Every Tuesday night at Jackie O’s, 24 W. Union St., a local Celtic group moves to the beat of a very different drum — a traditional Irish instrument called a bodhran.
The Boys of the Hock’ are a part of a weekly Athenian tradition that began more than 30 years ago and has moved among various bars, including Casa Nueva and Jackie O’s previous incarnation — O’Hooley’s Pub.
Many musicians have come and gone since the sessions began, but The Boys of the Hock’ have been familiar faces on Jackie O’s stage for more than a decade.
The Boys have been together in various assemblages for about 12 years, said Lynn Shaw, the band’s fiddler.
Boasting a large repertoire of hundreds of traditional Irish numbers, the band plays lengthy sets to encourage the crowd to jig at the gig.
“The stuff we play is a drop in a bucket to what’s out there,” said Sean O’Malley, the band’s flutist. “There’s tens of thousands of songs out there.”
While neighboring bars pipe the latest hits, The Boys of the Hock’ are attempting to make the crowd dance to their unfamiliar sound.
“It has to have recognizable parts that come back around so the dancers can reorient themselves,” O’Malley said.
The recurring structure of Celtic music is closely related to the folk music that is native to Southeast Ohio and other parts of Appalachia.
“It’s a direct correlation,” Shaw said. “Most of the American Old Time music came from Celtic music. … Most of the Scotts and Irishmen settled in the Appalachians when they came over here. It’s called the ‘white man’s Blues.’”
Despite having some of the same goals as dance music, The Boys of the Hock’s tunes have some telling characteristics that separate their sound from more familiar songs.
“The melodies are complicated, and the chord structures are very complex. You really have to work at it. It has a lot of ornamentation, like rolls and triplets,” Shaw said. “You end up becoming your own musician when you play it.”
Like the music, the band’s members are also embedded in Athens. O’Malley is the communications manager of Ohio University’s Office of Information Technology, guitarist Rusty Smith is a program manager at WOUB and dulcimer player Ed Newman is OU’s recycling and refuse manager.
The Boys recently took their music to Dublin, Ohio, for the Irish Festival among other gigs throughout the area.
But no matter how often the group travels, though, it can be found every Tuesday at Jackie O’s in the public house starting at 8:30 p.m.
ap338210@ohiou.edu
