It was Saturday night in Scotland and songs were set to be sung.
With the sky as black as the Earl of Hell's waistcoat and the reek puffing from the lum — or maybe when it was a bit dark and smoke rose from the chimney — Geoffrey Kelly's parents came back from the raised euphoria and reduced judgment one enjoys during an evening at the pub.
It was before the singer and flutist would record the brilliantly titled solo album Gringo Star, before he added a Celtic texture to the indefinable sound of the Paperboys, before he trekked across the world with Spirit of the West and long before he ever became an Irish Rover.
"I didn't realize at the time that it was important," Kelly said of those Saturday nights in the family home. But as Kelly went about learning the flute, the bodhran (a handheld Irish percussion instrument), the tin whistle and the uillean pipes, those formative evenings of song came back to him.
His mother the singer and his father the accordionist would pack the house with a gang of folks, and there would always be a big sing song," he remembers. "It seemed like everybody in the village either sang or played."
They were Kelly's introduction to Celtic music, but to hear him tell it, those Saturday nights in that little village in southwest Scotland were less of an introduction and more of an immersion.
With whiskey on their breath and music in their heart, his parents would run through their repertoire while warmed by a coal-burning fire.
Kelly became a full-fledged Irish Rover in 2008. Joining a band that keeps the melodies of the Emerald Isle alive is a job he'd been preparing for more than 40 years.
He was nine when his family left Scotland for North Vancouver. Heading to New Zealand was a close second choice, but his parents were swayed by the nearness of friends and relatives from the old village.
"Scottish people just have a way of finding each other," he explains.
The North Vancouver home became a "shrine to their past life," Kelly remembers. That included an appreciation for the Irish Rovers.
The Irish/Canadian band formed when two Irish/Canadians met in Toronto and quickly found notoriety as the guys who sang "Whiskey, You're the Devil" to a bunch of five-year-old children in Calgary. The band's second album ended up in the Kelly household, and the tune "The Unicorn" was in heavy rotation.
The band's television specials were also "must-watch viewing, certainly for my folks," Kelly says.
As a young man Kelly found himself awash in the nine-minute chord progressions of bands like Yes and Pink Floyd, but after a trip to Europe he found himself leaving the Dark Side of the Moon and coming back to the music of his youth.
"Once I rediscovered it, it was all-consuming for me. It totally changed my life," he says.
Kelly first played with the band when the group was looking to beef up their sound for their 1989 release Hardstuff.
"Maybe the fact that I was in North Van helped," Kelly said.
George Millar, who started the group with Jim Ferguson when he was just 16 and continues as the principle songsmith, also lived in North Vancouver and formed a connection with Kelly.
The two stayed in touch following the session, but it wasn't until 2002 that Kelly got the call to join the Irish Rovers for a tour of New Zealand.
By the time the international ambassadors of the Celtic sound celebrated their 50th anniversary in 2012, Kelly was a full-fledged member.
Reached in a Regina, Sask., hotel room 10 days into the group's latest world tour, Kelly is cognizant of the band's dilemma: there are the songs they want to play, and the songs they absolutely, positively have to play.
Millar has penned a couple of new songs for the grey-bearded lads, including "An Irishman in Paris" as well as a ballad titled "She Never Had an Eye for Me."
The new songs are fun and challenging, but Kelly says the group makes sure to play "Drunken Sailor," "Black Velvet Ban," and one or two other fan favourites.
"I think we'd be lynched if we didn't play 'The Unicorn,'" Kelly adds.
After half a century, the band's winding down a mite.
The tours are shorter and there are more rest days between gigs, but that doesn't mean it's closing time just yet.
"I think they enjoy it too much to pack it in completely," Kelly says. "I don't see the end quite in sight yet, that's for sure."
The legacy continues March 17 at the Vogue Theatre.
The Irish Rovers perform at CelticFest Vancouver, Vogue Theatre, St. Patrick's Day, March 17. For more information, visit celticfestvancouver.com.
