We’re celebrating the LGBTQ+ Celtic musicians this Pride Month today on the Irish & Celtic Music Podcast #712 . Subscribe now!
Malin Lewis, The Homespun Ceilidh Band, Bua, Callanish, Dancing With Hobbits, Ermagerd the Bard, Alexander James Adams, Seumas Gagne, Melanie Gruben, Ockham's Razor
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VOTE IN THE CELTIC TOP 20 FOR 2025
This is our way of finding the best songs and artists each year. You can vote for as many songs and tunes that inspire you in each episode. Your vote helps me create this year's Best Celtic music of 2025 episode. You have just three weeks to vote this year. Vote Now!
You can follow our playlist on YouTube to listen to those top voted tracks as they are added every 2 – 3 weeks.
THIS WEEK IN CELTIC MUSIC
0:11 – The Homespun Ceilidh Band “De'il In The Kitchen / The Drunken Piper” from Home With
The Homespun Ceilidh Band
- Daphne Eftychia Arthur (pronounciation eff – ti – HEE – ah) T and L
3:19 – WELCOME
5:26 – Bua “John Joe Hartnett's / Spellan the Fiddler” from Down the Green Fields
- Brian Ó hAirt: vocals, sean – nós dance, concertina
9:29 – Callanish “The Wind that Shakes the Barley” from Callanish
- John Adams: Fiddler
12:58 – Dancing With Hobbits “Hobbit Hornpipe” from Dancing With Hobbits
- Sam Gillogly: Fiddle
15:22 – THANKS
17:44 – INTREVIEW: INTRODUCTION
23:43 – Malin Lewis “Hiraeth” from Halocline
27:59 – INTERVIEW: INSPIRATIONS
35:15 – Malin Lewis “Trans” from Halocline
38:20 – INTERVIEW: RAPID FIRE QUESTIONS
45:08 – Malin Lewis “The Old Inn” from Halocline
48:52 – FEEDBACK
52:55 – Ermagerd the Bard “I Walk Among You” from single
55:31 – Alexander James Adams “Your Coming Spring” from The Blue Rose Rare and Other Faerie Tales
1:01:16 – Seumas Gagne “Tir Nan Og” from Baile Ard
1:06:32 – Melanie Gruben “Water Charges Song” from Like a Tide Upon the Land
1:11:30 – CLOSING
1:12:37 – Ockham's Razor “I'm Coming Home Northumberland (2024)” from Garnet
1:18:36 – CREDITS
The Irish & Celtic Music Podcast was produced by Marc Gunn, The Celtfather and our Patrons on Patreon. The show was edited by Mitchell Petersen with Graphics by Miranda Nelson Designs. Visit our website to follow the show. You’ll find links to all of the artists played in this episode.
Todd Wiley is the editor of the Celtic Music Magazine. Subscribe to get 34 Celtic MP3s for Free. Plus, you’ll get 7 weekly news items about what’s happening with Celtic music and culture online. Best of all, you will connect with your Celtic heritage.
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Change doesn’t happen alone. Start a conversation. Ask a question. Vote like the planet depends on it—because it does. Your children, your neighbors, and your future self are counting on you to speak up today.
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WELCOME THE IRISH & CELTIC MUSIC PODCAST
* Helping you celebrate Celtic culture through music. I am Marc Gunn. I’m a Celtic musician and also host of Folk Songs & Stories. This podcast is for fans of Celtic music.
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An album pin is a lapel pin with artwork inspired by a specific album or song from an album. It could be the actual album artwork or it could be inspired by a specific track on the album.
The best album pins stand out on their own. They appeal to more than just your fans. It is simple, bold, and visually engaging. However, what truly makes it an “album pin” is that the purchaser also gets a digital album with their pin.
I have an entire blog on my website with details including templates for you to make your own album pin jacket.
