Eamonn McGirr
Daniel Martin
The following is a story from the Albany Times Union from
Albany, NY, dated January 7, 1996. This is about my friend
Eamonn McGirr who is attempting to yet again break the world
record for consecutive singing. If you read the story you
will see that this is not just a publicity stunt, there is a
real reason for this far beyond some free ink. Indeed,
Eamonn's pub, Eamonn's Loudon House, is doing quite well,
thank you, and Eamonn has no plans to go back into the record
industry. When you read the story, you can go to a URL I set
up for Eamonn at
http://www.wizvax.net/alfalfa/eamonns/eamonns.htm
and can see a little bit about Eamonn's place, listen
to sound files which I hope to update daily with Eamonn's
progress, and make a contribution to Cerebral Palsy if you
would so like. There is also another site at
with large quicktime movies.
But maybe more importantly, if you would like
to send some encouraging words to Eamonn, there is a form set
up to do that as well. If you don't have access to the web,
you can send email to alf...@wizvax.net and I will see to it
that the Big E gets it. If you know or remember Eamonn from
Ireland, I think he would particularly appreciate this.
Daniel Martin
Eamonn McGirr Plans to sing for 11 Days Straight and Regain
a World Record
By Doug Blackburn
Staff Writer
John Lennon's plaintive voice is in the air. His bittersweet
song "Happy Christmas, War Is Over" wafts from the jukebox
across the dark chocolate colored bar at Eamonn's pub, hanging
over the hunter green tablecloths of this unpretentious
gathering spot in residential Loudonville.
Mary McGirr approaches her husband, who is seated at one of
the tables. It is late afternoon, before the evening crowds
bring chatter and laughter. She sets a cup of tea with cream
in front of McGirr, gently placing her hand on his beefy
shoulder.
"Eh, Eamonn, they're playing your song. You hear it ?"
Eamonn McGirr stiffly twists his torso and turns his ruddy,
full face toward his wife and business partner. "Brings back
memories, doesn't it ?" he replies, smiling an dpatting Mary's
hand.
"That was my hit, too," he explains about the Lennon tune.
"It was a hit in Ireland."
McGirr's rendition of "Happy Christmas, War Is Over" spent
three weeks in the top 20 in Ireland, not quite the success
he enjoyed with "Up Went Nelson," which stayed at No. 1 in
the Irish charts for six weeks in 1966.
Both are regularly featured during the Saturday Night
performances at Eamonn's , a hangout for those in search of
good times at an old-fashioned public house. The McGirr's
have opertated it since December 1992, when they moved to
Albany from Dennisport, Cape Cod.
The pub will be the setting for a performance of a different
sort this Wednesday, when McGirr embarks on an 11 day
marathon of nonstop singing. Two-hundred-and-sixty-two
consecutive hours of crooning.
If he's successful, he will enter the Guiness Book of World
Records for endurance singing for the fifth time. But the
last time McGirr set the record, he needed to warble for a
mere five days straight.
That was 17 years ago, when he was 38 and in far better health.
McGirr now has a number of physical ailments: He's more than
100 pounds overweight. His legs and feet are swelled from
lymphodema. The top of his spine is fused from arthritis,
making it difficult to lift or turn his head.
Singing for 11 days and nights would seem beyond the reach of
a healthy person. For someone in McGirr's condition it
borders on foolhardy.
Watch him shuffle to the 4-by-8 foot green stage in his pub
and you wonder if this man is well enough to sing at all.
But when he picks up his acoustic guitar and sits to face the
crowd, McGirr lights up, the rich baritone voice washing away
doubts about his health. But the record is a more difficult
matter.
"It's not a show I'm doing, it's a human endurance effort,"
McGirr warns. "To try for the record, this was not a decision
that was taken lightly."
"The mental approach is what concerns me. The last time I did
it, I began to hallucinate. I'm told that I said certain
things, that I told certain reporters to get lost in rather
emphatic terms, although I deny it all."
