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.
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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.
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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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