Billy and the Curley Brothers and the Gift of Music

Join Us for St. Patrick's Day (Week)

My older son, Josh Curley (on guitar), is a self-taught guitar player. My younger son, Eamon Curley (on violin), is a classically trained violinist who trained himself on guitar, banjo, piano, and mandolin.

Josh and Eamon create beautiful classic American music. 

They mix and blend Irish, rock, blues, folk, Appalachian, country, Western, and other traditions in weekly performances at microbreweries in the Frederick, MD, Northern Virginia, and the Martinsburg, WV, area for the past 3 years.

To hear Eamon's original American music creations, go here. 

Billy and the Curley Brothers 

After they have played in these local microbreweries and vineyards, weddings, and for other venues, many have told me it is great to hear their sweet American music live.

Often, they compliment my wife and I on raising such beautiful and musically gifted sons.

But the thousands of hours of practice to get to this level were done by them, so they deserve the credit.

I love to watch the way their music gets people laughing and talking and communicating at microbreweries, vineyards, parties, weddings and other places where they perform.

They took my Irish American roots and my wife's West Virginia American roots and created their own musical sound, tone, spirit, and beauty.

The world needs beautiful music right now.

I'm proud my sons, and Billy, are providing it.

The name of their group is Billy and the Curley Brothers. 

Billy Czajkowski is the drummer...and he is GOOD.

Both Josh and Eamon got degrees in mechanical engineers, but work as sound engineers. I think this professional expertise contributes to their American musical gift that comes through in the artistry of their live shows.

Music Heals the Soul 

The Government closed the country down in 2020 the day after they performed for St. Patrick's Day. Now, in 2023 the music continues.

After 800 years of slavery, the oppressor was never able to take the music, poetry, literature, language, joy, spirit, or life out of the Irish, or Irish Americans.

Despite the Vikings arriving every few decades and using their broad axes on them, the English and Cromwell slaughtering them and stealing all their land, livelihood and imposing the penal laws, and the horrors of the the Great Hunger, the Irish, rather than complaining, continued to laugh, loved, believe in God, and create...family, poetry, literature, laughter, love, dance, and music...lots of music.

And they passed on this dealing with disasters and horror with humor, music,, poetry, dance, stories, mature love, and beautiful smiles to Irish Americans, at least those who understand the ancient struggle, who celebrate the God's Gift of Life every St. Patrick's Day. 

A bit about St. Patrick here.

In a summary of this tough Irish survival mentality, my dad said to me once, "If a man pays you to clean up horse shit, you clean up horse shit. You can always wash your hands. You can't always earn another dollar."

And in a statement that indicated that the Great Hunger was still in the DNA memory, when informed I was going to Ireland after going to school in France, he said, "Why would you go to Ireland. It's terrible there. Why do you think they all left and came to America?"

I include a poem with my dad's humor and wisdom, "Eamon's Poem," below. I went to the American College in Paris when I was 19. They published in in their magazine, Au Courant, Summer/Autumn 2000, p. 6.

The Irish, and Irish Americans, always knew how to survive death, horror, disease, starvation, war, oppression, slavery, and other life difficulties with humor and music.

Enjoy Irish music with us if you can.

And Happy St. Patrick's Day!!!

The lads will perform for many hours during St. Patrick's week.

Join us for some good craic!

Eamon Patrick’s Poem

Kicking your mother
from inside the liquid
universe of the womb
 
I feel so crippled
and broken
when considering
I have so much to teach you
and only the remaining
lifetime to do so.
 
It is hopeless, really,
except these two gems
that came down from a long, long,
line of men and women who survived
centuries of Viking invasions
whose barbarity was only surpassed
by the neighbor invader
who considered genocide
by the rule of law
such a jolly good adventure
and stole all the food
in the very middle
of the famine of all famines.
 
Through it all,
your ancestors survived
tenaciously creative
and green as moss
on the back of a stone
on the gentle Shannon river
and these two gems skip across
that great river to the Delaware
where once, when wondering
of ancestral roots I asked my father,
“Dad, what is it to be American?”
 
“Work.” “What?” I asked.
“Work.” he repeated. 
“Your grandfather worked.
I worked.  You’ll work.”
“That’s all?” “That’s all.” he answered.
 
“Then what is it to be Irish?”
“Hilarity.” He didn’t miss a beat again.
“Hilarity.  You gotta make ‘em laugh.”
So, there it is Eamon Patrick.  
 
If God takes me
before I get to teach you
all you need to know,
let these two words suffice: 
work and hilarity.
 
Work and hilarity
saved your people
over centuries of warfare, pestilence,
invasion, slavery, defeat, and famine
and eventually defeated
the greatest power on earth
so that I could write you this poem.
 
Work and hilarity
can carry you to the universe
and to the other planets
and when you find
a particularly hard planet,
name it “Work,”
and when you find
an especially funny planet,
name it “Hilarity.”
 
No matter what the planet or year,
work and hilarity are in your genes,
as am I, and all my dreams.
 
Bruce Curley
Germantown, MD
February 10, 1996