Wandering the Burren & Friends Celtic Band

Wandering the Burren plays traditional acoustic music. We have enjoyed playing together for many years and want to share our music. We are best suited to smaller or more casual venues. To contact us, send an email to rebecca@unm.edu or ssponar07@gmail.com.

Front: (from left) Barbara Herrington, Rebecca Keeshen, Susan Sponar
Back: Harlow Pinson, Doug Cowan, Mike Maulsby

Rebecca Keeshen: When her day job at UNM is done, Rebecca plays the whistle, composes tunes (including our namesake piece) and is working on the flute.

Barbara Herrington, a retired planner, left behind American traditional fiddling a few years ago for Irish fiddling and never looked back. She now contributes to the local music scene by coordinating an Irish session at High and Dry Brewing in Albuquerque.

Mike Maulsby majored in classical guitar in college and now brings his classical sensibility to supporting traditional music, when he is not at his day job serving students at CNM.

Harlow Pinson, a leader in the Albuquerque Irish music community, is currently a member of the Duke City Ceili Band and coordinates the Thursday night Irish sessions at Hops Brewery in Los Ranchos de Albuquerque. He plays (and teaches) the fiddle and flute, and recently took up the button accordion.

Doug Cowan, a retired Southwest Airlines pilot, plays the Highland pipes, Irish bodhran, concertina, and Irish flute. He is a founding member of The Celtic Coyotes and sings with a choral group.

Susan Sponar, a retired media and crisis communicator, took up Irish fiddling later in life and now aspires to play the button accordion.

Our Strayaway Friend
On New Year’s Day this year, Wandering the Burren experienced the sudden, tragic loss of our good friend and long-time member John Conoboy.  It still doesn’t seem real that he’s not here, sipping on some whiskey, shuffling through a sheaf papers trying to find a tune we’re working on, and playing the hell out of Strayaway Child.

A true stalwart of the ABQ Irish music scene, keeper of the flame, and lover of all things played with a pick (except the ukelele, I’m thinking), John knew the history of many, many Irish tunes, where they were first played, who played them, who had the audacity to play them in a different key, who ought to be escorted out of a session, and the best places for live traditional music in an impressive number of cities in the country and world. His was an encyclopedic knowledge and contained in it were a great number of good stories.