Band Announcement

Friday! Beautiful weather, birds are singing, Irish Fest is only 140 days away-which happens to be the typical gestation period of a baboon-and that means it's band announcement time.

I'll tell you a little story about today's band. A few years ago in Pittsburgh at the conference we Irish festival directors hold every year and a half, the event recently held here in K.C. I was sitting with our own Keli Wenzel at the Saturday night music showcase. A four piece band from Canada took the stage and before they'd finished playing their first tune, Keli and I were looking for their agent. They absolutely blew us away. We've been trying to get them since and this year we've succeeded. That band is called Vishten.

Twin sisters Emmanuelle and Pastelle LeBlanc along with Louis-Charles Vigneau and Pascal Miousse make up Vishten (pronounced with the accent on the second syllable). As you may have noticed that their names aren't typical of what you expect to hear at an Irish festival. The members of Vishten are French-speaking Acadians, from Prince Edward and the Magdalen Islands. The music they play is the perfect example of the long reach of the Celtic music tradition into the New World. A seamless blend of the Irish, Scots, Acadian and French traditions that are so rich and alive in maritime Canada. I love this band. I've seen them a half dozen times now and I'm thrilled that they'll finally be adding our Kansas City audiences to their legion of fans. Here's a taste.