SLITHERING HALFWAY TO ST. PAT’S
Snakes are a-playin’: Saint Patrick may have booted these guys off the Emerald Isle, but The Snakes (featuring Gary Shaffer, in blue checked shirt) have managed to charm themselves into the marshgrass of the Jersey Shore.
By TOM CHESEK
Don’t look now, but it’s — Saint Practice Day?
Granted, the spirit of St. Pat’s Day never quite leaves the building around these parts, where upstanding publick houses like the Dublin House, the Claddagh and the Celtic Cottage keep the embers glowing year-round. In fact, anyplace with some party-store paper leprechauns on the wall will pretty much do after a few.
But, Halfway to St. Patrick’s Day? We understand the any-cause-for-a-celebration angle; still, where did this come from? Did they slide it in there while the entire population of Monmouth County was passed out on the floor?
In these days on and around the 17th of September, a number of Shore area bars will be turning their establishments into Halfway houses. In Highlands, where the annual St. Paddy’s Parade is serious business indeed, the restaurant One28 Bay will be presenting a Halfway to St. Patrick’s Day benefit for the local fire department on Friday, complete with corned beef, green beer, bagpipers and the guitarrific Sonny Kenn. The following night, the Claddagh marks the halfway point with music by one of the fastest-growing favorites on the regional bar scene, Shore-based folk-punkers The Snakes.
Pirates look past 40: From left to right, Gary, Vincenzo, T-Bone, Scott, Frank and Tim are The Snakes.
A casual glom of the Google reveals that we’re not alone in this phenomenon. There are Halfway to St. Pat parties going on this week in cities from New York, Boston and DC to Columbus, OH and Portland, OR. One bar in Richmond claims to be holding its “tenth annual” event, while the Chicago White Sox have allegedly been doing this since before the days of Shoeless Joe Jackson. But who’s responsible for the madness here on the isle of Jersey?
“I’m not saying we invented it, but — last year we got a little proactive,” says Snakes bassman and vocalist Gary Shaffer. “We reached out to a bunch of bars in September, and reminded them that it was coming up on what we like to call St. Practice Day.”
The gambit apparently paid off for the band, a loose aggregation of five to seven guys (depending on day jobs and other variables) from all over the state.
“This year we had five different places call us, asking if we could do a Halfway to St. Patrick’s event,” says the Toms River-based Shaffer. “We did McLynn’s in Springfield, Saint Stephen’s in Spring Lake, and on Friday we do the Trinity Pub at Caesar’s in Atlantic City.”
Not bad for a combo that was put together as something of a high-concept hobby project — a bunch of fortysomethings who mixed trad Irish songs and instrumentation with classic rockers, oldies, and the sort of vintage punk stuff they cut their teeth on years before — from the Clancy Brothers to the Clash, as they say.
It’s a fine-tuned approach that’s gotten the band noticed around the dependable regional circuit of Irish-themed pubs and clubs (it also earned them this glowing write-up in the Irish Voice) — and it’s a road that brings them back to the Claddagh for the first time since last March.
“We played Highlands on the day of the big parade,” says Shaffer of the borough’s day-long dingus. “It was crazy — absolutely one of the most fun places we’ve ever played.”
The Snakes will also be entering the studio in the weeks to come to record some of their original songs, a development that Shaffer — who spent the early part of the 1980s trying to get a toenail in the door of the music industry with his band The Pinch — finds a little ironic.
“Go figure — when you’re really not trying, that’s when the phones start to ring,” says the man who handles publicity for off-Broadway shows as a trade. “We actually didn’t want to be playing all the time — we just got in it to have a good time ourselves.”
“Face it, you don’t put six or seven people onstage if it’s about the money.”
Tomorrow in oRBit: Any excuse for a party continues, with a wake for a guy who died in 1973.
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September 18, 2008
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