If music moves you to get up and dance, you?ll be complimenting the Hedgerows? Charlie MacVicar.
“[Musicians] want a connection with the audience,” he said. “Ask any of them how they feel about it, andthey?ll say getting up and dancing is the highest praise.”
MacVicar plays illeann pipes, the Irish version of bagpipes. Patrick Cavanagh is on tenor banjo and mandolin; C.B. Heinemann plays guitar and bouzouki; and group leader Dennis Botzer is on the fiddle, flute and whistle.
“There is a richness to Irish music, a real broadness,” MacVicar said.
MacVicar said he doesn?t read music, nor has he ever studied it. He discovered Irish music in junior high school when he found an album of uilleann pipe music in the library. He listened out of curiosity and was soon hooked.
MacVicar said 75 percent of what the group plays is “music other than the voice.” This is the dancing music, such as reels and jigs.
There may also be an element of improvisation in the show.
Many times musicians visiting from Ireland call their buddies who show up to play along with the group performing, said Danny Stanton, a bartender at J. Patrick?s in Baltimore City and president of The Emerald Isle Club.
“Baltimore is blessed with so many fine traditional musicians, and now there is a second generation learning from them,” Stanton said.
“It?s the coolest Irish pub in Locust Point,” Botzer said. “And [there are] no televisions to interfere with life and conversation.”
IF YOU GO
» What: The Hedgerows
» Where: J. Patrick?s Pub
1371 Andre St., Baltimore
410-244-8613
» When: 9 p.m. to 1 a.m. tonight
