Arts & Entertainment
Seamus Kennedy Performs at BlackRock
Award winning singer, composer and entertainer performs at BlackRock Center for the Arts on St. Patrick's Day.
If you're looking for a festive St. Patrick's Day alternative to a rowdy bar and green beer, then look no further than the .
, a Belfast, Northern Ireland native will be on stage cracking jokes, weaving through tongue twisters and possibly reeling an Irish gig tonight.
Kennedy, who will perform in Germantown tonight at 7:30 p.m., has entertained school children and dignitaries, but his most memorable guest of all time, he said, was President Ronald Reagan in 1988.
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“He walked into a pub where I was performing in Arlington on St. Patrick’s Day,” Kennedy said. “I got him to get up on stage to tell Irish jokes and stories.”
When Kennedy takes the stage tonight, he will not be performing a predetermined set of songs. He says he never arranges a set, choosing instead to depend on his repertoire of more than a thousand jokes and seven hundred songs to keep his audience entertained.
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“I just make it up as I go,” he said. “I have no idea what I am going to sing. I only find out myself when I get on stage.”
His gamble has paid off well. According to his website, Kennedy has won numerous Washington Area Music Association Awards over the years. While he appreciates the recognition coming from his fellow musicians and performers, Kennedy says he would much rather have a satisfied audience.
Kennedy has been entertaining for forty years, specializing in Irish and Scottish music, but is just as comfortable singing daft songs or children’s songs because he says humor is universal. For example, he finds joy in singing about seven old ladies locked in a lavatory and imparting life lessons thinly veiled as smells of different farts.
“I think humor plays a part in just about every culture throughout the world because people need to laugh,” Kennedy said.
Kennedy has authored a book with his band mates, “Clean Cabbage in the Bucket and Other Tales from the Irish Music Trenches”
Tonight will be Kennedy's first performance in Germantown and he says he is eager to meet local residents.
“I am really looking forward to coming to Germantown and performing.”
Tickets are $28.
