Dan Milner & Bob Conroy (New York)
Friends for 25 years, Bob and Dan teamed up for the first time in 1997. They've sung together from Dublin to Denmark to San Francisco, lectured and taught at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama, the Sidmouth International Festival and the Inishowen International Ballad and Folk Song Seminar. Back home in New York, they're leaders of The New York Packet, South Street Seaport Museum's maritime music group, and frequently play at Irish music sessions with 1986 All-Ireland Champion fiddler, Brian Conway.
Dan Milner has been involved in Irish traditional song all his life as a singer, author, collector, organizer and teacher. His father was a good singer with a repertoire learned from his grandfather and while serving in the army in India and elsewhere. By the time he was 16, Dan had lived in Ireland, England, Canada and had immigrated to the United States twice, once each on the Cunard liners Aquitania and Queen Elizabeth. A retired airline executive, he is now a National Park Ranger at the Statue of Liberty National Monument and a columnist/correspondant for Irish Music Magazine of Dublin. He is best known for his book of folk songs, The Bonnie Bunch of Roses, published by Oak; his highly classic Folk-Legacy maritime song recording, Irish Ballads & Songs of the Sea with Louis Killen, Mick Moloney, Bob Conroy and others; and for the weekly traditional music club he ran for 10 years at Malachy McCourt's Bells of Hell and The Eagle Tavern in New York City.
Bob Conroy is the son of American labor leader and 69th Regiment veteran, John Joseph Conroy, who in 1935 founded with John DelLury the first union officially recognized by the City of New York. Bob teaches History Through Folk Music in the New York City school system and has conducted fretted instrument workshops with Martin Carthy, Eric Weissberg and other well known musicians. His roots are in Co. Roscommon and he grew up in a home filled with labor and Irish-American songs. In the 1960s, he became struck with American folk music, spent most of his waking hours in Greenwich Village, studied 5-string banjo and guitar with the legendary Erik Darling and first heard the Clancy Brothers and Lou Killen. Bob Conroy has sung with the group Stout for 25 years.
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