The Shores of America Story

It’s still in the back of every New Yorker’s mind. We look like and think we have healed, and we really have on many levels, but so much has changed. The world will never be the same. From the banker, the NYFD retiree, to the immigrant cabby, every denizen of Gotham knows where they were, where their family was, what they did that night… 9-11-01. And it hasn’t been the same since that day.

Shores of America, the new Celtic Cross CD takes an uncommon perspective on the tragic attack that deeply impacted the proud Irish-American community in the city its ancestors built from the ground up. From the tragic stories of the victims that left no neighborhood unmarred, the ensuing changes to immigration that strangled the flow of new Irish blood, to the military families that are still making their sacrifice, the Irish in New York wear 9/11 on their sleeves… no matter what their tough exterior might suggest.

The Celtic Cross recording, released in December, chronicles the Irish American kids growing up stories on New York City’s streets. With catchy tunes like First Kiss, telling a love story under the 7 train in the Irish crammed streets of Woodside, and Those Were the Days, a world-wind tour of a “narrowback” or second generation Irish child, Shores of America delivers a colorful view of the immigrant households that are the fabric of so many Irish ghettos around town. All delivered with determined singing and an updated pop rock edge that critics call Irish Americana.

But the piece that sets the tempo is the title track Shores of America. An edgy energetic anthem sung by the sassy lead singer Kathleen Fee makes you sit back and listen, and look for the lyrics page. “We didn’t set out to write a 9-11 song, and we certainly never thought to be political,” says Ms. Fee, “but any way you look at things, it has been the key turning point for so much about Irish culture in the US, and nowhere more deeply felt than in the Irish-American stronghold neighborhoods in New York City.”

Shores of America spins three real life vignettes; each verse is a different chapter in Irish Americana over the last seven years. The first and most poignant grips the listener with the notion of a good looking good natured fireman who died in the tragic World Trade Center attack. Specifically, Ms. Fee writes about NYFD’s Tom Foley, a Pearl River friend of the band. A look at the names of 9/11 victims from the New York Fire Department is like the map of Ireland. The memories of funeral after funeral with bagpipes kept the pain of the terrible attack with us for months and years. It would be hard for a New Yorker not to stop in retrospect when Ms. Fee sings:

Tommy was a friend of mine, had a heart so pure and so kind. His big, blue eyes could make your heart sing; being there for everyone was Tommy’s thing. Did his job that fateful day, when our NY skyline was ablaze…

There is a traditional Irish melancholy sing-song of the same title as the Celtic Cross title track that speaks hauntingly of the hope, promise and desire of the famine impoverished Irish as they longed for freedom in the United States. At the moment of this personal reflection on the death of one of 343 New York’s Bravest, the hopes of the world’s emigrants were put on hold and their view of the Shores of this America are forever changed.

The Irish talked about the Flight of the Earls in the eighties as the best and brightest, and a good portion of the rest of Ireland’s youth renewed the levels of immigration to the US not seen since the fifties. The vibrant inflow created venerable Celtic ghettos in neighborhoods like Maclean Avenue in Yonkers, Katonah and Bainbridge Avenues in the Bronx, and Roosevelt Avenue and Queens Boulevard in Queens. Celtic Cross banjo/mandolin player Frankie McCormick, himself an immigrant from County Armagh in Ireland recalls “We could get a gig seven nights a week with all the bars in the Bronx and Queens, and every night packed to the doors.” But things began to change well before 9-11 with the emergence of the “Celtic Tiger” Irish economy in the late nineties. Job growth in Ireland exploded, stymieing the flow of emigrants and reversing the flow back from the US.

The War on Terror’s dramatic crackdown on immigration laws was the final straw. Shores of America’s second verse speaks of the aftermath from the disaffected immigrant perspective. The days of the packed Bronx bars were over. Ms. Fee sings:

“Flight of the Earls now in reverse, leavin like our fathers first. I’ll be back for a holiday, but across the sea is where I’ll stay. Now I’m leavin here, Shores of America”

The once longed for Shores are now out of reach, and may never be the same.

The ramifications of the attacks are further chronicled by Celtic Cross in the eyes of the military mother in the third verse. The band’s fiddle player, Ken Vesey (brother of Kathleen, and John, the band’s accordionist) talks emotionally about his military cousins, “My Aunt Bridie always has a smile on, but I know she cries every time one of them packs their trunk to head out to the base.” Ken, Kathleen and John have four first cousins who have served in Iraq and Afghanistan over the last few years. Kathleen sings about her Aunt and cousins,

A war to fight that’s what they say, Sent Bridie’s boys away. One by one she kissed goodbye, Off to the desert now, they would fly. She lights her candle, in her window at night, says her prayers to safely end this fight. Bridie’s waiting at her door, when they’ll come home and leave no more.

This final verse brings the 9-11 Irish America story to date with a hopeful prayer for the safe return of her military children (and ours) from the dessert from the perspective of an Irish mother in New York. Something of an end to a story that doesn’t have one yet.

The Celtic Cross record Shores of America weaves a view of Irish New York that is forever changed, yet ever-charming. The music is updated, yet mindful of the great Irish music tradition. The stories are for all of us in New York, and all of our Irish friends and their families.