The Town Pants don’t ease you in. The Ottawa, Ontario five-piece — built around dual lead vocals, a rhythm section tuned for pub floors, and a violinist whose fiddle work their own press materials describe as “fiery” — plays Celtic roots-rock at a volume and energy that assumes you came ready. Nearly three decades in, they have turned that approach into a career spanning eight albums and more than 500 cities across 15 countries, from the Canadian pubs where they started to Celtic and Roots festival headlining slots across North America and Europe. The music they play has a way of sounding more alive in close rooms than on any recording.
About the Show
This Thursday evening at Middle Ages Beer Hall opens the Syracuse Irish Festival’s weekend. The main festival runs free, outdoors, Sept. 11–12, presented by Guinness. The kick-off is a separate, ticketed night presented by Visions FCU, and it occupies a particular role: this is where the festival energy actually starts, in a covered room where the musicians are at eye level and the sound carries to the back wall without losing anything along the way.
Brothers Duane and Dave Keogh share lead vocal duties, their harmonies sharpened by decades of performance into something that sounds less like two vocalists and more like a single instrument with range. Johanna So plays violin at the melodic center; Jeff Tripoli and Blake Propst anchor the rhythm. Together they work a sound the band calls “West Coast Celtic,” a fusion of Irish traditional, folk-rock, and roots Americana that their press kit describes as “some of the most imaginative songwriting in the genre.” A reviewer quoted in those materials calls the live show “jaw-dropping amazing.” Eight albums deep, including Coming Home and Weight of Words, they bring a catalog with three hours of material, which is exactly the runtime the 8:00 to 11:00 p.m. window provides.
Venue & Logistics
Middle Ages Beer Hall, at 120 Wilkinson Street in Syracuse, is a 400-capacity room in central New York, close enough to the stage that the fiddle doesn’t need to travel far. Doors open at 6:00 p.m. The event is all ages; those under 18 must be accompanied by a guardian.
Tickets
Advance tickets are $22 base ($27.52 with fees) through TicketWeb; the band’s calendar lists $30 at the door. Buy tickets