Why this St. Patrick's Day feels extra green for Twin Cities band Belfast Cowboys

They've played these songs under tents and in parking lots on St. Patrick's Day. In Irish pubs, too, of course, and bars that have long since closed. Even in radio studios at 7 a.m.

When the Belfast Cowboys deliver their trove of Van Morrison covers this Friday, though, bandleader Terry Walsh believes he's going to take those tunes to a whole new place.

"I know I'll never sing 'Brown Eyed Girl' again without picturing the actual Hollow in my mind," he said.

After 20 straight years of performing for Irish Americans and all the many wannabes in the Twin Cities on March 17, Walsh made a point of digging closer to the source of his material before the Belfast Cowboys' 21^st annual installment — a holiday tradition that started at the 400 Bar in 2002.

He and the band's guitarist, Dan Kowalke, traveled to Northern Ireland three weeks ago. Their main objective was to take in any and all sites related to Van the Man, whose other nickname gave the Belfast Cowboys their band name.

While there, Walsh and Kowalke soaked up enough culture — and Guinness, too, of course — to come home with a deeper appreciation for the struggles and the soulfulness in Morrison's homeland that are at the root of his music and St. Patrick's Day on the whole.

"He's such a literal songwriter," Kowalke said of the Belfast native. "The things he saw, the places he went — they're all there in his songs. It was fascinating to see all that in person."

All that Driftwood gig money goes to Foothold Twin Cities, a charity Walsh runs with his educator wife, Amber Lampron. It helps families with schoolkids keep the lights and heat on and roofs over their heads — often single moms, often referred by school staff.

"We gave money to four referrals this week, but a lot more than four came in," Walsh said before their Driftwood gig last week. "The need is always there."

Tying his music in with the charitable aspect of what they do at home, Walsh and Kowalke said they were struck by the "very lower working class" of Morrison's childhood home and surroundings.

"You could see the shipyards from there where his dad rode his bike every morning, which is part of the lyrics in 'Choppin' Wood,'" Walsh recalled. "And then just about a half-mile away the houses start getting a lot nicer, and that's when we came up Cyprus Avenue."

The street of ritzy houses inspired the song of the same name on the seminal "Astral Weeks" album.

"I took a picture of it before I even knew we were there, it's that beautiful a place," Walsh said. "Being there just gave you a vivid sense of how special a place it must've been for him as a kid."

One other song that kept coming to mind on the trip — and that the band has pledged to learn — is "No Religion," a song that the politically complex Morrison wrote and sang about "The Troubles," aka the conflict between Protestants and Catholics that plagued Northern Ireland with violence from the 1960s to the 1990s. Walsh and Kowalke were happy to see that it's mostly in the past.

"Most of the people there didn't even want to talk about it," Kowalke said. "They've moved on."

While the guitarist has only a smidge of Irish blood in him, he's green enough at heart to also play in another group steeped in Celtic folk and other traditional Irish sounds, Locklin Road. Walsh, however, is about 95% Irish and comes from a big south Minneapolis family that takes St. Patrick's Day quite seriously.

The bandleader was quick to clarify: Even after 21 straight years and all the chaos it involves, he still loves playing St. Patrick's Day gigs, which some bands slog through simply as a good payday.

However, Walsh said he definitely does feel a jolt of inspiration coming into the holiday so soon after his trip.

"I feel a lot more knowledgeable about what it means to be Irish — and proud, really," he said.

Come next year, other members of the band will have made the trek, too: Concurrent with this year's trip, Walsh lined up gigs in Belfast for the full band to play in April 2024, including their Vic Volare-led horn section.

"I always made fun of the fact that nobody in the Belfast Cowboys had ever actually been to Belfast," Walsh said. "So it's about time we get to know the place."

When: 7:30 p.m. Fri.

Tickets: $20-$25, thehookmpls.com.