Edmond beer house to host Celtic music festival
EDMOND — Brad Mullenix wasn’t really planning to put on a music festival, but apparently that sometimes happens when you book the right band.
“Truthfully, I owe it all to The House Session,” said Mullenix, general manager and part owner of The Patriarch Craft Beer House & Lawn. “I wish I could take credit for any sort of success we’re gonna have this weekend, but honestly, it was this Irish group and the demand for it. I had no idea that this many people would be this interested — but I’m glad they are.”
Regardless of who came up with the notion, The Patriarch is hosting Saturday its inaugural Pobal Celtic & Bluegrass Festival. The event is free and open to the public, or at least those ages 21 and older.
“‘Pobal’ is the Gaelic word for community,” Mullenix said. “The demand has created this wholly by itself … so we’re gonna go big and have music all day. It just spiraled out of control in a good way.”
The origins of the Pobal festival date back more than a year, when he booked the Oklahomabased Celtic band The House Session to play a musical jam inside The Patriarch, which opened about 3 ½ years ago in what Edmond residents call “The Hunt House,” the three-story home William M. Hunt, one of the community’s founding fathers, built in 1903.
“Every single Monday night, we get about 15 to 25 players in a circle and the house fills up with people, and we’ve been having this ongoing Irish music session,” Mullenix said. “It just makes the coolest environment I’ve ever been in a public place, because you’re sitting in a 1903 house, listening to tunes that are probably 100 years older than that played on acoustic instruments. And all the wood is resonating, and the crowd will clap along. … It’s just really cool to be a part of and it’s really cool to be able to host it.”
He recently asked the members of The House Session if they wanted to play a Saturday night set on the bar’s stage, and the musicians readily agreed. Since they all play in different bands and have friends in various music groups, they asked Mullenix if he might host a whole evening of Celtic music. He agreed and created a Facebook event for it.
“Then, it spread like wildfire, and now we’re doing music from noon to 10 p.m. They’re having people from Colorado and Kansas and Texas coming in. … Pipers and accordion players and, of course, every acoustic instrument,” he said. “So, it’s just going to be act after act and after act, and we’re going to pack it out with music for about 10 hours straight.”
The lineup for the event includes fellow Oklahoma musicians Ravens Three, Jason Hunt, Dustbowl Gypsies and Mullenix’s folk band Launchpad Lawncare. The festival will close in much the same fashion as the Monday night sessions, with a free-for-all jam.
The Patriarch’s kitchen, OK Yaki, will be grilling up Japanese yakitori skewers, and the Smokin’ Okies food truck will be serving up brisket, chicken and other barbecue delicacies. The craft beer will be flowing from the 48 taps, along with whiskeys, cocktails and craft sodas.
“I can’t take any credit for any sort of notoriety that this event has gotten. But I would absolutely love for people to come here for the first time and just go, ‘Oh, wow, this is what this place is. This is cool,’” Mullenix said.