Recap/Review: Introducing The Mighty Regis: March 14, 2011, Mickey Finn’s Pub, Toledo, Ohio

This blog post will serve two functions: one is to introduce you to The Mighty Regis; the second is to recap the show I attended of theirs yesterday.

In order to properly explain what on earth possessed me to be interested in, let alone go to see, a Celtic punk rock band, I need to offer a bit of background. And his name is Ben Wise. Ben is the lead guitarist for The Mighty Regis. He also happens to be an extraordinarily talented singer-songwriter in his own right. I’ve been acquainted with him for about a year (though I had never actually met him in person).

For the full story, you’ll need to read the blog post I wrote about him last year. You can find that here: http://nleighh.wordpress.com/2010/04/26/ben-wise/

Go on, I’ll wait. It’s a quick read.

Back now? Great! Forging ahead.

I had a previous opportunity to see The Mighty Regis in concert during last summer’s Warped Tour. They had a stop in Cleveland. The Warped Tour, though, wasn’t really the sort of show I wanted to attend by myself. I did have a friend who was willing to go with me, but only if TMR was going to be on at a certain time. I asked Ben if he knew what time TMR would play; unfortunately, the band didn’t receive the time of their set until the morning of each show. For two mothers of young children, that simply wasn’t enough lead time.

To make matters worse, I found out later that their Cleveland show had been a terrible experience. That led me to believe that the band would never be back, which made me think, “ah, that was my only chance to see Ben live, and I missed it.”

But no! About a month ago I saw a series of tweets from TMR regarding tour dates. I thought, “nah, no way will they be playing in Ohio,” but I checked it out anyway… just to be sure. And, what what? They were playing a show in Toledo! On a Monday! Totally doable!

I’m in love with Ben’s music enough that I would have been completely willing to go to the show alone. But I thought it would be a lot more fun to have a friend with me. So I thought, why not see if any of my over 500 followers on Twitter would like to be adventurous and join me? I wasn’t expecting anyone to be. I mean, we’re talking a Celtic punk rock band, for crying out loud. Most of my followers are David Cook fans. Fans of rock music, yes, but more mainstream-sounding, melodic rock music. Not that there’s anything wrong with this – that’s my general preference as well.

But something about The Mighty Regis’ music had grabbed me. It was fun, it was catchy, it was at times very beautiful. I honestly feel the “punk” part of “Celtic punk rock” is a little bit of a misnomer, because when I think of “punk,” I think of music that lacks melody to the point of being nearly painful to listen to. That’s not the case with TMR at all.

Anyway… I threw it out there, not counting on any takers. “Hey, anyone want to come with me to see a Celtic punk rock band in Toledo in March?” Imagine my surprise I did receive an interested party: @HeyJoanieB – someone I had chatted with on Twitter, but had never met in person and didn’t know *extremely* well. She said “hey, I don’t live far from Toledo, what’s the band called and what’s the date?” I gave her the information, she listened to some of their music, liked it, and literally within minutes was all for it. I later found out that this very sweet woman is my mother’s age. Not that this matters, at all, but I found it even more awesome that such a person had been the one to respond to my invitation.

So after a few weeks’ worth of DMing back & forth to nail down the details of when & where we would arrive to ensure our safety (Joanie continually reminded me that Toledo had one of the highest crime rates in the country), the big day had arrived. My drive took slightly less than two hours, and I arrived at the very charming red building known as Mickey Finn’s Pub.

When I pulled into the parking lot, I did notice something a little peculiar… it was empty. I checked the clock. It was right around 7 p.m. The show’s starting time was supposed to be 8:30, according to some of their tweets, and 9:00 according to other listings I’d seen online. Why on earth would NO ONE be here at 7 p.m.? I wondered if the place wasn’t open until later. I remembered my experience at one Ryan Star show a few years ago, when the doors didn’t even open until 10 p.m. (Gulp!)

Joanie arrived very shortly afterwards, and after emerging from our vehicles and hugging, we surveyed the scene. We came to the same conclusion, that we were the first ones there, and we joked about how we were the early-comers like at a David Cook concert, ha! We then went to the front door, and I nervously noted that while the sign stated that the pub opened at 4 on Wednesdays, Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays… today was a Monday.

Uh-oh.