At one point during the ordeal, well into the third day when
the fatigue was wearing McGirr down, a writer came up to him
at his pub in Ireland to show him a story about his marathon
in that day's Irish Times. McGirr, who had only singing on
his mind, snapped and pushed the reporter away.
"It gets very emotional for me," he explains. "For days after,
you feel you have to sing even in your sleep. You can't get
away from it. You feel you have to sing even when you're
going to the bathroom."
There is more than self-promotion at work with McGirr, 55.
The reason he is willing to push himself beyond all
reasonable limits of endurance is a bright, cheerful, 17-year
old, who spends almost all her waking moments in a wheelchair, his daughter Mareena.
She was born with cerebral palsy, a disease that has ravaged
her body and central nervous system but left her alert mind
intact. The McGirr's came to the United States 11 years ago
(they have yet to return to Ireland for even a visit) for
superior medical treatment for Mareena. Thanks to a team of
surgeons, she can now get about with a walker.
Starting at 8:00 PM Wednesday, when McGirr breaks into a
rendition of "One Day At A Time", in the dining area of his
eatery, he is dovetailing his attempt at the world record
with the annual fund-raiser for the Center For The Disabled,
which has assisted Mareena with various wheelchair needs over
the years.
McGirr has set a lofty goal - to bring $500,000 in to the
Center in the form of pledges by the hour or day from
individuals or corporations.
The rules are simple, someone must be with McGirr at all
times to verify that he does not stop singing. He is allowed
five minutes off for every hour he sings. He is not required
to sing throughout the ordeal. Humming, reading the
newspapers with a wee bit of a melody, and la-la-la-ing are
all allowed. And McGirr intends to make these rules work
on his behalf. He plans to get into the third day without
taking one five-minute break, then use the accumulated time
to get four or five hours sleep. Go as long as he can again,
then rest.
"It's like a yoke on me shoulders, it has to be removed bit
by bit as you get to the end of the 11 days," McGirr says.
"It takes patience, and I'm not a patient man." But he is
very much a theatrical entertainer, and his finale, provided
he lasts that long, should be grand. To break the record,
he plans to sing "God Bless America" at 7 PM on January 21
in the studios of WTEN, Channel 10, during the finish of
the United Cerebral Palsy telethon the station hosts. He'll
return to his pub for a rendition of "The Town I Love So
Well". Then to bed for as long as possible.
McGirr plans to visit schools and other eateries in the area
during his marathon, singing all the while. And as he travels
from his pub to various places, he will of course be singing -
traditional Irish folk songs, as well as country-western and
other gentle ballads that will not tax his vocal chords. He
recently saw a physician about his lymphodema and plans to
spend Monday and Tuesday (January 8 and 9) in bed strapped
to a machine that will massage his aching, bloated legs.
Treatments will continue throughout his singing.
Ken Philo, a regular at Eamonn's and among the inner circle
helping McGirr go back into the record book, says those lined
up to witness his effort are well aware of the entertainer's
health problems. "Is it safe ? Who knows ?" says Philo, a
budget analyst for New York State. "Eamonn promised us all
that if Mary calls it off, he'll listen to her. Mary's got a
world of common sense, so I think we're in good hands. Plus,
we plan to have a nurse on site most of the time. Still, I
think Eamonn looks worse than he is. He's got physical
problems, but he's got a strong heart, and his blood pressure
runs good. He's strong as an ox."
Philo is a teetotaler of Irish descent who visits Eamonn's
three times a week to sip coffee and be anong friends. He
likens the scene to the scene at the TV show "Cheers".
There's a group of regulars and the only requirement for
membership is to show up. You just have to be there. You
don't have to be Irish or anything." Philo says.
McGirr is a native of Derry City in Northern Ireland, site of
the infamous Bloody Sunday tradegy in 1972 during which 14
demonstrators were killed by British soldiers. He was raised
a Catholic in a fiercely land dominated by Protestants.
