Young Dubliners

Kansas City’s Irish have endured their own troubles lately, what with a shortened St. Pat’s parade, an Irish heritage museum still searching for a home and festivals destined not just to invoke but to become bogs. The Young Dubliners, based in that well-known bastion of the Ancient Order of Hibernians known as Los Angeles, are well aware of our Irish famine. The group does, after all, play here almost as frequently as the Wolfe Tones or even our own Elders, but the Dubliners are the kind of band that can single-handedly change a city’s fortunes. Fronted by the stadium-ready voice of Keith Roberts, the Dubliners — with fiddle at the fore and reels below the surface — have that Celtic ability to fill the world with sound even as their fans drown it with booze. It doesn’t hurt that their blood’s also full of Thin Lizzy, the Boomtown Rats and the Faces, whose “Ooh La La” highlights the Dubliner’s live show.