I tried the door, and it wouldn’t open. This wasn’t looking good at all. Joanie and I exchanged worried looks.

Then the door opened, and a blond woman stepped out and asked if she could help us. I asked if they were open yet, and she apologetically told us that no, they weren’t really open yet, that they didn’t really open until 8. Joanie and I thanked her, and we stepped away from the doorway.

Okay, now what? We began to plan our next move, as we were going to need one. This wasn’t the best neighborhood, it wasn’t the sort of place we would feel comfortable hanging around outside the door for an hour waiting for it to open. Joanie was about to call her son, who lived 15 minutes away, when the door opened once more.

“Would you ladies like to come in for a drink?”

I could hardly believe my ears. “Are you sure?” I asked.

“Yes, absolutely!”

We didn’t need to be asked twice. “Thank you!” We stepped inside, and I confessed that I really needed the bathroom, lol. The woman told me I was definitely welcome to do that, ha! When I returned, Joanie and I nabbed seats by the bar, and we ordered drinks. Better yet, after we ordered our drinks, the woman handed us a menu so we could go ahead and order our dinner. I can’t say enough about how nice this pub was to us, when we were a full hour early! Never once did they make us feel stupid or like we were imposing or inconveniencing them.

While Joanie and I waited for our food (and my Corona – not a Light, but an Extra, which began the relatively simple task of going straight to my head) and chatted, I began to realize that The Mighty Regis were all hanging out at the bar. Including Ben. He’s pretty easy to spot since he’s the only member of the band with platinum blond hair, lol. I thought about going up to him and saying hi, but he was on his phone, and I didn’t want to interrupt. Actually, it seemed like they were all on their phones. It kind of cracked me up. Welcome to the 21^st century.

At various times I thought about going up to him and saying hi, but my courage kept failing me. I could chalk it up to my traditionally crippling social awkwardness, although I had been merrily chatting with Joanie since we had arrived. In all honesty, my thought process was more like, “but he’s a rockstar! I can’t just go up to him and say ‘hi’ like I’m, I’m somebody!” (Ben, if you’re reading this… I’m sorry. I do realize how ridiculous that was. Lol)

It was ridiculous because even before I met him, I knew, intellectually, that Ben would never want someone to be afraid to go up and introduce themselves to him. He’s not at all an intimidating person. It’s more that I admire him so much, and I am so in awe of his talent and skill, that I just completely psyche myself out and think that I’m not worthy of saying hello like a normal person. Again, I know this is ridiculous. I’m trying to get better. Really, I am.

Anyway… at one point I confessed to Joanie that I had been trying to gather my nerve and say hi to Ben for the past half-hour, and she encouraged me to go for it. I trembled some more and acted like a 15-year-old with a crush, lol, then finally finished my Corona, waited for her to get another drink herself, and just went for it. Ben was by the jukebox at the time, and I forced myself to go to him.

I said “hi, Ben?” to get his attention. When he turned to look at me, I said, “It’s Nicole.”

His reaction… was priceless. His face split into a huge grin, and he held his arms out wide. I gave him a big hug. It was so sweet.  He told me how great it was to finally meet me and how awesome it was for me to have come out all this way. I introduced him to Joanie, told him she was my “pretend mother-in-law” (a running joke for the two of us throughout the evening, something I don’t think anyone ever really understood, but that everyone laughed at anyway, ha!). He asked me about my drive, and I told him it went well. Joanie told him about her own drive as well, and he was impressed to find that someone else had driven such a long way to see their band.

I had a great conversation with Ben about his work in the band, about his work in booking the tour, their decision to take their annual St. Patrick’s tour beyond the LA-area and extend it across the country (which had been done largely through his encouragement), about the general experience of being, as Ben likes to put it, a “do-it-yourself” band. This was exactly the kind of conversation I’d hungered to have with him, so I was in heaven.

One thing I never got around to asking Ben, though I had planned to, was why he is nicknamed “The Sarge.” However, after talking with him… I think I figured it out.

