Eleven years ago this Saturday Nick Kelly performed an intimate show at the Garrett Park Town Hall in lieu of our annual Druid Drive St. Patrick’s Day Party. Decked out in a stylish blue suit, Nick sang and played guitar and piano for an enthusiastic, standing room only audience. The set list featured new solo work as well as material from his first band, The Fat Lady Sings, and a few well-chosen covers. For many in the audience it was an unforgettable introduction to this talented Irishman and his music. For me, it was a dream come true.
In 2014 Lori and I travelled to Dublin on a whim so we could attend a CD-release concert by Alien Envoy; the name that Nick records under these days. When we called to check that tickets were still available, Nick assured us that if we came all the way to Dublin for the show there would be two seats with our names on them. The show was in yet another intimate venue—this time a theatre that had once been a church—and featured another incredible career-spanning performance spotlighting the new album, Loads. Nick began the show on his own—reminiscent of the Garrett Park Town Hall show—then he brought out the rest of the band to kick things up a notch with a spiritual and musical fervor the likes of which I doubt that old church had experienced for quite some time.
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The next night, after a wonderful day of carousing around Dublin, hanging out in Grogan’s pub and shopping for new Irish music at Freebird Records, we met Nick for dinner at a popular Mexican restaurant where tables were hard to come by. Without once making us feel like he had more important things to do, places to go and people to see, Nick treated us to a brilliant evening of conversation and stories about family, music, bicycling, Dublin and film making. Loads had just been released to much critical acclaim, but it was plans for his first feature film that really had Nick jazzed. His energy and enthusiasm for the project were palpable from across the table, and as I listened to him talk the familiar lingo of someone steeped in the early days of pre-production excitement, I had a sneaking suspicion that Nick’s feature film debut was destined to be exceptional.
Sadly we weren’t able to secure Nick’s film for this year’s Capital Irish Film Festival, but a different CIFF had more luck. The Drummer and the Keeper, a story about an unlikely friendship that develops between the bipolar drummer of a young rock band and an institutionalized teen suffering from Asperger’s syndrome, will have its US premiere as the gala opening night film of the 42nd Cleveland International Film Festival on Wednesday, April 4. Feels like some kind of karma to me. I couldn’t be more proud and happy for my friend and I know Cleveland will bestow on him all the accolades he and his film deserve. Like the Happy Medium Song of the Day by Alien Envoy says, at this point there’s “Nothing Left to Do But to Dance.” (Please use the comments box to share your thoughts.)