The Pogues and St. Patrick’s Day were always a natural combination to be celebrated by the Irish from any background. Many are the fans who clamored to see the Irish roots punk band on their annual March visits to the East Coast.
Nearly as welcome, then, is the tour by Poguetry in Motion, which played St. Paddy’s at the Black Cat in D.C., for the first time in two years — shortly before the pandemic put a halt to their tour and nearly everything else in the performing world.
There was some extra joy, then, at the simple pleasure of live music in a room full of grateful fans who had been unable to gather like this for a good long while.
Poguetry is the brainchild of Peter Richard “Spider” Stacy, the Pogues’ tin whistle player and late period sometimes frontman. While spending some time in New Orleans he crossed paths with the Grammy-winning zydeco outfit Lost Bayou Ramblers, realizing there were a few similarities to their approaches to roots music, if not their instrumentation (electric guitar and drums, but also fiddle and squeezebox).
Soon they were jamming on Pogues tunes and before long Cait O’Riordan, the original Pogues bassist, was on board as well. Carrying such key bona fides, a tour naturally followed.