March 17: The Rebel Collective do double duty at The Shaskeen for St. Patrick’s Day

MANCHESTER, NH – St. Patrick’s Day signifies a few different things when it arrives on March 17. It officially celebrates the life of Saint Patrick, the foremost patron saint of Ireland, as a recognized feast day observed by various religious institutions. It’s unofficially an opportunity for people to wear green, embrace their Irish heritage or pretend to be Irish, drink some dark colored brews, eat some corned beef and cabbage and experience winter’s transition into spring. In Manchester, The Shaskeen celebrates St. Patrick’s Day unlike any other establishment with a party that starts early in the morning and goes right up until last call. Local pub rockers The Rebel Collective will be one of the acts providing music with two sets, one starting at noon and another happening at 8 p.m.

I recently had a talk with Ross Ketchum from the band about how The Rebel Collective functions, how he ended up joining the band, and looking forward to St. Patrick’s Day.

If you go

The Shaskeen

909 Elm Street Manchester

Tickets: No cover

Rob Duguay: The Rebel Collective stays true to their name by functioning like a collective with you, Brian Waldron and Michael Green being the central core of the band with rotating members in other facets. When it comes to playing different shows and putting together a lineup, how does this process go about? Is there a group messenger chat or a group email that people respond to when they’re available?

Ross Ketchum: The way it works is Brian and Mike are the ones who started the band. They started it back in 2013 and we kind of did what Flogging Molly does where people would show up and on every given week we would have different people coming in and out of the band when they’re available. We still have that, but realistically, Brian will come up from Florida because he moved down there three years ago and if we have a show then he’ll sit in with us. We have another fiddle player that we’ve played with quite a bit in Marielle Webster and if she’s got time when Audrey [Budington] can’t make a show then she’ll fill in for us. We do have some revolving members, but the main group has been for a long time, and will stay this way, myself, Michael Green, Connor Veazey, Audrey Budington and Ken MacLeod.

RD: You mentioned how Michael and Brian are the founding members of the band and you joined shortly afterwards, so how did you initially become part of The Rebel Collective? Were you guys all longtime friends and you were pitched the idea of joining up, or did it happen in another way?

RK: We’re all cousins, which is funny. Brian and Mike are cousins on his father’s side of the family and Brian and I are cousins on his mother’s side, so we’re all family. They started it, I joined and I was playing with a different group called Celtic Beats at the time, which was Marielle Webster, myself, and Campbell Webster, who is actually the bagpipe player for the Dropkick Murphys right now. To be honest, I was riding the coattails of those two kids playing three or four chords on the acoustic guitar while they did all of this crazy fiddle and pipe work. We all got together for this one St. Patrick’s Day and we said,”Screw it, let’s have some fun with this”. From that point on, I started sitting in with Brian and Mike a little bit more and then at one show at The Wild Rover in Manchester, they had me playing bass, which isn’t an instrument I play well.

I ended up asking if I could do something that I’m actually ok at, which is mandolin, and that’s when I became a core member.

RD: Very cool. It’s been mentioned that you guys plan out your St. Patrick’s Day season a year in advance, so is there a concrete date that you set out every year to begin booking the following season? How does that process come about?

RK: The really nice thing about this band is that we have a few longtime established shows during the St. Patrick’s Day season and then we kind of fill in around it. Josh Ames, who is one of the co-owners of The Shaskeen, saw us play with Derek Warfield and The Young Wolfe Tones back in 2015, and from that point on he told us that every year we would be the venue’s band for St. Patrick’s Day until either he dies or we break up. We know we have The Shaskeen and we’re so appreciative that Josh has always supported us and helped us build our brand by having us play in that awesome club. We work with the Salt Hill Pubs in the Lebanon area quite a bit, and then we work with NHSCOT, who are the people who put on the Highland Games, quite a bit as well. They’ve helped us out a lot, including one time when someone stole a bunch of my instruments in 2018 right before an album release party and they came right to my rescue.

They had me fill out a grant and they wanted to make sure I had an instrument to play, so those are the people who we work with the most and we fill in around that stuff. We’re playing an Irish festival down at Cisco Brewers and we’re doing all kinds of stuff. We even have a tour of Ireland that’s coming up next year.

RD: That’s fantastic. The show at The Shaskeen that’s happening on St. Patrick’s Day has The Rebel Collective playing two sets, one during the afternoon and another one during the evening. When people show up, what can they expect from these performances? Will there be a similar setlist for both or will one be wildly different from the other?

RK: This is something new for us. We usually play three shows on St. Patrick’s Day where we go way up north, we stop halfway and then we hit The Shaskeen late at night. With it being on a Monday this year, we all came to the conclusion to just chill and see if The Shaskeen would be up for us playing two sets. The afternoon set is going to be a little more subdued unless it’s as crazy as it is at night and we’ll play the full bore Celtic rock show that we usually put on with the antics and energy. A lot of the songs will be the same, but we play them a bit differently when we’re playing a bit more subdued with a little less electric guitar, little bit lower volume and a lower energy, but when you see us play those big nighttime shows, it’s balls to the wall, man.

It’s crazy energy, it’s a lot of fun and the crowd really gets into it, so we’re excited to see what happens.

RD: Yeah, it should be a festive time. After St. Patrick’s Day, what are The Rebel Collective’s plans going into the rest of the spring and into the summer?

RK: Right now, after St. Patrick’s Day is done, we’re going to be finishing up our second studio album. Most of the tracking is done and now we’re just gonna go in to do some mixing and mastering to make sure that it’s ready to go for the summer. We usually take April off because I’ll tell ya, after playing over 15 shows in the month of March, you’re toast and you want to be able to relax. Then towards the end of May is when we start gearing up for our summer season and I know we have seven or eight shows lined up for the summer, including some big ones.