Brighten Up Your Day With the Irish Rovers' The Boys Come Rollin' Home

In the past couple of years, I’ve fiercely latched onto the music group Celtic Thunder, which, as of the latest album, consists of two singers from Ireland, three from Northern Ireland and one from Scotland. I can’t get enough of their melodious tones. But long before that band existed, I was listening to the Irish Rovers, those wildly entertaining Irish-Canadian balladeers who have been bringing their blend of traditional and pop music to appreciative audiences for nearly half a century.

The first time I saw them in concert, I purchased The Boys Come Rollin’ Home, a collection of tunes from 1992 that is probably my favorite of their albums from the last two decades. A few years after this album was cut, Will Millar, the most prominent of the voices on many of the songs, dropped out, and Jimmy Ferguson died. Though I love the later addition of husky-voiced John Reynolds, it’s hard to think of the albums from the past decade or so as being quite the same incarnation of the Irish Rovers. This is the old guard here: cheeky, fluty-voiced Will; deep-voiced Jimmy; robust George Millar; resonant Joe Millar, so suited to romantic ballads; and accordionist Wilcil McDowell. It’s the same guys, but they’re no longer the lanky lads whose dulcet voices sang me to sleep from the record player when I was a tot. They’ve matured, and they’ve hit an apex of harmonic unity.

When the Boys Come Rollin’ Home - Irish music is full of songs honoring one’s hometown and dealing with the pain of leaving, along with the anticipation of a return that may or may not occur. Three of the songs on this album fit within this general category. While the other two have a more wistful tone to them, this one, written by Tommy Sands, is upbeat, even though the speaker spends the bulk of the song away from home and still is unsure, by the end, if he will ever make it back. It’s a rollicking tune about the necessities that drive a man to leave his hometown and the memories that keep him rooted there even when he’s lived far away for most of his life. A great way to kick off the album.

The Spanish Lady - This traditional tune is another lively one, a spirited back-and-forth between a series of suitors and a Spanish lady who knows just what she wants in a husband and will not settle for less. One of many Rovers songs in which Will voices a female character, this time to comic effect, and Joe does a bang-up job on the spoons.

Lorena - A sleepy tune about true loves separated by time and distance, and a chance to slow things down a bit.

Killiburn Brae - We needed a break before this one, because this raucous ballad will wear you out if you try singing along with it. A very fast-paced song, it reads like an extended version of a barroom joke. The gist of it is that a man has a wife who’s such a holy terror that even the Devil, who offers to take her off his hands, gets so sick of her that he winds up returning her to the beleaguered farmer. A bit naughty, and an absolute hoot to hear in concert.

Music in the Glen - A short, purely instrumental track designed to get people dancing a jig in their own living rooms. The percussion and accordion are particularly prominent here.

The Sand and the Foam - It’s always a kick for me when the Rovers cover the work of an artist I love completely independent of any association with them. That happens here as they sing this melancholy reflection by the magnificent Dan Fogelberg about the inevitable passage of time and the erosion that comes with it. This is one of his lovelier songs, made especially poignant with his death a couple of years ago.

The Bonnie Lady - Seafaring songs are always a pretty sure bet on a Rovers album, and this one brings us two. Both are upbeat and rowdy, but in this one, the lyrics are as optimistic-sounding as the tune. This is a guy who loves being a sea captain and wouldn’t trade his job for anything in the world, and his joy is just palpable.

Las Vegas in the Hills of Donegal - On the third Celtic Thunder album, Keith Harkin covers The Homes of Donegal, a stirring ode to a fondly remembered hometown. It’s quite affecting, but I had to kinda chuckle when I first heard it because my first exposure to Donegal came through this song, and the impression is very different. Far from a cozy little hamlet, I get the impression of a den of debauchery, or at least that’s what the speaker wants to make it. One of the most piano-driven and rockin’ songs on the album, this Pat Gallagher song has the speaker dreaming of Donegal as a haven, but of a very different kind, and the comical lyrics have a hard edge to them as he rhapsodizes about all the different types of gambling he’d like to see in his very own gated Donegal community.

