If your idea of celebrating St. Patrick’s Day includes raucous and rowdy sing-a-long songs, the Pourmen know how to get your blood flowing.
For the 10th consecutive year this New Bedford-based sextet will bring their Celtic punk to the Whaling City for a Sunday, March 12th show at The Vault in downtown. Starting at 6 p.m., the concert will be the final stop on the NBPD’s Unity Tour Riders’ St. Paddy’s Day Pub Crawl. The show will open with a set from New Bedford’s Molly O’Leary, who will also join the Pourmen later that evening for a couple of songs by the Irish band, the Cranberries.
“We’re a sing-a-long, drink-a-long band,” says Richie O’Toole, the Pourmen’s vocalist, who also plays mandolin, banjo and guitar. “An important part of the show is including the audience. I’m happy to share the microphone if someone knows the words.”
Known for blurring the line between the audience and the stage, the Pourmen’s musical itinerary will include original songs from their multiple albums, along with modern Celtic rock covers of bands such as Dropkick Murphy’s, Flogging Molly, and the Pogues. They will also perform their own amped-up versions of traditional Irish drinking songs.
“Our original songs are from the cobblestone streets and salty pubs of the Whaling City,” O’Toole says. “We have a lot of imagery from landmarks and infamous characters from the city’s history.”
The songs of the Pourmen can be enjoyed atthepourmen.bandcamp.com.
“This is the most exciting time of the year for this band,” O’Toole says. “We’re a lively group.”
The Vault show will be the only local performance from the Pourmen around St. Patrick’s Day. But if you want to enjoy more Irish revelry, the band will be playing two more shows in the region. On Friday, March 10th, they will perform at Cape Cod Beer in Barnstable for a 7 p.m. show, and on Saturday, March 11th, they will do a 6 p.m. show at Stone Path Malt in Wareham. Both shows will include Irish step dancers.
The Pourmen have built a regional reputation for their performance skills. The band has been invited to do a three-day residency at the Lansdowne Pub in Boston, located outside of Fenway Park. The band will perform on St. Patrick’s Day on Friday, March 17’th, with shows to follow on the next Saturday and Sunday.
St. Patrick’s Day will be the 10-year celebration of the Pourmen’s first-ever performance, a show at Slainte in downtown, the current location of PLAY Arcade.
In addition to O’Toole, the band’s lineup includes bassist Kris Motta, guitarist Keith Sylvia, drummer Dan Hoffman, fiddle player Katie Cooke, and John Curtin on tin whistle and mandolin. Guitarist Noah Whiteside will join the band for their Boston shows.
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