Jonathan Ramsey

Saint Louis, and Soulard in particular, has a new Irish Pub, and 3am establishment. Patrick McKeane’s features live music, and the array of stouts and lagers that you would expect at any respectable Irish public house.

Besides a new venue for crack and music, Patrick McKeane’s Pub is giving back to the community with its patrons’ help. Right now, you can contribute to the Patrick McKeane Scholarship Fund.

Go check out Patrick McKeane’s Pub at:

3152-54 Osceola
St. Louis, MO 63111

Check out their website at http://www.patrickmckeanespub.com/.

Thanks to my friend Summer for tipping me off.

Chocolate Cafe and Coffee House, O'Fallon, MO

A great weekend of Irish music. Friday night, I’ll head off to Saint Charles County, right off U.S. 40 (I-64) to Chocolate Cafe and Coffee House. That show will start at 7:30PM. Chocolate Cafe is right at U.S. 40 on the west side of Route K. The actual address is 1120 Technology Drive.

Saturday night, I return to the fabulous O’Malley’s Irish Pub in Soulard. At 1900 Cherokee St, at the corner of Lemp and Cherokee, it’s just blocks from the Anheuser-Busch brewery, and right across the street from the old Lemp Brewery. It’s a great Irish pub with a history of serving healthy doses of the region’s own Irish music offerings. Tommy, Bailey, and the whole family work their arses off to make you feel at home. I’ll bring the music. So, call your friends and meet them at this local gem.

O'Malley's Irish Pub - 1900 Cherokee St, St Louis, MO

This weekend, if you’re in Saint Charles county, head to Chocolate Café. Then, Saturday, before you head off for some Lemp Ghost Hunting, Saturday night, come our for a few scoops with me at O’Malley’s.

• Friday, August 15 Chocolate Café and Coffee House, O’Fallon, MO, 7:30PM-9:30PM
• Saturday, August 16 O’Malley’s Irish Pub, Saint Louis, MO (Soulard), 9PM-1AM
  1900 Cherokee St

See you there!

P.S. I promise to get some better –and bigger- photos of the venues, this weekend.

Be sure, too, to check out the offerings at the Chocolate Café website.

John Lennon rehearses Give Peace a Chance at the Montreal Bed-In. Photo by Roy Kerwood. Source: Wikimedia.org.

Merlin Mann put our artist lifestyles in perspective, “Put plainer, my sense is that western culture would be a damn sight poorer today if John Lennon had been forced to carry a goddamn BlackBerry.”

‘Tis true, Merlin. ‘Tis true. I’d hope he’d have been better at ignoring the stuff than I am.

Questions? Comments?

Tonight, at 9PM in your time zone, light a candle in protest for Tibet. The Olympics begin tomorrow, and this year’s games in Beijing have already caused a stir. Of course, many feel that awarding the games to China, with their refusal to address human rights and dignity issues, amounts to a reward. Should an international organization, intended to perpetuate goodwill, dignify inhumanity by holding such an event in such an offending country. I would say, “No.” In fact, I do. I’m not saying I won’t support our teams, but I’m not so likely to watch, as I normally would. Many people won’t watch at all.

Whether you watch, I hope you’ll light a candle tonight.

For more information, visit Candle4Tibet.

I gotta tell ya. After three missed years, there, including the third –I think- in which the store that housed it closed soon thereafter, I’m so gonna campaign to play at this show. Maybe I’ll just make some kit up, and apply for a booth. We’ll see.

I’ve made some updates to the photos on my site. You may notice that I’m now using more thumbnails, and FancyZoom to display the larger image.

Let me know what you think. I’m doing a lot of housekeeping around here, now that I’ve a bit more time. Once September hits, things break nutty all over again.

So, go check out the photo gallery. I’ll be adding some more photos over the next couple of weeks –and beyond, of course.

This is rough. It’s a camcorder take, from a weird angle, with posters upstaging me. We made no attempt at getting great audio. For that, I would have taken the audio from the board. We really just wanted to see how it would turn out, ad hoc. We also wanted to see what an index finger looked like up close on YouTube.

We’re going to work on it, but here’s a rough, homemade at a venue video. Thanks to my wife and daughter, who had plenty else to contend with, but nevertheless took a minute to set this up and let it roll.

I know you’re laughing, Clavey!

Yes. I’m finally getting around to getting some new videos up. I was tweaking and experimenting with settings in the editing software, trying to get the video ready to YouTube. So, I looked for some advice on such settings. I found this instead. This is where I should have started.

That’s how you make a good music video.

Thanks, guys!

Of course I had a great time at Saint Charles Coffee House, tonight, in beautiful Saint Peters, MO. Thanks to all the kind people who came up; said hello; talked music, drawing and television; and made the evening great. I hope you had as much fun as I did.

See you next time.

Love and peace!