Joanie was trying to take a photo of us with my phone, but the bar area was way too dark to be conducive to a photo. So we moved to the next “room,” which was kind of a joint game room/band room, I think Mickey Finn’s refers to it as the event room. There was a bulletin board of some sort that had some light shining down above it, and Joanie suggested we situate ourselves there. We gamely posed, but I guess I failed to take Joanie’s advice to tilt my head back properly, or something, because it still came out rather dark. I sent it anyway, but I deleted the photo this morning since (spoiler!) we got much better photos later. Lol

While in this room, we ran into Darby, the band’s bassist, who was kind of practicing playing shuffleboard by himself. I really, really should have taken a photo of this shuffleboard game. It’s hard to explain without seeing it. It was a shuffleboard game kind of like a foosball game in concept – basically shuffleboard played on a table instead of the floor. Instead of using big sticks to slide the pucks (or whatever the heck you call those things, lol) along the floor, you just use your hands and slide them along the table.

Anyway, we introduced ourselves to Darby, and Joanie asked me if I had told him about the thing we had in common. I kind of blushed and told Darby that I was an extremely beginning bassist. He said something to the effect of, “sweet! I’m a beginning bassist, so I’m only one step above you! Keep at it and you’ll be at my level in no time!” LOL! Darby was really, really funny. Also really sweet and, as Joanie will tell you, very cute. (She liked his dimples. Lol) I have to say that talking “shop” with a bassist for the first time was a pretty cool experience.

I’m not sure how it happened, but the next thing we knew, Joanie and I were invited into a shuffleboard game with Ben and Darby. I was completely flabbergasted. I think Darby mistook my shock for horror, lol, because when I was saying, “wait, what? Us? What? You want us to play with YOU?” he said something like “oh wait, I don’t think they’re interested.” I was like “no wait, no, we want to do it, this is awesome even though I don’t think I’ve played since I was in middle school!” LOL

So while I was still pinching myself (okay… we’ve just been invited by two of the members of the band to play shuffleboard with them. And one of them happens to be one of my favorite musicians. Yeah. This just happens every day…) they were dividing us into teams. Darby took Joanie and Ben took me. Joanie’s all “hello, dimples!” and I’m all “and now I’m on a team with one of my favorite musicians, okay, NO ONE WAKE ME OR I CUT THEM.”

The game itself was silly and fun, even though we all roundly sucked – no, make that especially since we all roundly sucked. But we all also got in a couple lucky shots, which made for some fun times, and of course I cheered like the silly ninny I am, and even though Darby and Joanie had built a good lead in the beginning, Ben and I managed to come back to win. Go Green! LOL

Darby played with his family (who had been following the band in their RV to their tour stops since North Carolina, which was completely cool) after that, and I decided to ask a pub employee if I could grab one of the tables I saw stacked in a corner and set it on Ben’s side of the stage, since there were currently no tables set over there. I got the employee’s blessing, and better still, the employee even came out and brought the table down for me, along with some chairs. Joanie and I set up “camp” there, and then we hit the merch table. Ben and The Mighty Regis’ lone female, Ryan O’Neill, were there for us.

Joanie was checking out the T-shirts, while I was eyeing the CDs. I asked Ben if it was too early for me to buy the CDs, and he said definitely not. He then pointed to one and said “this is our latest CD, so I definitely recommend it.” I just gave him a look and said “Ben… I’m going to buy them all!” He gave me an incredulous look and told me I was awesome. A sentiment I returned. He told me that since I was buying all of them, he would give me a “bulk rate… like Costco.” LOL Which was cool because that meant I would definitely have enough money for a T-shirt.

At some point – either while I was at the merch table, or maybe before then, I’m not sure exactly – Ben had, unbeknownst to me, sent Joey (yes, that Joey) a text, saying, “Hanging out with Nicole.” It became beknownst to me when Joey sent him a return text, which Ben then showed to me, that said: “Very cool. Tell her I said hi. Rock her face off.”

Yeah… little bit of a happy-happy-joy-joy moment for yours truly.

Ben then went on to tell me that he had only recently had a chance to spend some quality time with Joey after having to settle for “drive-by texts” for a while. I knew they had both been very busy recently. That’s a good thing for musicians, of course, but it’s not such a good thing when it keeps good friends from spending time together. When Ben had tweeted a week or so ago that he’d had a chance to have a brunch with Joey, it had made me really happy.

