RIP Pat Halloran

[Brer Brian]

This week we say goodbye to Pat Halloran of the band Ceann, who passed in a car accident on a snowy Vermont road. Going to share some memories for anyone who might be interested... Feel free to share as well.

First met Pat around 2000 or so, and I remember helping him move a piano from Jeff Lewis' grandmother's apartment to Patsy Grace's house in williamsburg. Briefly he lived there with his brother Brian and I remember how Patsy got pissed at them once for eating cheetohs and watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer. ;D

We formed a St. Patrick's Day band to play traditional Irish music in one wildly successful show at the Sidewalk Cafe. This project spun off into the band Ceann Na Cacca ("Shithead" in Gaelic) and I followed the template we established for cultural holiday shows later on as the Leprechaunquistadors.

Pat figured out how to book shows for a travelling Irish band and get paid for it. Some of my best memories of him involve all of us piling into a farty-smelling van and driving to places like Virginia Beach and Ocean City, MD to do residency shows at places like Murphy's, who would party us out with Guiness and steak and clam chowder and feed us to our heart's content.

He didn't start out as the greatest songwriter, but I believe he became one, as over the course of his band's development he applied what he learned from traditional Irish and country songs to his own writing. Songs like "Worst Pirate" and "Pittsburgh Makes Me Drunk" are as good of songs as anyone's written in the past ten years, and "Almost Irish" was one of my favorite things to harmonize to.

www.ilike.com/artist/Ceann/track/Brer+Brian+Is+Lost

Don't know where the actual song is on here, but "Brer Brian Is Lost" is a techno remix of a semi-panicked voice mail I left him when I got lost at the Renaissance Fair.

That's all for now, stay tuned for more recollections as I think of them and feel free to share your own.

[Grey Revell]

Patsy got mad at them for bringing a six pack into the house, a mortal sin in those parts. Watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer was also diablos en casa , probably because it involved hot girls who weren't well versed in the teachings of Gloria Steinem or "Women Who Run With Wolves". That being said, "Buffy the Werewolf Slayer" would probably have fared little better.

I remember that Pat for all his bluster, loved what I did, and even played my songs at his own gigs..He was loud and brash and smart, and human, and only God knows why he was taken so early..Everyone should have ample time to balance the scales, but it never seems that way..When the scales balance for anyone is impossible to ascertain. He lived his dream..that's important. Slainte, Pat..It was good to know ye.