Songbag Concert Series

The Roundstone Buskers and their modern take on Celtic music return Sunday, October 14 to the Carl Sandburg State Historic Site’s Songbag Concert Series in Galesburg. The group, which formed in 2001, takes its name from Roundstone, Ireland, home of the great bodhran maker, Malachy Kearns. The trio’s current lineup features Shannan Sullivan, Tom Jones and Bruce Burton.

With Jones’ and Burton’s rock and bluegrass backgrounds, plus Sullivan’s classical training, the Buskers’ style is eclectic and exciting. They put folky spins on everything from Louis Prima to Paul Simon to modern pop, as well as adding in their own distinct arrangements of traditional Celtic jigs and reels. “You draw from that past,” Jones explains. “It’s exciting when you do that kind of music that’s been done for thousands of years by your forefathers, and then you bring it back into modern times and people still want to hear it.”

The Roundstone Buskers have been praised for putting a modern spin on traditional music and bringing some traditional sounds to modern music. Critics rave that they “routinely get people up clapping, yelling, singing and dancing” and “keep the musical traditions of their ancestral homeland alive.” For more about their music, visit www.roundstonebuskers.net.

The performance on October 14 will be in the Sandburg site’s Barn at 313 E. Third Street in Galesburg. The show starts at 4 p.m. and ends at 6 p.m. with a break for refreshments around 5 p.m. The second set will begin around 5:20 p.m. A donation of $5 per person is suggested. The concert is sponsored by the Carl Sandburg Historic Site Association and the Illinois Department of Natural Resources (IDNR).

November 11 will be the final Fall Songbag Concert. Tom Irwin, a folk musician from Springfield, Illinois, will be performing for the first time at the Sandburg site.

Carl Sandburg was a collector and performer of America’s folk songs. The concert series is named in honor of Sandburg’s book “The American Songbag,” published in 1927. The Carl Sandburg State Historic Site includes the home where the famed poet and biographer was born. For more information, visit www.sandburg.org. The Sandburg site is operated by the IDNR.