Music, pub crawl on St. Pat’s Day

The Waupaca Community Arts Board will host the annual Irish Wake on Saturday, March 17, throughout downtown Waupaca.

This year’s event will fall on St. Patrick’s Day.

The wake will begin at Little Fat Gretchen’s.

There will first be an Irish music session there with a regional group of players.

That will begin around 4:30 p.m.

The actual wake will then begin at 7 p.m.

It will include a list of songs.

Traditional Irish and original poetry will also be read.

From Little Fat Gretchen’s, the wake will move to Weasel’s Restaurant around 7:45 p.m.

Those who attend will act as pallbearers, carrying the coffin and singing as they make their way to Weasel’s.

At approximately 8:20 p.m., the wake will move to Paca Pub.

Around 9:45 p.m. it will make its way to the final stop of the evening.

That will be T-Dub’s Public House, where the procession will be greeted by a bagpiper.

“It is always a great experience when we walk down the ramp, through Rotary Park, and towards T-Dub’s, with the bagpipes in the distance,” says Fran Rademacher, a core Irish Wake musician. “By that time in the evening, everyone knows the songs, people are full of energy and you can really feel the love.”

The Irish Wake began in Waupaca around 2000.

That was after a group of musicians went to the St. Patrick’s Day festivities in New London.

That community originally had a large settlement of Irish people and celebrates St. Patrick’s Day on the Saturday closest to March 17.

The antics there include changing the name on the signs leading into the community to “New Dublin.”

A group of theatrical people visit local pubs with a hearse and coffin, depicting an Irish Ffneral procession.

The group also appears in the parade.

The core group of Waupaca people who had been to the New London festivities decided to try and create a tradition Irish Wake in Waupaca.
The Waupaca Irish Wake was thus born.

Now under the sponsorship of the Waupaca Community Arts Board (WCAB), it is a pub crawl, complete with live Irish music and a coffin.

It has evolved into an annual opportunity to honor and let go.

Attendees are encouraged to take a slip of paper and write down something they wish to let go of.

It may be something they are angry or upset about, someone they want to forgive or someone who has passed on they want to memorialize.

The slips of paper are placed in the faux coffin, where they reside along with now hundreds of other such thoughts and memories.

The faux coffin was constructed of pine by local carpenters for the purpose of this annual pub crawl.

It resides in the WCAB storage facility and is brought out each March for the Irish Wake.

WCAB members do not go through the slips of paper, mementos and trinkets placed into it year after year.

“It’s sort of a sacred time capsule. People put these private things in there, they should remain private,” said Steve Laedtke of WCAB.

Names of those passed on are also entered into the Annual Honor Roll.

This is a book that contains names from many past years.

The current list is read aloud at each stop on the wake route.

“It is always an honor to be the person reading the Honor Roll,” says Barb Laedtke, who often is the reader. “People feel good hearing their loved one’s name read during that few minutes of silence at each stop, followed with a joyous song.”

Another feature of Waupaca’s Irish Wake is that at each stop along the route, songs are sung by not only the musicians, but all of the attendees.

Song books are passed out at the first stop, and by the end of the event, people are able to sing a variety of Irish music, some of it in Gaelic.

Musical Director Marci Beaucoup said, “We love the act of singing together. The songs are full of spirit, and people really enjoy this form of release. We get lots of suggestions for new songs to add to the list.”

People are encouraged to bring a portable instrument, or just their voices, and to join in.

More information about this free event is available by visiting www.waupacaarts.org or the WCAB page on Facebook.