This webpage lists events' links, location, and month. As I have less time now that I used too, this calendar will only be updated periodically. As such, I have sorted the events below into the months that they were last held, if events shift months I make changes as I update the page. Links that lead to temporarily dead sites will be marked with an asterisk (*) and will be removed if they are not fixed.

If any changes are needed, or if you wish to have an event added, please email me.

Click here for the history of this page. Also, check out this testimonial from the The Gothard Sisters.

History

In the Hampton Roads area of Virginia, the Celtic scene is a bit minimal, if nonexistent. There weren't any Irish Fests around, and even through I lived ten to thirty minutes away from the Williamsburg Scottish Festival, I never had the time to make it there. In fact the only real Celtic music scene was a local band called Coyote Run which played monthly at a local church, with scattered shows elsewhere in the Hampton Roads area. But even this went away as their popularity grew and they started to tour up and down the East Coast. So I was basically limited to listening to the Celtic music I had downloaded or the steaming radio stations (mainly Live Ireland and the now defunct Celtic Grove radio) over the Internet.

Well that all changed one night in the fall of 2005. The previous summer, I had left the little corner of Virginia where I had lived all my life and moved up to the Chicago area. One Monday night, NPR was playing jazz, which I don't normally listen to, so I decided to flip through the stations. And lo and behold, I came across a station that was playing Celtic music. After listening to the first song I was amazed that the Celtic music continued. Although, I didn't remember to get the call sign I found the station again a couple of weeks later. And then I learned that the station was WDCB 90.9 FM, and the show was Blarney on the Air. I also determined that they stream online every Monday between 7:00 PM and 9:00 PM CST. So ever since then, I've listened to most every show that I can catch. (Blarney on the Air continues to this day every Monday between 7:00 and 8:00 CST, with Ireland Tonight streaming from 8:00 to 9:00 CST.)

So what does this have to do with Fests? Well besides playing good music, the dialogue between the two hosts was very informative as well as amusing. I learned that there are events dedicated to Celtic music. So I started writing down the names of the fests they mentioned and found websites for them. This list grew as one page would link to another, which would link to another, and so forth. These pages are linked below for reference purposes. (Note: Some of the links have been deleted as they went dead.)