They ended up deciding on Méara Meara which mean "Lively Fingers" in Irish…if you've heard them play, you'd understand how perfect this name is.  You can check out their website www.LivelyFingers.com.

Haley and Dylan had played at The Burren in Boston back in November and the month before they performed, Keegan had been there with a youth exchange program. Brian O'Donovan asked if the three of them could come back together to open for one of the bands and we eventually settled on April 15th. It ended up being a great night! The kids did a great job performing their four sets and we met the three musicians in the Mairtin O'Connor Trio and got to hear their lively set of wonderfully arranged tunes! What a great night of music!!

Backstage at The Burren with The Mairtin O'Connor Trio.

Sound Check at The Burren

A little video of their set thanks to Stephen Shepard…

The next day, we spent the day in Boston. We had a few mis-adventures…a couple sites we wanted to see were closed during the week (until the following Monday of course) and we attempted to get some good photos of the kids. We walked around a lot, saw whatever we could see, had some incredible Italian food (home-made pasta), then headed to a local session for some lovely tunes. We were pleasantly surprised to see Flynn (a guitarist for The John Whelan band who backed one of Haley's slow airs on the kids' new CD).

This photo cracks me up.

We were out late Thursday night and took awhile to get moving on Friday then drove to NYC where the kids were hosting a session for Donie Carroll.

Because they hadn't had enough Irish music the three days prior, they spent the early afternoon busking in NYC on Saturday before we drove home.