Home to Celtic Classic and many an Irish pub, the Lehigh Valley loves its Old World heritage and the rollicking, romantic music of the Emerald Isle. Sharing their time between New York City and Bethlehem, Rogue Diplomats are a Celtic contingent playing with frequency in the Valley and doing jolly justice to the legends of Irish music.
Most of the five-member bunch either reside in or are from Bethlehem and draw on early experiences in families steeped in Irish ancestry. “My uncle and great-uncle are in Irish bands, so I grew up with the music,” says guitarist and singer Brian Donnelly. “I used to stand on the dining room table and sing Irish songs when company was over.”
Donnelly started Rogue Diplomats with Matthew Breiner and Patrick Marran while they were living in New York City, where they chose a fitting band name from a very unrelated source. Dennis Rodman’s bizarre forays to North Korea had earned him the designation “rogue diplomat” in the news, and Donnelly and Breiner couldn’t resist being the first and only Irish band named after Dennis Rodman.
Together with Christine Scharf Breiner and Nate Diehl, Rogue Diplomats have a roaring good time on stage balancing the humor, solemnity and beautiful three- and four-part harmonies of the music made popular by the Clancy Brothers and the Wolfe Tones, drawing on theatrical backgrounds to engulf their audience in well-rounded entertainment. “Performers like Seamus Kennedy and Timlin & Kane follow this model,” Breiner says, “and having enjoyed seeing them perform for years, it’s a wonderful feeling to carry on the tradition of sharing the simplicity and the unyielding depth and heart that is the core of traditional Celtic music.”
