Brian O’Brian

Wikipedia says the phrase ‘Shooting Fish In A Barrel’ means “describing an effortless or simple action, with guaranteed success.” So now with that, I can safely state that when you’re in a cover band, trying to draw a big crowd during St. Patrick’s Day is like shooting fish in a barrel: Happily drunk fish in a stupefied barrel.

… But ya gotta love it!

Remember the movie “Field of Dreams”? The whisper-voice motto for any bar/club on St. Patrick’s Day (SPD) should be “If you open it, they will come… wearing green, drinking green, and vomiting ummm…. well, more of an olive and green mixture, actually, like pea soup.” And playing in Toolshed Jack the last dozen of these, I should know about this SPD experience inside and out. Actually, I’m an expert regarding the day in general. You see, with the name ‘Brian’ being of Old Celtic origin, that makes me an expert at anything and everything Irish. I can’t believe you just read that sentence with a straight face. Wow, deceiving you for the rest of this article seems it will be like shooting fish in a barrel.

This coming Saturday March 13th 2010, my band Toolshed Jack will be playing its SPD gig at the Mountain Valley Golf Course in Barnesville, PA starting at 7:00 pm (Apparently ‘Brian’ is Old Celtic for “Shameless Self-promotion Whore”). This is our 6th year in a row there, and if this year is like the last couple of years, here is what I predict TSJ and every band like ours will experience during a bar/club’s SPD blowout. In fact, I bet each band that plays a SPD celebration will see more than half of these typical standards:

-Some gal whose SPD accessories, such as her hat or headwear, bump into everyone around her each time she turns around.

-A pocket or two of children barely 21 years of age at their first SPD night who stand around confused at all the weirdness.

-A crowd member who wears green eyelids.

-One guy over 70 who is actually Irish that comes out just on this night, perhaps smiling and dancing a merry jig.

-Larry the Cable Guy’s twin who means well but constantly wants to come up on stage to lend his drunken vocal genius to your show.

-That gal who confuses Mardi Gras with SPD by the fact she is wearing twelve thousand green beads with little shamrocks on them.

-A beer poster from a company who, for only one month a year, models a hot red-head.

-Some kilt-wearing dude with legs the color of Elmer’s Glue.

-Idiots who will purposely drink only Rolling Rock, thinking that it is somehow Irish.

-A handful of people who front as trying to be ultra-Irish, even though they couldn’t name another Ireland city besides Dublin, and only base this misguided illusion of theirs on that they are big fans of Notre Dame.

But when you’re in a band, you really don’t even care why people have showed up. Genuinely on SPD, people are happy as haggis to be out partying near you. Most folks don’t get out much anymore due to family commitments or getting a little too old for the bar scene, but they’ll find their buddies and dance to pretty much anything on SPD. Damn, I just researched to find out that haggis is actually Scottish. And I REALLY liked the phrase “happy as haggis”. Shit.

The crowd people themselves during SPD make me laugh. Normally, what I’ve seen, they are huge blots of people that all travel in a pack. Usually it is one alpha female and her six dozen friends, all coming in the place together, ready to party it up until they realize that not as many guys are going to buy them free drinks as they thought would have before they got there when they were applying their four hundred items of flair. Then they go to the dance floor and still scream their heads off, but have not gone to choreography school as is evident by the fact that they almost bump heads every two minutes. Half of them secure their purse around their one shoulder as if it carried three winning Powerball tickets, and grasp the strap of it as they sway back and forth to the beat just enough to not spill the bottle of Yuengling Light in their other hand. Although not unique to SPD, the GAME then begins…

What GAME? Oh, the game of each female checking out and judging every OTHER female in the place. Don’t think I notice because I’m a guy? Guess again, Mean Girl… I can just tell the thoughts in your head, which most popularly go like “Wow, since I saw her last year on SPD, did SHE put on a lot of weight!!” And of course if you are a female that LOST weight since the last SPD, you’re obviously bulimic or snorting. That’s why I’m glad I’m a guy: We’ve created a culture for ourselves in which we don’t care about our physique. We look at each other during SPD and say “Hey, that’s another guy.” And thoughts pretty much end right there.

In Toolshed Jack, we REALLY look forward to SPD at Mountain Valley because it’s a party day, and we’re a party band, and we feed off of crowd energy. We also feed off of front-stage security, because I don’t think we’ve been there a single year where somebody from the crowd hasn’t fallen onto our equipment. I don’t think the culprit ever does it on purpose, but let’s just say that during SPD certain patrons consume a considerable amount of a liquid commonly known as ‘alcohol’, therefore altering their equilibrium, commonly known as ‘balance’, where my trumpet almost gets knocked over by them causing me to be dangerously close to being ‘pissed off’, commonly known as being ‘pissed off’.

But for some reason SPD causes me to forgive quickly, because aside from New Year’s Eve and Big Wednesday before Thanksgiving, there are only three days in a year that people come out to just let their cares wash away. And our band always tries to deliver, as I’m sure all bands do. Just watching you all let loose and wear your green, I understand that SPD is a right of passage in this country, once your childhood has been blown to smithereens (which IS an Irish word, Yay!! Shit.). So don’t be afraid to party with Toolshed Jack on March 13th around 7 pm at Mountain Valley Golf Course… just as long as when you eventually fall on my equipment, you hand over your winning Powerball tickets.

Brian from Toolshed Jack