Irish band, tenor coming to Columbus area in March

Two benefit concerts featuring nationally known entertainers will be taking place in the Columbus area in the days leading to St. Patrick’s Day, Sunday, March 17.

The folk rock band Scythian, whose repertoire features Irish music, will perform on Friday, March 8 at 8 p.m. at Skully’s Music Diner, 1151 N. High St., Columbus.

Scythian, in cooperation with the Self-Reliance Association of Chicago, a group for Ukrainian immigrants, is donating 200 percent of the profits of all digital downloads of its 16 albums through its Shopify page to Ukrainian refugees.

Emmet Cahill, a tenor acclaimed for his solo work and for being part of the group Celtic Thunder, seen frequently on Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) specials, will present a benefit concert at 7:30 p.m. Wednesday, March 13 at Gahanna St. Matthew Church, 807 Havens Corners Road. 

Proceeds will go to the parish charitable works fund and Special People in Catholic Education (SPiCE), which aids special-needs students in Catholic schools.

Dan Fedoryka of Scythian said the four-man group, which has strong Catholic roots, will be in familiar territory when it comes to Columbus. It has been on stage at the annual Irish festival in suburban Dublin “about 10 times” and appeared at other central Ohio venues.

“Audiences at the festival and in Columbus in general seem to have pretty refined music tastes,” he said. “I think the Irish Festival can take a lot of credit for that because it brings in a wide range of folk artists. That makes the music IQ pretty high around the Columbus area.”

Scythian has been at other Columbus venues besides the festival. Last year, it performed on March 16, the day before St. Patrick’s Day, at The Athenaeum in downtown Columbus. “That concert was put together kind of at the last minute and people may not have realized it was taking place,” he said. “It drew about 400 people to the Athenaeum, which has about 1,000 seats. So this year we decided to play a smaller venue in Columbus. Skully’s seats about 500 and we’re hoping for a sellout since we have more time to publicize the concert.”

The band consists of Fedoryka, his brother Alex, Johnny Rees and Ethan Dean. The Fedoryka brothers grew up in the Shenandoah Valley area of Virginia, graduated from Franciscan University of Steubenville and began playing together for their fellow students at the Dominican House of Studies in Washington in 2002.

When the brothers discerned out of the seminary, they began playing together as a street group and added Rees, whom they knew from the folk music circuit through his work as a drummer with L’Angelus, a group that played at many Catholic youth festivals. Dean joined Scythian just before the COVID pandemic halted most live music in the spring of 2020 and for some time afterward.

The Fedoryka brothers’ parents escaped from the Communists in Ukraine as children while it was still part of the Soviet Union and came to the United States with their family. The brothers have relatives in the eastern European nation. “We know they’re safe, but we never know when we’ll get an update from them,” Dan Fedoryka said. “They’re in western Ukraine, which is the safer half of the nation because most of the fighting is in the east. The Ukraine war has affected them mainly in the way it’s brought so many people fleeing to that area from the east.”

Fedoryka said Scythian’s name was his brother’s idea. “The Scythians were people who settled in the Black Sea region now known as Ukraine and were unconquerable until they met the Celtics. Alex said the Scythians were like us – Ukrainians who were conquered by Celtic music.”

Arroe Collins of iHeart Radio said “Scythian has reinvented folk rock in America.” Fedoryka said “it’s pretty cool to hear an authority about all types of music say that about you. He gets what we’re all about and why we perform the way we do.”

“Music has become such a commercialized, capitalistic venture, and though we want to make money, that’s not what Scythian is about,” Fedoryka said. “We’re a high-energy band that wants to get people to connect with each other and feel the spirit of joy. If they want to get up and dance, that’s great! We love to see that.”

“Unlike many bands on the Irish-American folk circuit, we play concert venues rather than churches,” he said. “But before every concert, we ask the Holy Spirit to help us make the right connections and to create something that will bring the true, the good and the beautiful to our audiences and make people joyful. That’s our way of evangelizing.”  

Cahill, 33, has performed several times in Columbus and at locations including Carnegie Hall and St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York and with the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. He is from Mullingar in Westmeath County, Ireland, where he lives when not touring and sings at his hone church, Christ the King Cathedral in Mulllingar.

“I have some concerts in larger theaters but always include churches in my tours because the Catholic Church is so important to me,” he said in February during a break in rehearsals for a concert in Kutztown, Pennsylvania. 

“My first love is sacred music – ‘How Great Thou Art,’ ‘Be Still, My Soul,’ ‘Danny Boy,’ which is really quite a prayerful song when you listen to the words. When I was growing up, my father was music director at the cathedral and my mother was in the choir, so church music was my first and greatest influence.

“PBS has been huge for me and the other three members of Celtic Thunder and our backup band because of how it’s brought our music to every home. The Irish are known as storytellers and my concerts, whether with the group or solo, tell stories that resonate with the 40 million people in the United States with some kind of Irish background.” He said Celtic Thunder recently completed a PBS special that will be shown while he is on tour in the U.S.

Cahill said he sees himself as part of a legacy of Irish tenors in this country that stretches from John McCormack in the 19th and early 20th centuries to Joe Feeney of “The Lawrence Welk Show,” Jack Benny’s longtime tenor soloist Dennis Day, the late Frank Patterson, and The Irish Tenors, another group seen frequently on PBS. “There’s just something about the Irish tenor voice that people here have loved for generations,” he said. “Perhaps it’s the way it connects many people to their roots.”

Cahill said his Gahanna concert will mix sacred music with traditional Irish folk tunes and include “at least one sing-along, probably more. In solo concerts, I’m able to bring more of my own personality,” he said. “People say after concerts that they feel they know me. I couldn’t feel more honored when they do, because my goal is to bring as much honesty and authenticity as I can to a performance.”

Cahiil said plans for the Gahanna concert got started with a call from Pat Martin of the St. Matthew charitable works committee, who asked him if he could include the church in his current American tour.

“I became a fan of his through PBS,” Martin said. “I knew he did concerts in churches, so I emailed him about possibly coming to Gahanna. He answered ‘Let’s talk about it’ and things came together pretty quickly, especially when he knew it would be a benefit.

“It’s been a joy to work with him in planning this and I’m sure he will spread that joy when he comes to St. Matthew’s,” she said.

Tickets are $35 for general admission and $50 for the concert and a meet-and-greet that starts at 6:15 p.m. They are available at www.emmetcahill.com. For more on Scythian, go to www.scythianmusic.com.