Want to know the quickest way to an Irishman’s heart? According to Joey, the handsome guitar player from The Shams, it’s a bottle of Jameson Irish Whiskey. (I didn’t know he was going to say that, but I kind of knew.)

The Shams Éire are a band of charming lads who play energetic rock with Treggar on the fiddle, Tommy on the upright bass and James on the drums. The guys came to the studio and talked with us about life and love and growing up in Northern Ireland. As the conversation moved toward music, Sean the lead vocalist talked about Northern Irish rebel bands, the Pogues, and how most Jewish people don’t care for Irish music generally. (Is…wait…what??)

I was curious about that, so I asked around. A young Jewish lady named Evanne C. told me that “River Dance rocks!” Lotus W. said “You mean like River Dance?”

Inconclusive.

The Shams blew us away with an on-air accousic set and take my advice, if you get a chance to see them live, do it. The music is grand and they’re great craic.

We received some international requests this week from Yoko in Japan, Brad in Perú, Rhona from Ireland, and my all-time favorite author, Zadie Smith to whom we dedicated the show. Ms Smith wrote “White Teeth,” “On Beauty,” “Autograph Man,” and I’ll leave you with a few lines from her novel “NW”:

“Leah drank some more and spent a long time twisting the radio knob for a pirate station they didn’t find. At around ten fifteen p.m. Leah Hanwell said “I think women can be really beautiful. I think they can be so attractive and you want to love them and shag them and blah blah, but I think really only men can be completely beautiful in the end.” You recon?” said Keisha, and disguised her confusion by drinking deeply from her mug of tea. She was not at all sure to whom the second person pronoun was meant to refer.”

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