When I was about 16 or 17, the Dubliners came to San Francisco. After the concert, my whole family—3 generations—wound up singing till the wee hours in the Dubliners' suite at the Jack Tar Hotel.
My Corkonian grandmother, Jennie Walsh Reilly was off in a corner talking to her old friend, the tall, gaunt John Whooley, Irish emissario, and radio show host of "Bits of Blarney." John was the man responsible for bringing the Dubliners to town. Later, John also brought The Chieftains and The Wolftones to San Francisco. Much more formal events. John Whooley also ran a travel agency, Hibernia Travel—and Aer Lingus charters.
John Whooley always made sure my grannie got front row seats. That's probably also why we were invited to the after-hours post-performance party. That's where the real craic was at. Not in the formal ballroom downstairs stuffed with old bluehaired matrons bedecked in pearls and laced in stiff corsets, sitting ramrod on even stiffer chairs.
The party was in full swing. The whiskey flowed like the River Shannon, everybody burbling at once. Nobody my age to talk to. I was hiding out in a corner. Ronnie Drew, whom I’d just met, thought I should meet a bandmate who was hiding out in a corner. Ronnie was trying to fix me up with Luke Kelly, it was oil and water at first sight.
The party was in full swing. The whiskey flowed like the River Shannon, everybody burbling at once. Nobody my age to talk to. I was hiding out in a corner. Ronnie Drew, whom I’d just met, thought I should meet a bandmate who was hiding out in a corner. Ronnie was trying to fix me up with Luke Kelly, it was oil and water at first sight.
We stood awkwardly and had nothing to say to each other. I was shy as a fencepost. My world was horses. I blurted to Luke Kelly that I was trying to learn the cords to a new song. Not that I was any good at playing guitar. Didn't know what else to say to him. He had the most startling red afro and palest watery green eyes I'd ever seen. I was mortified, we were standing in a sea surrounded by a drunken after-party who didn’t want the concert or craic to end.
Luke, seeing an easy way to get rid of me, set his banjo down, and led me back over to where gravelly-voiced Ronnie Drew was still holding court. Before I knew it, Ronnie had me perched on his knee. He was nursing a drink in one hand and fretting his guitar in the other hand—as he was showing me the tune…and the gossip began. I was so mortified, I couldn't even fret a G chord. No idea what tune it was.
Everyone wanting to know who that chit of a girl was sitting like that in public on the knee of the man with bedroom eyes, like that, shameless— in front of God and everyone. It was the late 1960s.
Ronnie couldn't help how his eyes looked. He did have bedroom eyes—but he was a perfect gentleman.
Rescue came from an unexpected source. My great-aunt Peig Walsh Collins, a former head nurse, a chain-smoking tower of a redhead who took no interference from anyone, raised herself up to her full six feet, and bellowed, "That's MY grand-niece yer slanderin' there. I'll have none of that!" Other words followed and the nosy gossip drifted away…
Here's to You Ronnie Drew.
Ride on Ronnie. Ride on.
