Photo By Sgt. Amber Bohlman | Armed Forces Entertainment and Morale, Welfare & Recreation team up to bring The Wee...... read more read more
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GUANTANAMO BAY, Cuba – What’s an Irish pub, without Irish music? St. Patrick’s Day celebrations began March 14 at U.S. Naval Station Guantanamo Bay when Morale, Welfare & Recreation teamed up with Armed Forces Entertainment to host The Wee Bag Band, an Irish band from Wales.
The band is full of life and character – when introducing themselves, they do as such; Rory, the plucker (mandolin and whistles), Paul the strummer (guitar), Jules the scratcher (fiddle), Steve the slapper (bass) and Alan the beater (drums).
“We primarily play Irish music with a strong Celtic theme and a blue grass tune thrown in for good measure. We sort of split it into three genres; we have the traditional style with bag pipes that you associate with Irish music, then we have the popular Irish music, and then we have the more contemporary stuff,” Rory said.
“We try to cover all three of those to make sure that everyone has something that they enjoy,” Paul chimed in.
Their set list consists of a wide variety of Irish music, ranging from “Tripping up the Stairs” to “Farewell to Nova Scotia” and “Brown Eyed Girl.”
This is The Wee Bag Band’s second visit to GTMO and they feel very lucky to get a second invite here, or that’s what they tried to say anyways.
“We were very fortunate to be invited back,” Rory said.
Paul joked, “We must have done something wrong.”
“Or you might have done something wrong here to invite us back,” Rory chimed in. “Since you’re going to be the ones that have to suffer the torture of what we’re going to do.”
Joking aside, the gentlemen agreed that they couldn’t be happier with the hospitality and the welcome that they have received since being here.
“It’s not often you get a general coming up to you to shake your hand and thank you,” Alan said.
With this being a popular time of year that Irish bands are in high-demand, the five members are currently on a 12-day tour around the world. From here they go to the Bahamas and then they’re off to New York.
“There are just not enough bands to go around,” Paul said. “There needs to be three or four St. Patrick’s Days every year in order to get to everyone.”
Throughout the night there were some questions as to how the name of the band came about.
When asked how they came up with it, they encouraged those who are interested to look it up on the internet. In order to stay as professional as possible Rory said, “What we like to go with is that when everything started, everything fit into a wee bag.” From there all five of them burst into laughter, not wanting to spill an old joke just yet.
| Date Taken: | 03.14.2015 |
| Date Posted: | 04.23.2015 14:46 |
| Story ID: | 161003 |
| Location: | GUANTANAMO BAY, CU |
| Web Views: | 37 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
This work, Keeping it in a wee bag, band, by SGT Amber Bohlman, identified by DVIDS, must comply with the restrictions shown on https://www.dvidshub.net/about/copyright.
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