High octane Celtic music trio, Open The Door For Three will be appearing in Gulfport Mississippi on Saturday, February 11, 2017 as part of Arts Under The Dome, a long-running concert series offered by the First United Methodist Church.

The band members of Open The Door For Three, Irish fiddler Liz Knowles, piper Kieran O’Hare, and bouzouki player and singer Pat Broaders, are well-known veterans of the Irish music scene in both the United States and abroad. Their upcoming Mississippi concert forms part of a whistle-stop tour of the Deep South  before the band  heads onwards to France and then Ireland, where they have plans to record a new album in Dublin that should be available late spring of this year.

“We are working on it while we are on the road,” said Knowles. “We are pretty efficient that way."

The life of a musician is usually a travelling one and Open The Door For Three are no exception to that rule.  Even though four years ago, Knowles and O’Hare swapped the Windy City for Portland, MN and Broaders currently lives in Chicago, they spend a lot of time on the road. Yet, said Knowles, one of the best things about being on the road, apart from the view and the camaraderie, is that it lets the band see and be part of the many new “pockets” of Irish music appearing in the United States.

“It's something that we are always talking about on the road - the ebb and flow of touring with Irish music in the states,” said Knowles. “While there are wonderful areas that have always been a hotbed for Irish music, like Chicago and New York, what we are finding is that it is often the far and away places that surprise us with wonderful Irish music scenes.”

One such "surprising and inspiring scene" can be found in Dallas, TX, said Knowles. 

“They have the North Texas Irish Festival (NTIF) which is an incredible festival," she explained.  "And the city itself has a vibrant community of people who play, teach, and support Irish music."

But, she went on, another city that also enjoys a somewhat unexpected Irish music scene is New Orleans.

“We played at the Irish House on St Charles Avenue last year,” said Knowles. “This year there were some scheduling conflicts, but New Orleans is a unique place and we plan to play there as often as we can.”

According to Knowles, another challenge of touring the South for Celtic musicians is finding enough smaller venues between the larger shows to help offset the cost of the often long travelling distances between gigs. One way that more and more touring Irish musicians and bands, such as Open the Door For Three, are seeking to remedy this can be found in the emerging popularity of house concerts, which, as the name suggests, are concerts open to the public but  held in private homes. 

“Unfortunately, in America, we have seen a lessening of grant money for artistic programs,” said Knowles. “And performing art centers sometimes tend to flow towards what kind of music is “hot” at any given moment.  Irish music isn’t less popular than it used to be but large venues are less likely to book Irish music with the regularity they used to.”

“The house concert thing is interesting because it wasn’t really started by the musicians; it was started by people in the community who, realizing that venues that used to book Irish music just weren’t there anymore, took things into their own hands. Word of mouth began to happen and there has been an incredible upsurge of incredibly generous people who have created a new and very vibrant concert community.”

"Ten years ago, I don't remember doing any house concerts," she laughed. "Now they have become one of our favourite venues."

Open the Door For Three will perform at the First United Methodist Church, 2301 15th St, Gulfport, MS 39501,  at 7 p.m. on Saturday, February 11, 2017.

More information about Open The Door For Three is available at http://www.openthedoorforthree.com

More information about the Arts Under the Dome Concert Series is available at http://arts.fumc-gulfport.org/tickets/