Balling the Jack

“Nonpareil,” says Molly. “Both of them beyond reproach.”

One of these days she’ll learn to speak plain English.

“From your demeanor I assume you won your bet. This would mean you’re not in for the evening.”

“I did, and I’m not. Meeting Dave at Finn’s to check out the new band. How about it? Can I interest you two in some rock ’n’ roll?”

“Hardly. We’ve got quite the day ahead tomorrow. Though I shouldn’t speak for Mike.”

“What do you say, guy? I’ll have you back by dawn.”

“No thanks.”

He doesn’t look at me. Must still be sore about the dress. Oh well. If I thought they’d come along I wouldn’t have offered. I shower, change into my shorts and Mets T-shirt, and head out the door.

FRIDAY NIGHTS in this city are for the young. They shouldn’t let anyone over thirty out of their apartment. Walking up Second Avenue, an Oil Can in my hand and eight hundred bucks in my pocket, the evening spreads before me like a feast. On the menu tonight is everything you get out of bed for: friends, women, music, drink. From a block away I can see the sign for Finn’s: a neon leprechaun sitting on a shamrock, drinking from a frosty mug. I kill my beer and arc it into a trash basket on the corner. Look out tonight, Manhattan. You’ve met your match.

Liam Kennedy, the manager of Finn O’Shea’s, takes off his shades as I enter and looks hard at me.

“Well, Tom? Are ya carryin’?”

“Thanks to the Phillies.”

He breaks into a grin and grabs my hand. “That’s it, lad! Man after me heart. I’ll tell the waitresses—they’ll keep the pints coming.”

“Thanks.”

These are good days for Liam Kennedy. A year ago, Finn O’Shea’s was just a solid Irish bar like a hundred others in town. A few dartboards, a jukebox, a couple of brogues from the old country pouring drinks. One of five in the O’Shea chain, kept in business by the soaks and the rough Irish illegals, who roll in after work or before work or because they can’t find work. When the recession hit, all the bars felt the pinch, and Papa O’Shea laid down the word: The one with the lowest receipts in six months was out of business. Leave it to an Irish boss to pit his own against each other.

Kennedy knew he was in trouble. Two of the O’Shea bars are on the Upper East Side, milking the yuppies. One is in the Village, milking everybody, and the other is in Hell’s Kitchen, pulling in the Garden crowd and the Jersey high school kids through the tunnel. Finn’s, though, is stuck here at Twenty-first and Second. It’s not uptown, it’s not downtown, and it’s not midtown. Liam was getting his ass kicked.

He tried going to the other managers to see if they could put up a united front. Pool their receipts, maybe. All for one and one for all. They told him to get lost. Said we don’t make the rules, Kennedy.

Up against it, he hit on the idea of pulling one of the dartboards on the weekends and sticking in a band. He booked some real morgue acts at first, old geezers strumming guitars, singing “Danny Boy” and “Kathleen,” barely keeping themselves awake. Even the alkies couldn’t listen to them. Liam needed a new sound, and as luck would have it, it walked right in his door.

One day, four scruffy guys showed up at the bar clutching a demo. They called themselves the Coffin Ships, after the boats that brought so many Irish to the New World. Looking at the tiny stage, the bums slumped over their drinks, they must have started to wonder why they came. As for Kennedy, he wasn’t sure he liked the looks of them.

Neither party had a lot to lose, though. The Coffin Ships had been chased out of all the local bars in the Bronx for not singing “Danny Boy” and “Kathleen.” For them it was a chance to play inside, in Manhattan; hell, they might even let women in the bar. It beat the pants off a street corner on Fordham Road. As for Liam, what the hell. They had to be better than the last act, and they were cheap. He promised them all they could drink and twenty percent of beer sales above the average take. They promised to make a lot of noise.

By chance I caught them on their first night. Stopped in to confirm a dart match, saw them tuning up, and figured I’d give them a few songs. I didn’t leave until they locked the door on me. There were only thirty of us, half of them friends of the band, but once they took the stage they didn’t care.

The singer sang and played electric guitar. They had a guy on the uilleann pipes, a smooth sax, bongos, and a drum machine. They did great covers, and their own stuff was even better. Killer songs about drinking in the new country and missing the old. About fallen heroes, about workers uniting, about chasing tail. Songs funny and sad that kept you moving. I was swept along, into the second set, downing one pint after another. Jigging to the jigs, reeling to the reels, having a blast.

Late in the night they played the first strains of a song that sounded familiar but no, it couldn’t be, not here, not by a bunch of drunken micks. But it was! Bob Marley, “Get Up, Stand Up,” and damned if they didn’t hit it just right. At 3 A.M. they sent us out the door to “Anarchy in the UK” and we spilled into the street exhausted, excited, drunk, promising ourselves we’d be back.

Nothing beats finding a new band. One day they don’t exist and the next they explode into your head and are part of you. I bought the T-shirts and homemade tapes, learned all the words to their songs. Told my friends about them, passed out fliers, called the college radio stations. “What do you mean, you never heard of them? Don’t you guys do your homework?”

Each week built to Saturday night. We would stake out a spot by the bar and send drinks to the stage between songs. We plotted to get them into Rolling Stone. Word spread. Thirty people turned to fifty, to a hundred, to a line down the block, another set on Wednesdays, a doorman, a cover, and some real faces in the crowd. Record men, dealmakers. This band was the real thing, and we were a part of it.

