Singing on tap.(Wexford Singing and Swinging Pubs Competition)(Brief Article)

BRIAN KELLOW travels to Wexford, Ireland, for Guinness's annual Singing and Swinging Pub Competition

"Christmas comes twice a year to Wexford," laughs a newsagent on Main Street in Wexford Town, one of the principal towns of County Wexford, in serenely picturesque southeastern Ireland. It's easy to see what he means. Outside the shop window, Wexford's Main Street is spilling over with tourists who have descended on the town to attend the forty-ninth season of Wexford Festival Opera, a three-week presentation of works that range from the seldom-performed (Tchaikovsky's Orleanskaya Deva) to the downright obscure (Zandonai's Conchita). The festival, founded by Dr. Thomas Walsh, in 1951, has become a favorite of opera devotees all over the world who are tired of a steady diet of Bohemes and Butterflys and long to see Ireland at its best, when the summer crowds have dispersed and the trees are in their autumn beauty.

But there's another event on the festival's fringe, one that has not gotten nearly so much attention, even though it's been running nearly as long: it's the Wexford Singing and Swinging Pubs Competition, sponsored by Guinness Draught. The opera festival (of which Guinness is also a chief sponsor) caters primarily to outsiders, but the Singing and Swinging Pubs Competition belongs without question to the people of Wexford Town. Wexford Town has around 12,000 people, and forty-three pubs, nearly all of which participate in the competition. Publicans can enter as either "Singing" (each pub lines up six or seven soloists, offering anything from traditional Irish songs to American pop) or "Swinging" (performed by a band, and much rowdier). In both categories, the issue is not only performance quality; the adjudicators want to see how well the entrants get the crowd to sing along. The performances last around thirty to forty minutes each, and the competition lasts for sixteen evenings. On the final night, the winners are posted, and then the party really begins. Anyone in search of an authentic Irish experience would be foolish to miss it.

On my first night in town, I'm met at my hotel by Fionnuala Dwyer, a hearty young Guinness sales representative, the competition's adjudicator, Sean Meyler, and his wife, Una, lifetime residents of Wexford. Meyler is a former newspaper publisher and printer; his wife teaches music privately. Our first stop is the Selskar Pub, where there's a packed house. Many of the patrons attend every performance, drawing up their own list of projected winners as they go. Wexford native Joe McGuinness is the competitions unofficial historian; he makes a cassette tape of all the performances. First up on the Selskar program is an amazing ballad singer, Matty Murphy, who offers "The Old Triangle," a song about imprisonment. The patrons give him their full attention, becoming dead quiet as they bend over their Smithwicks and Guinnesses, joining in only on the chorus, "And the Old Triangle/Went jingle jangle/All along the banks/Of the royal canal." Any chance that Murphy may take home a prize, however, gets blown into the stratosphere when Jimmy Kelly, who's been performing in the pub competition since he was seventeen, sings the old Andy Williams hit "Solitaire." His sweet tenor is warm and melancholy, but the most important thing is that his staging comes straight from the heart. The song seems to linger in the air after Kelly is finished. I find myself wishing some of our overly fussy lieder singers could hear it.

"That was brilliant," says Dwyer, as we head off to the Talbot Hotel, which has sponsored a band led by Maurice McCarthy, a veteran singer with seemingly limitless energy. There's an enormous crowd. "We're working at a slight handicap tonight, folks," McCarthy calls out -- "We're sober!" Then the band launches into a lively program that includes "King of the Swingers" and "Stranger on the Shore," the latter featuring stunning instrumental solos by two of the group's younger members, clarinetist Vicky Clancy and trombonist Gary Maguire. The band has made a tremendous hit, no doubt about it. They're slick and professional, providing a contrast to the "traditional" atmosphere of the Selskar. They do encore after encore, and long after the music stops, the crowd shows no sign of breaking up. Licensing hours were relaxed several years ago -- in a big way. At 3:30, my jet lag finally catches up with me. Fortunately, I'm staying at the Talbot, so all I have to do is stagger into the elevator and figure out which of the buttons has a "5" printed on it.

The following night, I'm supposed to attend Adolphe Adam's Si J'Etais Roi at the opera festival, but my weak flesh succumbs to the promise of another evening at the singing pubs, and I decide to see the opera another night. On this evening -- the penultimate of the entire competition -- we begin at the White Horse, conveniently located only a block from the Talbot. The host, Tony Cleere, welcomes everyone, and the music begins. The performer to remember is Geraldine Allen, who sings a haunting ballad, "Matty Groves," about a woman who prefers her poor lover to her wealthy husband and gets murdered as a result. Allen closes her eyes and sings a cappella. Halfway through, the patrons begin to stomp on the floor in time, a mass percussion section. The song builds beautifully, and poor Matty meets her miserable end. Allen's is a voice that seems to have countless stories behind it; like so many of the competitors, she sings every word as if she really means it.

From the White Horse we proceed to Asples, a "Swinging" pub. It's rocking, with people sitting on top of the bar, because there's no room anywhere else. David Lynch, a policeman known as "The Singing Detective," scores a big hit with "That's Amore." Meyler announces that I've ...