McGirr learned to see the British soldiers on the streets of
his neighborhood as a force to suppress the minority population
of Catholics. He decided he wanted to be a priest, and
completed five years of a seven year seminary program, where
one of his classmates was 1995 Nobel Prize winning poet,
Seamus Heaney. But he abandoned the priesthood and embarked
on a career as a mathematics teacher.
McGirr rarely questions his decision to leave seminary school
early. "If his Holiness got up tomorrow and said we'd let
priests be married, I think tomorrow I'd become a priest.
Does that tell you all you need to know ?" While teaching
advanced math and calculus in Belfast, McGirr formed the folk
group The Go-Lucky Four. They enjoyed enormous success in
Ireland, going to the top of the charts with "Up Went Nelson,"
but weren't known on this side of the Atlantic.
Their success inspired him to give up teaching. McGirr took
his act on the road, going solo in England to play nightclubs.
There, outside Manchester, he met Mary. She also was a native
of County Derry, but had been raised in England since age 3.
They were married 20 years ago this Easter Monday, and three
years later, were joined by Mareena. While here father sounds
distinctly Irish, and her mother English, Mareena speaks with
no such accent. She's an American teenager who prefers
hamburgers to shepherd pie, who likes soft rock even though
Irish folk songs are her favorite. She has received a
scholarship to attend the College of Saint Rose in Albany
this fall, and dreams of a career as a television news anchor. At Shaker High in Latham, New York she sings in her school choir, but as unself-conscious as she is, Mareena is not the performer her father is. She has yet to sing before an audience at Eamonn's.
Sitting next to his daughter, McGirr nods his head in her
direction when asked about his attempt to sing for 11 days
straight. "It's for Mareena and the Center for the Disabled,
you know. If it wasn't for this lassie, I wouldn't do it.
It's a father's gesture." He notes that, because of his own
ailments, it is easier for Mareena to pick things up off the
floor than it is for him. "We're all handicapped, that's
what I tell Mareena and anyone else," he says with eyes
twinkling."Show me the perfect man."
McGirr's warm self-deprecating style has won the admiration
of other proprietors in the area. For example, Michael Byron,
owner of Washington Tavern and The Ginger Man, is a native of
Ireland who might be considered a rival of Eamonn's. But
Byron not only sings praises of McGirr, he also occasionally
shows up at Eamonn's for a bit of crac (Gaelic for good times)
and has pledged to collect donations of at least $1000 for the
fund-raising marathon. "Eamonn is a marvelous entertainer.
I'd say he's kind of unique in his voice, his looks and his
physique. We're very lucky in this area to have him here,"
Byron adds, "I guess you could say that listening to Eamonn
is like being back in Ireland. It's a fine, fine feeling."
Observes Joe Mahoney, a spokesman in the New York State
Attorney General's Office and a regular at Eamonn's :"Eamonn
is Mr. Hospitality. I like to think of him as a cross between
a leprechaun and a teddy bear. I think there was a real
thirst here for the type of entertainment Eamonn offers."
Since arriving in the Capital Region four years ago, McGirr
has become a highly visible spokesman for Irish-Americans,
the region's No. 1 group in terms of population according to
the Regional Planning Commission. Not to mention the
political influence of the Irish in the area. "All of the
Irish people in the Albany area go to Eamonn's. It's more
like home than any other place,", says Yvonne Mahar, a native
of Limerick who's been living in Albany for four years.
McGirr's Sunday afternoon radio show on the Siena College
station (WVCR 88.3 FM), "Proud To Be Irish", has developed a
loyal following. And when Gerry Adams visited Albany last
March, McGirr was chosen to serenade the Sinn Fein leader.
He opted to sing "Four Green Fields".
The McGirr's became American citizens seven years ago so they
could buy a business in their adoptive country. But there's
no question where McGirr's loyalty lies. "I'm Irish, all
through and through," he says without hesitation."If I were
to go back to Ireland, I'm not sure I'd ever be able to
leave."