The Mighty Tour at The Garde
Katie 
Tuesday night I headed to New London with a friend to see The Mighty Tour – Gaelic Storm and The High Kings at the Garde Arts Center. The show was a lot of fun and there were a lot of jokes about Pat and jumping off the balcony because the last time Gaelic Storm played The Kate (the sister venue of The Garde and where I’ll be going tonight for a show!) Pat decided to jump off the balcony and ended up breaking both his legs because there were some stairs he was not anticipating and no one caught him.
Unfortunately I didn’t keep track of the setlist for either band but from looking at past setlists (where is the Irish folk version of me in CT?!) I believe the show opened with both bands on stage singing The Leaving of Liverpool and Whiskey in the Jar. Then The High Kings left the stage to Gaelic Storm. I think they sang Scalliwag, Darcy’s Donkey (which had people jockeying across the front row and also Pat forcing a woman who was there from Finland to join in. Pat also kept saying that Finland won happiest country for the 6th year in a row and I thought that he just made that up but I actually saw the new article about it when I woke up this morning), Johnny Jump Up, The Night Pat Murphy Died… among others. (Either no one cares or someone will end up commenting to correct me lol) There was a lot of up and down during this show – Pat claimed one song was their last standing song so I stood, only for Steve to tell us to keep standing for a second song! And then a few songs later Patrick said he lied and there was another standing song (at that point I was done and stayed seated!)
After a 15 minute intermission, The High Kings took the stage. Some songs I remember that they did was The Moonshiner, an entirely acapella piece called 1845 that they then had the audience sing back and they said we were the best ones yet – true or not I don’t know – but then they made us do it a second time. But they played an hour+ so there’s plenty more songs I am missing but I was not familiar with them at all, but I did really enjoy them.
Then Gaelic Storm came back out for a handful of songs at the end. I actually really like fiddles in music but not when it’s country so apparently it is the fiddle + bagpipe combo I need for Irish folk music. Gaelic Storm is always a fun time so I was glad I went out, even if it was a bit far away and during one of the busiest weeks I have maybe ever constructed for myself (This is show #1 of 5 for this week… we’ll see how well I keep up with making posts…)