SIDNEY — The Deep Cove Folk Club is pleased to present Alberta based Cowboy Celtic in Sidney at the Mary Winspear Centre on Oct. 13 at 8 p.m.
The group includes David Wilkie on mandolin and vocals, Denise Withnell on guitar and vocals, Keri Lynn Zwicker on harp and vocals and Joseph Hertz on fiddle. The group has played together for 17 years and last summer toured Ecuador and Peru.
Cowboy Celtic has recorded six CDs, the second of which (Cowboy Ceilidh) won the National Cowboy Hall of Fame Wrangler Award for Outstanding Traditional Western Music Album in 1999.
“We don’t play traditional Celtic music and we don’t play traditional cowboy music,” said Wilkie.
“We play the kind of music that you’d have heard if you pushed back the swingin’ doors at an Irish pub in Tombstone or Dodge City.”
Cowboy Celtic is the creation of Wilkie, who recorded the first Cowboy Celtic CD in 1995.
It was supposed to be a one-off project to highlight the music of Ireland and Scotland that connects the cowboy music of the American Old West to Celtic traditions. The one-off project blossomed into a busy musical career.
The historical basis to Cowboy Celtic’s music is that many cowboys in the Old West emigrated from Ireland and Scotland and brought their familiar Celtic melodies along with them to the western cattle drives and round-ups.
Tickets are $25 and available from the Mary Winspear Centre box office or online at www.marywinspear.ca.
— Submitted