Here's the list of concerts I saw in this decade:
March 9, 1990 -- Opera House -- Spokane, Washington
March 9, 1991 -- Opera House -- Spokane, Washington
March 12, 1995 -- Opera House -- Spokane, Washington
March 20, 1997 -- The Met -- Spokane, Washington -- first time I saw them after Will left.
March 28, 1998 -- The Met -- Spokane, Washington – Will and his Mad Irishmen
The 1990 tickets cost $15. I had my picture taken with Will after the show while getting autographs on the Silver Anniversary CD. A woman ahead of me asked for a picture and Will said yes, so that gave me the courage to ask too. My husband Cal took this snapshot:
When I got home that night I had to spread out all my Irish Rovers records and take a picture.
In July 1990 we went up to Vancouver and ate at The Unicorn there. I bought a blue denim shirt with The Unicorn printed on it. It said size small but it’s a very large “small.” Made a nice maternity top later on.
March 1991 they were back at the Opera House. I was pregnant then so didn’t get autographs because I was pretty tired after the show. Price went up a bit again to $15.50.
In August of 1991 when Jenny was just a baby, Will and George’s sister Sandra Beech was at the Festival at Sandpoint. We went to her show. I said it was for Jenny, but let’s be honest – it was for me. I bought a couple of her tapes. Jenny pretty much slept through the show. Later when she was about 2 or 3 she used to listen to the tapes and dance to the music. For a while she wouldn't listen to "that baby stuff" but when she was 12 she had some friends over and they were watching a video from when she was a toddler and dancing to one of the tapes, so her friends wanted to hear the tape. Jenny was a bit embarrassed but we found the right tape and she taught her friends the dance she was doing when she was a toddler.
March 1995 – the Last Hurrah Tour. Prices jumped to $18.50 for the good seats – Row A this year. I bought a video “The Irish Rovers Celebrate the First 30 Years” at this show. I kept waiting for them to say why it was called the “last hurrah” but they didn’t mention it so I was hoping they would come to town again. Turns out they did, but with a difference.
After this tour Will left the Irish Rovers.
In 1997 the Irish Rovers came back to Spokane. Just a few weeks before the show I saw something about Will having left the group, so I really didn’t know what to expect when we went to the Met on March 20. When the show started and Will really wasn’t there I was disappointed. Wallace Hood and John Reynolds are good, don’t get me wrong, but they don’t have the same spark that Will has, at least to me. I had a hard time enjoying the old songs, since every time they got to a verse that Will used to sing I couldn’t stand hearing anyone else doing it. The songs that they hadn’t done in concert before were a little easier to take, and I still felt it was a good show, just not as great as before.
By this time I had been surfing the Internet both at the community college, where I was taking some classes, and through the public library, and I ran across an article about Will’s new CD “The Lark in the Clear Aire.” Our local Hastings store had it and I bought it there in March 1997. It’s a very pretty instrumental album.
Then in April 1997 I found out Will had another CD out “Celtic Reverie – Women of Ireland” and I ordered that on-line from CD Universe.
In October 1997 Jimmy Ferguson passed away while on tour. I feel that really marked the end of an era – up until then there was always a chance that the brothers would patch up their differences and they would all get back together again, but now that could never happen.
In December 1997 I bought Will’s book “Messing About in Boats” from barnesandnoble.com for $11.86. Check out
March 28, 1998, Will brought his new group “Mad Irishmen” to the Met Theater in Spokane. All three of us (me, Cal, and Jenny) went. This group consisted of Will, Ian Millar (Joe’s son), Dale O’Sullivan, and Davey Walker. In the info I printed off of the web site back then it lists two other members, Bob O’Donovan who I honestly don’t remember if he was at this show or not – if he was I didn’t get his autograph, and Vince Griffin who I know wasn’t there but who is in the video I bought that night. Will autographed Messing About in Boats and drew a sailboat and also drew a leprechaun and a unicorn in the joke book and said Jenny could color them. We had spent lots of time when Jenny was little telling her the only books she could color in were coloring books (especially with Cal owning the bookstore and Jenny spending so much time there!) but I let her color these, and she did a really good job. She was 6 ½ then.
One thing that I felt really stupid for doing – after Will autographed these and I was moving on to the next guys, he said “would you like to go sailing with me?” Dummy me – after reading about all the close calls he’s had I stupidly said “no.” Dumb dumb dumb! So what if I’ve been known to get seasick on the ferry over to Victoria – I’d still like to go sailing with Will sometime. But I guess I blew that with this case of “foot-in-mouth” disease.
