Irish Rovers stopping in Sarnia for March 3 performance

After the band’s 2020 tour was cut short at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, The Irish Rovers will make their return to the stage with a series of Canadian performances beginning in Southwestern Ontario.

The Canadian and Irish folk group will perform live for the first time in almost three years on March 3 at the Imperial Theater in Sarnia, followed by March 4 at the Chatham Capitol Theater and March 8 at Centennial Hall in London.

The band nearly completed the 2020 tour before the initial public health measures were put in place, but it had to cancel a date in Orillia and a St. Patrick’s Day performance in Chatham.

“It’s going to be a bit of a baptism by fire, I suppose,” George Millar, the last original Rover still in the band, said in an interview with Sarnia This Week. “We’ll see how we do. Hopefully, the fans will be just as happy to get out as we are to get out and play.”

The current Rovers lineup includes Millar on vocals and guitar, Ian Millar on bass and vocals, Davey Walker on keyboards, Gerry O’Connor on fiddle, Geoffrey Kelly on flute and whistle, Fred Graham on bodhran, Shane Farrell on banjo, Jimmy Keane on accordion and Kevin Evans on vocals and guitar.

Millar said the shutdowns during the pandemic inspired “Hey Boys, Sing Us a Song” from the band’s 2022 album No End In Sight. The tune, which has been nominated for Single of the Year in the 2023 Canadian Folk Music Awards, features lyrics like, “We all need some happiness back in our lives.”

The “wee song,” as Millar calls it, was meant to convey an “age old” message of love.

“The news on the TV was horrid and terrible things were happening in the world,” he said. “I just felt, ‘My goodness, there’s an awful lot of unkindness going around all of a sudden.’”

Millar’s cousin Joe Millar, who was the third member to join the band in 1963, recently died after a battle with Alzheimer’s disease.

Before Joe’s passing, Millar wrote the song “Somebody Loved Me” based on what his cousin was experiencing. He said “Joe wasn’t the Joe that we all knew” in the last year or two of his life.

“I miss him and it’s a terrible disease,” he said. “It robs people. It really robs them of their memories. It’s a terrible thing that people have to lose those wonderful memories because memories are what keep us all going.”

The songs on the new album maintain the Celtic traditions the group has been known for throughout its almost 60-year career, through the familiar vocal harmonies, pulsing drums and collage of instruments.

Millar said the challenge in writing these songs is making them fit a specific genre.

“When people come up to me and say, ‘Where did you get that old song?’ I say, ‘I wrote it,’” he said. “That really, to me, is an offhanded compliment because they think it’s an old traditional Irish tune that was written 300 years ago. When I hear that, it makes me smile and I love to hear that.”

With the title of the album as No End In SightMillar said that could have meant the end of COVID-19 or the end of the band.

He said he considers the Rovers to still be on an extended farewell tour and he sees no reason to stop as long as the fans want to see them as everyone is in “fairly good health.”

“I think the secret, also, as an older band is you have to enjoy what you’re doing because if you’re sort of spinning your wheels and not doing anything new and just living off your past glories, it’s not the same thing at all,” he said. “You have to enjoy and respect the music.”

Millar noted when he started the band at age 16, the early members had a five-year plan and then they would re-evaluate if they should continue making music together. Before the 1967 song “The Unicorn” became a hit, he said they were making $35 a week each, enough for “cigarettes and beer and whatever else you need.”

But they were starting to make inroads in California and thought they would give it a few more months, he said.

“After all these years, we’re still saying, ‘Maybe we’ll give it one more year and see how it goes.’”

Tickets and information for The Irish Rovers’ 2023 tour can be found at www.theirishroversmusic.com/on-tour.