Cathy Miller’s Persons of the Week are Paddy and the Pale Boys, which performed at the season finale of the Shippen Manor Summer Lawn Concerts series on Sept. 5. The popular music series was sidelined in 2021 due to COVID.

By Cathy Miller

The free concerts at Shippen Manor traditionally feature a different musical act every Sunday from Father’s Day to Labor Day but this year, with COVID still lingering, the shortened series ran August 1 through September 5. A late start – and a short season – maybe, but the music was back in Oxford!

The series is presented by the Warren County Cultural & Heritage Division of Land Preservation, supported by the Warren County Board of County Commissioners, and funded in part by the New Jersey State Council on the Arts, a partner agency of the National Endowment for the Arts.

This year’s grand finale featured Paddy and the Pale Boys who have closed out the Series on Labor Day weekend for at least ten years. Prior to securing that coveted spot, they’d performed on the Shippen summer stage for a decade.

Together for 25 years, Paddy and the Pale Boys always had a Warren County connection in former band member Steve Miller, who passed away earlier this year. Everyone else hails from all over New Jersey – Sussex, Bergen, Passaic, Morris, and Ocean counties!

The band came together in a series of fits and starts, getting a big push from close friend Paul Dunn. Every summer he hosted Pig Stock BBQ. In 1996 Paul phoned Martin to invite him to the big shindig saying, “Paddy and the Pale Boys are playing and you’re in it!” That was the origin of the band’s name and the start of an ongoing musical adventure.

Martin O’Connor remembered, “We did about an hour set, traditional Irish, some Pogues. I thought, let’s do this, we’ll be Paddy and the Pale Boys. My original idea was to book anything and everything through St. Patrick’s Day season. For the rest of the year, maybe one gig a month. We started doing gigs and the phone starting ringing and then it got crazy.”

A few personnel changes later, Mike Hoffman came on board and they really hit their stride.

The 1996 line-up never changed for the longest time:
Martin O’Connor: vocals, bass guitar, bodhran
Bobby “McGee”: drums, percussion
Mike Hoffman: vocals, electric/acoustic guitar
Steve “Fiddleboy” Miller: vocals, fiddle, mandolin, banjo, accordion, tin whistle

Steve played with the Pale Boys until his passing this year.

Paul Dunn faithfully attended the Pale Boys’ shows, often bringing his son Shane. Eventually young Shane brought along his guitar. The first time he sat in with the band was a St. Patrick’s Day all-day event at the Grasshopper in Morristown. He arrived after school one afternoon, set up onstage with the band, plugged in his guitar and amp and yelled, “Ready guys? One, two three…” Whoa! You’d think a kid would be nervous, playing out first time to a packed pub. He was a natural – even at the tender age of seven or eight!

There’s a good chance those in attendance also experienced one of Steve’s early forays into fiddling while dancing on the bar in his black Beatle boots.

Between all the back-up guitar players and back-up drummers, Martin counts up to 27 guys who’ve played with the Pale Boys. All the drummers filling in for Bob, oddly enough, shared the same surname “McGee.” The whole “McGee” family was nothing but drummers! Shane, now 18, still joins the band onstage as well.

Look for a new Paddy and the Pale Boys CD around Thanksgiving/Christmas tentatively titled “Finally.” It will include 14 songs, many they’ve been doing for ages, but never recorded. There’s a couple of new ones that they’re still fine-tuning, including “Give Every Man His Due” (a take on Tullamore D.E.W., an Irish whiskey), and “The Apple of the Corner of My Eye” which Martin began working on last year.

Martin begins the writing process by working out verses and chord structure, and then the piece will go through the “meat grinder” of rewrites and rehearsals and emerge a finished product.

Venturing out as Covid restrictions are lifted, the new 2021 line-up is:
Martin O’Connor: vocals, bass guitar, bodhran
Bobby McGee: drums, percussion
Mike Hoffman:  vocals, electric/acoustic guitar
James Sattler: vocals, fiddle, mandolin, banjo
Ray Hoffman: vocals, keyboards, accordion
*with George “Sweet” McGee: fill-in drummer and Shane Dunn: drop-in guitarist

Rarely do the Pale Boys perform a song that they haven’t put their own fingerprints on. Every song they do has some sort of big or little tweak!

Martin said, “We take great pride in the fact that when you come to hear the Pale Boys, you’re going to hear a bunch of songs that you’re not going to hear again until the next time you come see the Pale Boys.”

Their always expanding repertoire currently stands at around 500 songs, including a couple Christmas songs and a Kiss cover that came and went pretty quickly!

Laughing, Martin described Paddy and the Pale Boys as “a crack-up.” Between the band’s antics and all the crazy people they’ve met along the way, it’s been a great ride. The stories he’s compiled over 25 years will make a very entertaining book!

So you don’t forget, Martin likes to point out, “In the event you weren’t aware, Paddy and the Pale Boys IS your favorite Irish band!”

March 13, 2022 will be the 25th anniversary of Paddy and the Pale Boys’ first gig (at the Harp and Bard). Guaranteed to be a blast, it’s St. Patrick’s Day Parade Day in West Orange followed by an exodus to the West Orange Shillelagh Club to top off the celebration with pipers in kilts, Martin, Mike, Bobby, James and Ray in full aural glory.

Follow Paddy and the Pale Boys on Facebook and visit thepaleboys.com for upcoming dates.
Visit https://warrenparks.com/wcchc/ for news on Shippen Manor events and more.
Shippen Manor is located at 8 Belvidere Avenue, Oxford.

Cathy Miller is an award-winning photo journalist whose works appear regularly in Inside Warren. Over the years she has covered Warren County for a host of publications, photographing and speaking to people and taking pictures at hundreds of special events.