Irish Festival Planned This Weekend

mbrady@fortcollinsnow.com

In many ways the upcoming Fort Collins Irish Festival is something of a glorified planning accident.

Festival visionary and creator John Schreck, owner of Colorado Table Cloth in Longmont, a company that rents linens out to hotels and caterers for special events, originally had it in mind to conduct a one-day fundraiser in Civic Center Park. He dreamed up the idea to raise money for his nonprofit, Guard Colorado, which exists to help raise funds for organizations that work in protecting the Colorado environment.

To be certain, Schreck was not envisioning green streamers flying through the air while kilt-wearing irishmen clinked pints of Guiness to the sounds of pipes, drums and fiddles echoing from multiple stages in the downtown area. He merely wanted to add some spice to his humble fundraiser, and the thought of having some of his favorite Irish music at the event entered his mind.

“I’ve always had a love of irish music,” Schreck said. In particular, he was thinking of trying to recruit one of his favorite bands, The Elders, out of Kansas City, Mo. It was a stretch to think they’d come, but it couldn’t hurt to ask.

To his surprise, the band agreed to come to Colorado to play at the park. That’s when the fledgling event began to snowball into something much bigger. Schreck’s initial success encouraged him to recruit other Irish bands to play that day. He didn’t expect them to all agree, but they did.

Now that the event had morphed into a one-day music fest, he still had plenty of slots to fill: the fundraiser was supposed to run from noon-9 p.m., and the acts he had booked weren’t enough to fill the whole day.

“We didn’t have an opening act and then the realization hit me that we didn’t have anything to fill between noon and and 4,” he said.

That’s where the vision of a full-fledged festival entered his mind.

“I set out to book bands to fill that day and before you knew it we had more bands than we had days,” Schreck said.

So there was only one option—add more days. He managed to book Eileen Ivers and Immigrant Soul. Ivers is one of the nation’s premiere celtic fiddle players. The band will play a show at 7:30 p.m. Friday, Aug. 1 at the Lincoln Center.

“It went from a fundraiser to an all out let’s just go ahead and do it,” he said.

In its final manifestation, the Irish festival stands as a three-day party of music, vendors, and other festivities in downtown. He no longer has any doubt he’ll raise all the funds he originally wished to. He’s planning on donating to more organizations such as Save the Poudre, and to efforts to help victims of the Windsor tornado and protect Colorado’s groudwater.

Each day the festival will kick off and end with a performance from Michael Collins Pipes and Drums, who will lead a parade while playing from Old Town Square to Civic Center Park in the morning, and then from Civic Center Park back to Old Town to cap off the day.

If the serendipity that went into forming this year’s festival continues, Schreck will have no trouble pulling it off next year. He said that he already has bands lining up with requests to play at the next event.

“We’ve had over 20 inquiries from bands and musicians hoping to get into the festival all throughout the entire state,” he said.

With all the buzz, Schreck can’t wait for the festival to get here.

“Honestly, we have our airplane on the runway, our pilot in the pilot seat, we’re all fueled up. We have our vendors and all the community support on the plane and we’re ready for clearance for takeoff.”

Fort Collins Irish Festival Civic Center Park, Mason and Laporte streets 7:30-9:30 p.m. Friday, Aug. 1 11 a.m.-10 p.m. Saturday, Aug. 2 11 a.m.-9 p.m. Sunday, Aug. 3 Tickets and further information are available at www.fortcollinsirishfestival.com.