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TRAVEL WITH CELTIC INVASION VACATIONS
Every year, I take a small group of Celtic music fans on the relaxing adventure of a lifetime. We don't see everything. Instead, we stay in one area. We get to know the region through its culture, history, and legends. You can join us with an auditory and visual adventure through podcasts and videos.
In 2026, we’re traveling to the Celtic nation of Galicia in Spain.
We’ll dive deep into the history and legends of the Galician Celts, uncovering their connections to Ireland, Scotland, and beyond. We’ll walk the same lands where Celtic warriors once roamed, hear the myths passed down through generations, and experience the magic of authentic Galician Celtic music, alive with passion and history.
This isn’t just a trip—it’s a journey into the heart of a Celtic culture unlike any other. Will you join us?
Learn more about the invasion at http://celticinvasion.com/
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What are you doing today while listening to the podcast? I’d love to see a picture of what you're doing while listening. Is there a new Celtic CD or Celtic band that you heard of or saw? Send a picture.
Email me at follow@bestcelticmusic.
Ermagerd the Bard wrote about this next song: “The song is what I wrote in response to a real thing that happened to me once upon a time while being a queer medievalist on the internet.
I've been involved in the SCA for a couple of decades, and am also openly genderqueer. And this one time one of my recordings was used in a podcast where the theme of the episode was my kingdom, and due to some miscommunication…. there were some misspellings of names and titles of performers and a couple of song titles were incorrect.
Well somebody in our kingdom proudly posted the episode in our kingdom's facebook group and said hey, look at our bards, this is cool. And I took it upon myself to comment with a few corrections so people would know who the performers were and what those songs were, and thank the poster for being excited about it.
A while back the committee within the SCA that is in charge of registering people's names and titles and such on an international level had been working on finding alternative titles for genderqueer and nonbinary type members so they wouldn't have to use titles like Lord/Lady, and this pertains to me because I'm genderqueer. So in my comment I remarked that my name would be written Ermagerd, Nobilis, and that nobilis wasn't a surname, it's a less gendery Latin form of Lord/Lady and it's the title that describes my awarded status in the SCA.
Well this one particular ancient member took a huge offense to the existence of ungendered titles and people, and threw an angry rant into the comments. How dare we harsh her medieval vibe, nonbinary people aren't historically authentic, why does everybody have to shove their gayness down her throat, why can't we pretend “politics” doesn't exist when we're playing medieval dress – up, etc. etc.
I never responded to her directly, but I watched as my whole kingdom rose up to defend not just me, but the historical existence of other genders of people, the importance of acceptance in a big – tent international hobby group, the importance of the SCA's core values of chivalry, honor, and courtesy, the years of dedicated research done by the names and titles committee… and all this from people located in Texas and Oklahoma. The consensus was that yes we genderqueer people are historical, there's tons of proof, and people's very lives aren't just “politics”, and even if it was just some modern thing, she didn't drop rants like this against people wearing glasses and using wheelchairs and indoor plumbing, and if she wanted to call herself by her (also made – up) venerable title, she could very well try to be a good example for treating other people well.
It was a wondrous thing to behold, and this conversation unfolded into hundreds of comments, largely supportive and accepting, over a couple of days of commentary….
I Walk Among You took shape in my head on the second day, and it's intensely personal. I'm real, all of us are real, we're not just citations and talking points and theory and psychology and modern trends and political correctness and wokeism, we're human beings with lives, and feelings, just like the queer people who came before us in all the cultures in all the eras throughout time.
I've performed it twice, once in a tavern during my own set, to thunderous applause, and once as a guest artist in a more famous friend's concert, and again the clapping went on longer than I expected. I think people need to hear that we were always here, and I think people need to hear it in forms that touch their feelings, like storytelling and songs. It's especially important that younger queer people get to hear that they're not a fad, that we had ancestors, that we have history, that they're not alone but the inheritors of a proud tradition of sacred people surviving and thriving for centuries upon centuries.
Thanks for letting me get that off my chest.”
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