Gaelic Storm books a St. Paddy's-season night at the Mabel Tainter

The Titanic-famous Celtic band plays the 261-seat Menomonie theater on Friday, March 19, and tickets are already on sale from the venue.

There are 261 seats in the Mabel Tainter, and on Friday, March 19, 2027, a band that once played the party below decks in Titanic will be playing to every one of them. If you want one, the time to move is now.

Gaelic Storm plays The Historic Mabel Tainter Theater in Menomonie on Friday, March 19, 2027, at 7:30 p.m. The show was announced Oct. 30, and tickets are sold through the Mabel Tainter's own site at mabeltainter.org. With a room that size and a band with this kind of following, this is not one to leave for the week of.

The date lands two days after St. Patrick's Day, which makes sense for a Celtic band in March. Gaelic Storm has been here at this time of year before: the band's 2025 St. Patrick's run, the Roll Out The Barrel Tour with The Reverend Peyton's Big Damn Band, included a March 13 night at the Mabel Tainter. This will be another St. Paddy's-season visit to the same small room.

For anyone new to them, the short version starts in a pub. Gaelic Storm formed in Santa Monica, California, in 1996, playing at O'Brien's Irish Pub, where co-founder Patrick Murphy was the manager. The break came when James Cameron cast them as the steerage party band in Titanic in 1997, and after the film the band began touring extensively. Their 2010 album Cabbage debuted at No. 1 on Billboard's world chart, and 2017's Go Climb a Tree also topped the chart.

A band that started in a Santa Monica pub is playing a 261-seat room in Menomonie. That is the right size.

Gaelic Storm gets filed under both folk and rock, and that is fair. A Cleveland Scene review once argued the band has far more in common with straight folk groups like the Chieftains and Solas than with harder Celtic-rock acts such as Flogging Molly. Either way, the tunes that got them into Titanic, like "Drowsy Maggie" and "Kesh Jig," are jigs and reels, and a theater full of seats will have to make its peace with that.

The room is the other reason to go. The Mabel Tainter is a historic theater, and a band built on pub sessions sounds right at close range. At 261 seats, nobody is far from the stage, and nobody will need to fight for a view.

For Eau Claire readers, it is an easy Friday night out, and the show is more than four months away, which leaves plenty of time to plan dinner in Menomonie beforehand and line up a ride home. Tickets come straight from the theater, so check mabeltainter.org for seating and pricing, and grab them before word spreads among the people who were at the last one.

March in Menomonie can still feel like winter. Gaelic Storm in a small room, two days after St. Patrick's, is about the best argument for getting out of the house that month will offer. Bring the friend who always requests "Drowsy Maggie."

Sources: JamBase: Gaelic Storm at The Historic Mabel Tainter Theater, Mar 19, 2027 (jambase.com); The Mabel Tainter (tickets) (mabeltainter.org); Wikipedia: Gaelic Storm (en.wikipedia.org); Cleveland Scene: Gaelic Storm (clevescene.com); Shazam: Gaelic Storm (shazam.com); Read Junk: Gaelic Storm Announce Roll Out The Barrel Tour with The Reverend Peyton's Big Damn Band (readjunk.com)