He also told me the one thing that night that made me unable to contain a squeal of joy: that he had created several demos for a second solo record that he was hoping to be able to record in the summer. And that Joey was on board for recording bass again, as he had for Ben’s first solo record. Ben’s voice and songwriting and Joey’s bass is, to me, an unbeatable combination. If I could preorder THAT record, right now, I would. Just tell me when, where, and how, Ben.

So once Joanie and I had our T-shirts and I had my CDs (and labels, and even a magnet), we sat down at our table and relaxed and chatted. We talked about anything that popped into our heads, basically. It was a long wait, because the band was waiting to see how big of a crowd they could get. Ben had told me earlier that their originally-scheduled opening act for tonight had canceled a couple weeks ago, so tonight it was going to be just TMR. Which was fine by me, really. Opening acts are such dicey propositions, anyway… indie bands can have some seriously sucky opening acts. Besides, it turned out that the lack of an opener meant TMR got to have 2 sets, with an intermission in between. Very cool.

The band’s soundcheck was kind of interesting. They all kind of hopped onto the stage, and after a bit of tuning, FLUNG themselves into one of their songs with abandon. It was awesome. But at the same time I felt like I should get up and start rocking out, lol. I thought, “hmm… is this the beginning of the show? Or are they just soundchecking?” After they finished they started yelling instructions to the sound crew, which answered that question pretty fast. Hahaha

I knew they were getting ready to start the show for real when a) I saw Ben rolling up the sleeves to his shirt (and I yelled out “Ben’s rolling up his sleeves! Now we’re getting serious!” which earned me a big smile from Ben, lol) and b) I saw pretty much everyone in the band *except* Ben stretching. STRETCHING, y’all. I thought, “dang… this is going to be one heck of a show, if they feel the need to stretch first!”

I’m not going to describe every song, because a) I don’t remember every song, anyway, and b) most of you don’t know their songs, so it wouldn’t make any difference. LOL What I will do, though, is tell you what it’s like to attend a show of The Mighty Regis.

It’s loud. LOL But in a good way. They don’t blast you with noise. They blast you with intricate melodies and harmonies. They blast you with foot-stompin’ rhythms that make you want to dance. (Which I did, all night, and which did not go unnoticed by the band… ahem…) They blast you with tongue-twisting lyrics that I don’t understand half of, but which make me smile just because they’re so much fun to listen to roll off Mike O’Hara’s tongue. Mike O’Hara, obviously, is the lead singer of The Mighty Regis. He has a powerful voice, although he doesn’t use it to belt out songs the way a “traditional” singer would. Instead he uses it to muscle his way through complex, guttural vocals that would bring a lesser man to his knees whimpering for mercy.

The Mighty Regis is composed of an eye-popping seven musicians. What astonished me about watching and listening to them is how cohesive they are. There’s a drummer, an accordion player, a mandolinist, a sometimes-acoustic guitar player/ sometimes-tin whistle player, a bassist, the aforementioned lead singer, and an electric guitarist. They could be forgiven if, at times, they sounded occasionally like they were all playing something different. Yet they never did. Every song they played sounded completely in sync. It was always together in perfect punk harmony.

In addition to being yummy, yummy junk food for the ears (and I’m not sure “junk food” is even the right word, because really, how can it be “junk food” if it makes you get up & dance? LOL), The Mighty Regis is utter unbridled joy to watch. They don’t just sound great, they have fun doing it. They jump around on stage. They dance around. They lose themselves in their instruments (or in their vocals, if they’re Mike or Ryan – Ryan is the guitarist/tin whistleist and also, sometimes, lead vocalist as well). Ben sometimes also gets down on one knee while he plays, which I totally dug. (I told him this after the show, and he told me he prides himself on making a complete fool of himself on stage. I don’t know if I properly articulated to him how much I genuinely adore and love musicians who are willing to do this. BUT I DO.)