The Shadow of O’Casey - A hauntingly beautiful ode to Sean O’Casey, one of Ireland’s most famous playwrights, and the centerpiece of a biographical musical penned by Tommy Sands. Nobody conveys depths of affection through music quite like Will Millar, and that really comes across here, while the lower voices in the group provide really nice contrast throughout the chorus. While this is about a historical figure, it has a fanciful folk hero quality to it that reminds me of several of my favorite old-timey Rovers songs, particularly The Minstrel of Cranberry Lane and Penny Whistle Peddler from Tales to Warm Your Mind, my favorite of their albums.

The Irish Rover - This is where the band got its name, and although it’s really a tragic tale along the lines of the Decemberists’ The Mariner’s Revenge or Gordon Lightfoot’s The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald, the song is so darned peppy that you kinda forget that everybody on this doomed sea voyage is dropping like flies. I’ve heard several versions of this song, and the Rovers themselves have recorded significantly different variations, but this one is probably my favorite. Never has a shipwreck sounded more exuberant...

Travellin’ Man - There’s a hit by Ricky Nelson with the same name, and while it’s a completely different song, the gist of it is the same. No surprise that a band with the name Irish Rovers would have a lot of songs about guys on the move, never staying in any one place for very long. My favorite song of this type is The Tinker, which appears on the Rovers’ Come Fill Up Your Glasses and was written and performed by Reynolds; it captures all the more romantic associations of such a lifestyle - the freedom of the road, the opportunity to forge brief but meaningful relationships every day - and ignores the philandering element present in so many songs in this vein, including this one.

Isle of Innisfree - Up until Ryan Kelly’s The Village That They Call the Moy gave it the bump when I first heard it last year, this eloquent Richard Farrelly tune, heard without words in the John Wayne movie The Quiet Man, was my favorite Irish hometown ode. There are a great many of these, but few can boast such an achingly gorgeous melody or such dreamy lyrics that instantly make one want to claim Innisfree as one’s own home. One of Joe’s signature vocal performances, I’ve loved it from the moment he began to sing it at my first Irish Rovers concert.

Bold O’Donahue - Another rowdy song along the lines of Travelin’ Man. The speaker is a rake and proud of it, I think, though the lyrics come so quickly that I have a pretty tough time understanding what the heck he’s saying, especially toward the end of the chorus, which pretty much dissolves into nonsense. I don’t make much of an effort to sing along to this one. Still, it’s fun to listen to.

Bonnie Kellswater - Another tender hometown ode showcasing Joe’s pipes. For some reason I’ve never connected to this song as much as I have to most of the others in this vein, and I really couldn’t say why. It’s a perfectly nice song, and it’s less of a downer than many of these because it seems that the speaker managed to gain this deep appreciation for his home without ever leaving it or the hometown girl he loves so ardently.

Let the Good Guys Win - The album closes rather as it began, with an upbeat expression of hope for what might happen in the future. This is a fairly hard-rocking, electrified song that reminds me a lot of Forever Young. It’s basically a series of benedictions, which is certainly a very Irish phenomenon, though Jimmy sounds as though he’s trying to emulate a country singer here. It’s a rather unusual sound for the Rovers, but I really like it, and it’s a very cheerful way to end the album.

If you like Irish music or folk-rock in general, the Irish Rovers merge skilled instrumentals, complementary voices, memorable melodies and intricate lyrics to create a sound that satisfies me every time. If you’re looking for something upbeat, The Boys Come Rollin’ Home has a much lower tragedy quotient than usual, and most of the really depressing stuff is masked with maddeningly peppy melodies so you don’t really notice it. Meanwhile, the happy stuff is enough to leave you smiling for a long time to come.