Traditional Irish Music from New York’s
Lower East Side

This album offers one of the first recordings of a live traditional Irish music session in America.  Recorded over a few months in the unassuming Mona’s pub on Avenue B in New York’s Lower East Side, the album features various configurations of a dozen or so musicians in an informal setting.  Led by guitarist Eamon O’Leary and fiddler Patrick Orceau, Mona’s has been a meeting place on Monday nights for some of the best Irish musicians in world, who brave late hours and questionable environs to play Irish music firmly anchored in the traditions of Clare and Galway.  Some of the musicians represented on this album are professional and tour internationally, some live down the street and played or sang the music when they were growing up.  All give heartfelt performances, and clearly are playing for those gathered close around the session table.

The album features artistic photographs of the session and bar, notes on the tunes and musicians by Eamon and Patrick, extensive liner notes on the history of the session in New York by Mick Moloney, and recording notes by Scott Spencer.

Reviews include:

“[The musicians put forward] varied, unvarnished, spirited performances complete with background chatter, clacking billiard balls, slamming doors, and the soft thrum of passing traffic. It all serves to put the listener into the session. The lift and pulse of their music are usually the elusive optimal goals of a studio recording, and yet this all takes place matter-of-factly in a pub with no pretense of bohemian swankness. Even so, grit turns grace here.” 
— Earl Hitchner of the Irish Echo

“For a live session recording, I was struck by their ability to capture the tasteful and sympathetic rendering of the music by the lead players and accompanists. This is no helter-skelter mad frenzied session at play, but music played for its own enjoyment in this space and time.”
— Paul Keating of the Irish Voice

“The album [the recording, liner notes and pictures] as a whole is very successful at not being just a "container" for music, but instead a vehicle to bring across a whole experience, a sense of being there.”
— Philippe Varlet of Celtic Grooves

Please also visit the Live at Mona's website.