Rock ’n’ roll is a language and those who speak it a tribe. A good band, when you take them to heart, gives you more than songs. They give you nights, mad nights outside yourself when you feel your youth so strong it breaks through your skin. We would all be packed together, swaying, roaring the chorus to “Free Us Now,” our insides hollowed out, our fever rising with the music. At the peak we could barely stand it. We were no longer citizens. Our jobs, careers, parents belonged on another planet. We wanted only this world, right here, and so long as this song didn’t end we had it. Then the last chord crashed and we stood dazed, famished, like lovers stopped before the finish.

We looked at each other, really looked, on the verge of something, all of us. Some shared truth inside us the next song promised to reveal, if we could just hang on. And in the instant before it started a line from a college teacher I hated would come back to me. “You kids think the answer’s in a rock song, or between a woman’s legs.” Well, some nights it is, Teach, and as they broke into “Irish Freedom” I started rubbing up the girl next to me, and when she rubbed back I pulled her through the crowd, out the door, into a cab and gave it to her right there in the back seat, my face in her shirt as we took off, covered in sweat, the words of the last song still ringing in my head.

No wonder they stand up in Congress and plot the death of rock ’n’ roll. This stuff is dangerous.

The Coffin Ships hit the big time, as you might have guessed. Signed on the dotted line for one of the giants, and a month later here came the MTV truck, right into Finn’s to film the video! You’ll see our gang in the back if we survive the edit. These days the band keeps pretty fast company. The singer drinks with movie stars of Irish blood who pop in after a shoot, and you can often see the sax player on Page Six in the Post. Even the drummer, who hasn’t been sober since the first gig and was a little short of hat size to start with, never leaves without a girl on his arm.

Finn’s is a star now too. When the band’s first album took off, so did the bar’s rep as a launching pad. Writers started coming around. First the underground press, then The Voice, and finally, yes, Rolling Stone. Liam sits them all at the bar, pours pints and tells again how the new home of Irish music in New York began as just a dream in his head. He’s always careful to imply he’s a bit of a musician himself, though as a businessman there’s not the time for it.

When the Coffin Ships’s album hit the Top 10, the majors declared roots Irish music the next rage, and suddenly anybody with a cousin in Ireland and an amp had a shot at a contract. They all wanted to play Finn’s because that’s where the scouts were. Told Liam they’d play for nothing for a shot at the big time, so that’s what Liam pays them. Books the best for Friday night, the others for Monday and Thursday, throws in an open mike on Sunday and now he fills the place every night, at ten bucks a head. Takes in three times the other O’Shea bars combined. Liam still stops in on them from time to time. “Just for a pint, y’know, and to see how they’re getting on. We Irish stick together.”

A few weeks ago I saw the Coffin Ships for the last time. Headed over Saturday night, as usual, drinking an Oil Can, getting psyched, but when I saw the line down the block I slowed, and at the door I couldn’t bring myself to go in. I watched through the window awhile. Saw them set up, dive into the first set, the crowd going nuts. I thought back to the first night, just a few of us there, the magic feeling you get at the start of things. Was it really a year ago? I remembered the first time I heard them on the radio, turning from the deli register with a beer and stopping dead as the singer’s voice came through the speakers, singing “New County Down.” I thought of all that and then I tipped my beer to them, through the glass, and walked home.

When you’re with a band from the start and they make it big, there comes a time they don’t need you anymore. They belong to everyone now and not to you. Letting go is like ending an affair. The last few Saturdays were rough.

Dave says the buzz on tonight’s band is good, though. Some outfit called Aisling Chara—you tell me how to pronounce it. The singer is supposed to have a real set of pipes, they got some little guy plays hell out of the electric cello, whatever that is, and according to Liam, if Neil Young ever hears their cover of “Cinnamon Girl,” he’ll go back into the studio and get it right this time. Maybe I’m back in business.

Dave waves from a choice spot between two groups of girls. When I reach him he’s trying to explain the concept of a body shot to a pretty German. He claps me on the neck.

“How ’bout those Phillies!” he says. “I talked to Stella. Guess you’re buying tonight, huh?”

“All weekend. Pint?”

“Sure, and one for Angila if you can. And shots of Jägermeister. Maybe my German will come back to me.”

Looking at Dave you’d never guess I spent half my nights freshman year sleeping in the lounge. A shade under six feet, a bit on the heavy side, dark hair, dark eyes, a small mouth. Not GQ material by a long shot, but Dave gets laid more than anyone I know. It isn’t even close.

He’s off to a slow start tonight. As the drinks come, I turn just in time to see Angila land a good slap on his kisser and storm away.

I laugh. “You always said you could take a punch, Dave. What happened?”

“I don’t know.” He works his jaw in his hands. “I thought I told her she has nice eyes, but my German’s a little rusty. We should have gone to a better school.”

“I’ll drink to that. Next ten bucks I give goes to the language department. Cheers.” We do our shots. “Say, who’s the new waitress?”

“Something else, huh?”

She really is. Slender, with a strange, graceful walk, as if she were on her tiptoes. Blond hair all down her back and a shy smile when I overtip. I wave her back for another round.

“Hi, we’ll take two more. I’m Tom Reasons, by the way. This is my friend Dave.”

“I know. Liam told us about you. Says I should bring them as you finish. Says you’re loaded.”

“Well, I am tonight anyway. What time are you off?”

“About three.”

“Ever go for a bite after work?”