Event

Finnegans Wake

Finnegans Wake is an American band formed in 1973 at the County Cork Pub in Springfield, Illinois. Naming their ensemble after the James Joyce novel, the three men, bound by a love of traditional American and British Isles music became favorites on the Springfield music scene, eventually playing the Midwest and the Ozarks in an area circumscribed by Minneapolis, St. Louis, Mountain View, Arkansas, and, more recently, including Folklore Village near Dodgeville, Wisconsin.

The bands instrumentation includes guitar, concertina, fiddle, hurdy-gurdy, mandolin, tin whistles, bodhran, glockenspiel, harmonium, Appalachian dulcimer, and harmonica. Their repertoire spans traditional folksongs, ballads, sea chanteys, dance tunes, and John C. Van Orman originals, many of which can be heard on the recording Quiver and Rattle.

Mick Cochran of the Springfield State Journal-Register observed that Finnegans Wake was asking the audience to be intelligent, and still have a good time.