Pint of Order brings 'rolling with the punches' energy to Celtic Harp's Irish Music series

Mark Sisti
·3 min read

I recently had one of the more interesting nights I’ve ever spent in a pub. And trust me, I’ve spent a few.

A few of us were milling around a local bar listening to the music being played, a combination of traditional Irish folk songs, sea chanteys and pub tunes.

All of a sudden, the power went out. I don’t mean the band lost its energy. I mean the electricity went out. Completely.

Pint of Order will perform as part of Celtic Harp’s Irish Music Sundays series.
Pint of Order will perform as part of Celtic Harp’s Irish Music Sundays series.

What to do? Must our night of revelry come to a premature conclusion? Not so fast.

Fortunately the band was Pint Of Order.

Someone (OK, it might have been me) pointed out that they were primarily an acoustic band anyway. So, who needs electricity? Not Pint Of Order.

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The band reconvened to occupy a position in one of the semicircular booths, candles were brought out and lit and the party was back on.

“Pint of Order is known for ‘rolling with the punches,’” recalls vocalist/guitarist Bailey Quinn. “That was evidenced by ‘The Night the Lights Went Out on Varick Street,’ when the members of Pint of Order left the stage, instruments in hand, and continued to play in the dark, with and for the ever-growing crowd who filtered in and enjoyed a true ‘Irish Session’ by lantern light."

Improvisation comes naturally for this ensemble, having evolved from the shanty-singing theatrical pirate troupe, The Paddy Nappers.

Built around that company’s two powerhouse vocalists, Bailey Quinn and Lynzie Quinn (no relation), and with accompaniment by William Morton on backing vocals and Joe Boucher on percussion, Pint of Order leans heavily on traditional Irish pub songs and ballads, but they aren’t above diving into renditions of Johnny Cash’s “God’s Gonna Cut You Down” and Merle Travis’ “Sixteen Tons” to mix with the standards like “Red is the Rose,” “Clohinne Winds," and sing-alongs like “Whiskey in the Jar” and “The Wild Rover.”

Having a pair of singers whose huge voices will rattle the walls certainly made their impromptu unplugged performance easier to pull off without amplification. Lynzie Quinn is an accomplished singer-songwriter and bodhran player, while Bailey Quinn has been working in music since 1977 and is a veteran of several bands, including Der Kleiner Klezmer Orchestra, playing traditional and modern Klezmer music in Yiddish, Hebrew and Ladino; Bailey and Quinn, with partner Larry Meyerhoff; and The Jump Daddies, a jump-swing and blues combo, in addition to the Paddy Nappers.

And every once in a while, their buccaneer tendencies may surface.

“Although Pint of Order is not a specifically theatrical group,” admits Bailey, “we often can’t squelch our natural exuberance and launch into impromptu ad-lib humor."

Pint of Order will perform on Sunday, April 16 as part of Celtic Harp’s Irish Music Sundays series. Shows are free and run from 1-4 p.m.

This article originally appeared on Observer-Dispatch: Pint of Order at Celtic Harp Irish Music series in Utica: What to know