Young Dubliners book a March night at Menlo Park's Guild Theatre

The Celtic rock veterans return to the 100-year-old El Camino Real movie palace on Saturday, March 13, 2027, a few days before St. Patrick's Day.

There's a particular kind of Saturday night the Young Dubliners do well: a full room, a band that has been playing together long enough to read each other without looking, and a set that bounces between pub-ready rock and folk melodies. Peninsula fans now have one on the calendar.

The band plays The Guild Theatre in Menlo Park on Saturday, March 13, 2027. Doors are at 7 p.m. and the show starts at 8 p.m., per the venue's calendar, and tickets are on sale through OpenDate. The Guild holds about 500, and the date lands just four days before St. Patrick's Day, which tends to make Celtic rock tickets go faster than usual.

The Young Dubliners are led by founder and lead vocalist Keith Roberts, who has described the group as a mix of Irish and American natives who draw influences from just about everywhere. The band's own album notes trace a long catalog: *Red* in 2000, produced by Thom Panunzio; *Absolutely* in 2004, billed as the first album written by the entire band; and *Saints and Sinners*, which features blues guitarist Kenny Wayne Shepherd and whose title track the band frames as part of its mission as "American and Celtic rock ambassadors." The band's site is currently running a pledge drive for a new album and mentions an Ireland 2026 tour, though a title and release date haven't been posted yet.

This isn't the band's first time in the room. The Young Dubliners played the Guild in May 2023, so a return booking says something about how that night went for both sides.

The Guild spent most of a century showing movies before it learned to be loud.

The venue is half the story. The Guild opened in 1926 as the Menlo Theatre, complete with a $10,000 organ, and took the Guild name in the late 1940s, according to The Almanac. After decades as a cinema, including a long stretch as an art house, it closed on Sept. 26, 2019. The nonprofit Peninsula Arts Guild then put roughly $35 million into turning it into a live music venue, and it reopened in February 2022 with jazz pianist Robert Glasper on opening night. The renovation kept the 1920s bones, including an art deco chandelier rescued from the old theater that now hangs over the ground-floor bar.

This year the theater turned 100, and the Peninsula Arts Guild marked it with a centennial concert series running June through November. A March booking from a band with this much road behind it is a good sign for the Guild's second century: the room is now a regular stop, not a novelty.

When to get tickets: they're on sale now through OpenDate. It's a 500-cap room the week of St. Patrick's Day, so don't wait for March.

Sources: The Guild Theatre — Calendar (guildtheatre.com); The Guild Theatre — Our Mission (guildtheatre.com); OpenDate — Young Dubliners, March 13, 2027 (app.opendate.io); The Young Dubliners — official site (youngdubliners.com); The Young Dubliners — Absolutely (youngdubliners.com); The Young Dubliners — Red (youngdubliners.com); The Young Dubliners — Saints and Sinners (youngdubliners.com); JamBase — Young Dubliners at The Guild Theatre, May 4, 2023 (jambase.com); The Almanac — Menlo Park movie palace gets rock star treatment in $35M renovation (almanacnews.com); The Almanac — Curtain falls on cinema era at Guild Theatre (almanacnews.com); The Almanac — The Guild's centennial concert series (almanacnews.com); Young Dubliners - Wikipedia (en.wikipedia.org)