During the first set, I think I and one other person, on the other side of the stage, were the only people dancing (which would explain their tweet during the first intermission, “Nic_Leigh and Carlos are keeping us afloat all by themselves.”) But during the second intermission, there was a small but dedicated group of people in front of the stage, right in the middle, who were loud, rowdy, and fun. I was glad to see more people involved. It no longer made me feel like it was solely up to me to make TMR feel appreciated, lol. (To be fair, I know Joanie tried her best to get up and get moving during the second act, as well. And I appreciated that, too. As did TMR. )

A brief interjection, here. Ben blogs about his shows. I’ve been reading his blogs pretty religiously, and I’ve done so since TMR did the Warped Tour last summer. I’ve celebrated their successes and grieved over their – well, “failures” sounds so harsh, I’ll say “disappointments” instead. But there was something that hadn’t occurred to me about attending a show for a blogging musician right up until the point where I was actually at that show. I realized, about halfway through the show, that I desperately did NOT want to be part of a show that Ben blogged about as being a disappointment. I wanted Ben to blog about this show and call it something special. And I felt like, anything I could do to help make that happen, I was going to do it.

Now granted, it wasn’t hard for me to do that. I really, really enjoyed this show. The Mighty Regis’ sound and the show they put on were so entertaining that I couldn’t help throwing myself into it. But anytime I felt my energy start to lag even the slightest bit, I just looked at Ben and thought, “This show is going to be a good one. FOR HIM.” And that was all that was necessary.

It was about half past midnight by the time the show was over. I lost count of how many songs, but I think TMR played for a total of about 2 hours. To say my face had been well and truly rocked off is definitely an understatement… so, Joey, mission accomplished.

I wanted one last chance at a decent photo with Ben, so Joanie came with me to approach Ben, and he graciously agreed. He suggested the stage. We hopped up on the stage, and Joanie took two photos while we stood on stage. I wasn’t sure about the whole perspective difference, so I suggested we sit on the edge of the stage instead. All 3 photos actually turned out pretty well.

After our photos Ben kept hugging me and thanking me for coming and for pouring so much energy into showing my appreciation of the band’s performance. As I mentioned earlier, I told him how much I enjoyed watching them as well as listening to them, as well as how impressed I was by the band’s cohesiveness. I also told him that I wouldn’t have been so enthusiastic if they hadn’t been so awesome. While I was talking with Ben, I was also approached by Gavin McLoud, the mandolinist, who actually came to – really, I’m being serious, here – compliment me on my dancing.

I’m going to let that sink in here.

Because I have never, ever, ever been complimented on my dancing. In my entire life. I may have been thanked for dancing during a set by musicians who appreciated my enthusiasm… but I have never actually been told, “hey, you know, you showed real thought and intelligence and heart in the way you danced. You showed that you got it. So thank you for that. So very, very much. THANK YOU.” But that is, more or less, exactly what Gavin said to me.

That seriously blew me away.

I told him, in turn, that I have to respond to something really great in order to dance like that. Which led to a pretty hilarious conversation which started by Ben saying to Gavin, “We entertained the s*** out of her.” The conversation kind of went down the drain (or down the toilet, you could say) when Gavin proceeded to take this literally. It was so funny I honestly nearly got a stomachache from laughing so hard.

Joanie got into the conversation and told Gavin how much she had enjoyed their show, and Gavin complimented her on how she had gotten into it as well, and they proceeded to have an equally hilarious conversation about wheelchairs and dancing and… well, I think we were all pretty punchy by this point, let’s just leave it at that. LOL

Finally Ben was like “okay, I think they’re trying to leave now, we really ought to let them leave!” Ben had no way of knowing that I honestly could’ve stayed there all night. I was really only leaving because I knew Joanie wanted to leave and get home at a quasi-reasonable hour. Joanie said to me, “They’ll be back, and so will we.”

Of course, she was absolutely right.

Ben promised before we left that one way or another, The Mighty Regis would return to Ohio. He even said, “Next time we’ll try to be a little closer to you, so you don’t have to drive so far.” I told him, “Ben… you guys show up somewhere within the Ohio border, and I will be there.”

I never would have thought that my first live show of 2011 would be that of a Celtic punk rock band. But I am absolutely thrilled to have TMR as my maiden voyage of the new year.

The Mighty Regis website: http://themightyregis.com

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?profile=1&id=10768509135

MySpace: http://www.myspace.com/themightyregis

Twitter: http://twitter.com/themightyregis

Download The Mighty Regis’ music on iTunes: http://www.msplinks.com/MDFodHRwOi8vaXR1bmVzLmFwcGxlLmNvbS9XZWJPYmplY3RzL01aU3RvcmUud29hL3dhL3ZpZXdBcnRpc3Q/aWQ9MjgxMTg2MDQx

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