Irish Music at Pat Collins Bar

I was so inspired when we stopped by Pat Collins’ Bar one night to hear the live music, that I actually wrote this while sitting in the bar, toe tapping, Guinness sipping, sweating profusely & loving every minute of it.

I walked through the front door of Pat Collins bar & directly into the back of a cashmere red sweater. The stench hit me immediately: sweaty, like an indoor swimming pool full of pale Irish men, mixed with beer & Irish Catholic guilt. B & I weaved our we toward a table in the back, signaling to the bartender for two pints. In this part of Ireland, there’s no need to clarify what you’d like a pint of: Guinness is the only acceptable answer.

The music soon started: a trio playing traditional Irish tunes largely for themselves. Guitars & fiddles & steel guitars & instruments I had never seen. What struck me immediately was the diversity of the group gathered around the bar: a gaggle of American golfers (one of them wearing the cashmere sweater I collided with), celebrating a birthday & that day’s game. Two Irish couples on a double date, a significant age gap between them. Old Irish men, a lot of them, looking as if they haven’t left their bar stool in years.

As I sipped my pint, wedged between a cigarette machine & a vending machine of charity mints, swaying to the sweet sounds of the mandolin, there’s no where else in the world I would have rather been.

Live Irish Music at Pat Collins Bar from Christina Tuff Saull on Vimeo.