Kickstarter Launched: Unearthed Songs From Irish America

In September of 2024 Melanie Beth Curran launched a Kickstarter campaign to create an album of forgotten Irish American songs. Curran seeks to make an album fit for all immigrants. The songs speak to common struggles of all colonized and displaced people today. Amidst a rise in anti-migrant rhetoric in both America and Ireland, Curran’s project provides a bastion of clarity, connecting the broader Irish American immigrant experience to the shared struggles of today’s refugees.

In 2024, Curran unearthed a bevy of Irish American field recordings from The Library of Congress and other archives. These songs packed a punch. They illuminated how Irish Americans coped with loss, longing, and the process of finding home in a new world. Though rife with historic and cultural significance, the songs were gathering digital dust. She sought to change this. In August, she performed the songs at Jalopy Theatre and School of Folk Music in Brooklyn. She wrote and published a zine documenting the lyrics and stories behind the songs.

Here are a selection of the source materials Curran is working with and is inspired by:

Kathleen Mouverneen, Yankee Brown, Don't Judge a Man by The Clothes That He Wears - Beaver Island, Michigan (Library of Congress)

Interviews of Kevin Shannon - Butte, Montana (Library of Congress)

Bonny Irish Boy, Hills of Glenswilly, I am Thinking Ever Thinking - Ireland 

Jerry Go and Oil that Car - Canton, New York (Minnesota Folk Song Collection)

Goodbye Mike, Goodbye Pat (Leaving Tipperary); Barney McShane - America, Tin Pan Alley 

Songs from The New Song Book for Butte Mining Camp

Songs from present day New York City Irish, such as Chris Byrne's "Love in The Room”

Irish Americans on Beaver Island, Michigan during Alan Lomax’ field recording trip there in 1938.

“I am a devotee of Saint Brigid, who, in her beauty and grace, taught all people how to love and take care of the landless, of the people who have less, of the ones who come behind and need a hand up. She taught us to be great people of hospitality. I bring these songs into the 21st century so that others may find compassion in their hearts. The Irish American consciousness can be one of love and support across lines of race, creed, and politics. I am working for Saint Brigid and I will not stop singing until all people and all lands are free.” - Melanie Beth Curran

Curran’s Kickstarter campaign supports the realization of an album and a subsequent tour. Curran aims to connect through live performances in Irish American enclaves, in Ireland, and in spaces where the displaced are currently housed. Inspiration for this project comes from the late folklorist and musician Mick Moloney. His work bringing life to historic Irish American music is a blueprint for Curran’s efforts.

“Unearthed Songs of Irish America” is available to support on Kickstarter at this link: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/glenswilly/unearthed-songs-from-irish-america. The Kickstarter is live from September 5 - 27, with an all-or-nothing fundraising goal of $17,500. Rewards for backers include private concerts, vinyl albums, digital downloads, t-shirts, stickers, hats and more. The anticipated release date for the album is Saint Brigid’s Feast Day, Feb 1, 2025

What The Heck Was People's Beach Day and What Can Be Born of its Natural Beauty?!

People’s Beach Day, October 23rd 2021, 200 Dekalb Avenue - (Stu Leach)

“Feel free, this is the beach!” Was Miss LPK’s refrain as pedestrians encountered her, majestic, reading treatises and poetry on the sidewalk. For an afternoon in Fort Greene, Brooklyn, a chunk of cement was transformed. “We often hear about midwifery, but what about housewifery?” Miss LPK embodied that ecosexual poetess, pouring truth, an orator in public. 

Miss LPK, poet and ideologue. - (Lindiwe Priscilla Kreskin)

The show did not stop and end with her transformational language. Before she took to the proverbial stage, Eli and Eliana graced our ears with folks songs from an old Greece, in the style known as Rebetiko. If a battle is to be won for the hearts and minds let it be with guitar and bouzouki.  

Eliana and Eli Hetko, playing rebetiko - (duskin drum)

Onward prowled the occasion in the form of Melanie Beth Curran, who in fact was putting on this whole event. She, with the help of fantastic fellows brought her new album, San Benedito Beach, into living, luscious three dimensions. As a crowd continued to grow, perched on Beach chairs, she serenaded the populous with popular track The Last Corona (On The Diamond Princess). A raucous singalong bringing us out of Pandemic doom and gloom could only be followed by that most soulful of entertainers, Yva Las Vegass.

Yva Las Vegass, Venezuelan-born-Seattle-native present-day-New Yorker changing LIVES. - (Stu Leach)

Yva! Who gracing us with her originals brought to life the struggles and triumphs of a thousand lives absolutely freaking done with white supremacy. She is a storyteller, a poet, a transmuter of time and space. And just right there in the middle of her musical, foot stop, deep and true oration when here comes Bochay with the sandwiches, Stu with the camera, and Scarlett with a PA.

Yva Las Vegass on San Benedito Beach - (duskin drum)

The whole thing occurred on the chunk of sidewalk where each and every Saturday there is a tradition of vending. For upon this entire block where the wares both used and handcrafted and found and repurposed being sold to those who might, at this change of season, be hungry for a brand new leather jacked painted with van Gogh’s face, ear bleeding, and the children are congregating now. 

Melanie Beth Curran, serenading the strip. - (Stu Leach)

Can imagine a way through this hurried state, this rushing state, this eager and consumptive stage, can we make time stop? Melanie Beth Curran takes up the fiddle and sings her mournful love lost dirge. She’s wearing a blue suit and between her and Miss LPK its been 1hr spent applying falsies. This is the America we dreamed about or could. Melanie Beth Curran plays Walkin’ The Line as Scarlet Dame, ambient techno artiste sets up her stage which is much more like an altar.

Scarlet Dame, melting hearts with beats - (Stu Leach)

And from this point on, all bets are off. Anything you see here you will never be able to recapture in language. But try I shall. The sun leans slanted over the brownstones and casts a yellow gold through the cast iron rails of this, Edmonds Playground. The beats begin subtlety and the audience is supercharged, immediately. Bochay is shelling black beans with Qiao and Yvonne, longtime vendor of this sidewalk, is marvelous with a smile on her face. 

Bochay and Qiao shellin’ beans - (duskin drum)

duskin really feeling it and some kids too. - (Stu Leach)

Scarlet Dame’s synthesizer - (Stu Leach)

Space and time open wide and duskin is dancing. Ricky and Dylan who came all the way from Seattle are joyful in their youth. A kid actually tells Melanie Beth Curran that when she grows up, this is what she wants to do. And that is the point. That is the point people. We make a new future, out of the old. Built from the now. Hearty and falling into fall she comes. And for one enchanted afternoon we were the Shepards of this coming realm. And for one enchanted afternoon, we opened the door.

Melanie Beth Curran celebrating her album release - (Stu Leach)

in the morning, getting set up with Dylan - (duskin drum)

People’s Beach Day was supported by The City Artist Corps Grant, given by the New York Foundation for the Arts to help revive public cultural life after the pandemic (inside of the pandemic). The grant put artists back to work! Items for People’s Beach Day were culled at Materials For the Arts, an insane warehouse in Long Island City full of Art supplies.

Thanks to everyone that came and everyone who bought an album! They are for sale here:

melaniecurran.bandcamp.com/album/san-benedito-beach