I wandered out into the Gettysburg night in the midst of a bitter winter whose icy teeth had been chewing the skin of Central Pennsylvanians for the past few days. A spooky chill, having nothing to do with the weather, licked my spine, and I suddenly did not want to be outside. But, dammit, I had an assignment to see Irishtown Road, one of the finest traditional Irish folk bands this area has known, and nothing would stop me from my charge. Plus, there was beer somewhere around here.

I opened the door to O'Rorke's Family Restaurant and Tavern and was immediately buffeted with a benevolent heat and meaty aroma that reminded me of a family room right after Thanksgiving dinner. My goose pimples smoothed out and I stepped into the entryway. And there I stood for at least an hour. It was as busy inside the restaurant bar as it was dead calm outside. People were everywhere - standing, sitting, and leaning on the bar - and a few were even able to move to the music. Luckily, I was trapped in the doorway with a few of the nicest, most interesting people I have met in a long time.

There was Tabitha Hymans, an effervescent theater major graduating this year from Gettysburg College. She had come to see Irishtown Road for the first time with a small clutch of roommates who stay at the college residence home called The Philosophy House. There were also Tim Sheads and Allan Tischler, two of the dozen or more men in the crowd wearing soldier's uniforms representing nearly every American battle from the 1840s to Desert Storm. Men and women costumed in historical military and civilian garb is as common a sight in Gettysburg as the Eiffel Tower is in Paris. Tischler was dressed as a Zouave (ZOOahv), a unique Civil War soldier led by General McClellan. Sheads was costumed as a Northern infantryman. Unlike Hymans, these two would-be servicemen have seen the band perform so many times, Sheads says, "I know what song they're going to play next." Being skeptical, I bit. "An Irish song!" Oh, ha ha. Well, he was right.

From the tavern's entryway, I could see the band decked in kilts and tams, playing perfect Irish folk music in front of a majestic stone fireplace so large that a six-foot man could have walked into it just ducking his head. And yet it was not large enough to frame the six-piece group. In its current lineup, Irishtown Road has been playing traditional Irish folk music, both originals and time-honored favorites, for nearly six years. Frontman Brian Colgan, his sisters Lynn and Eileen Colgan on keyboards and tin whistle respectively, bassist Rick Louthian, and percussionist Joe Clark are the core fivesome of Irishtown Road. Tonight, as is often the case, Lynn's husband, Henry, is quite adeptly sitting in on fiddle. "I come in when they let me," he jokes.

Irishtown Road, named after the main road in the small town of Irishtown, Pa., on which Colgan's ancestors first settled when they immigrated, have acquired members over the years by letting some people "sit in." That's how it began for Louthian and former band member Dave Bowman. "Well, Brian asked us to sit in on a song or two and that went well," says Louthian. "Then we'd sit in for a set. And eventually he just said, 'Would you like to just stay seated here?'" Colgan cites his earliest influences as his parents, The Clancys, and his grade school's annual presentations. "Some schools do a Christmas program," says Colgan. "Well, we'd do a huge St. Patrick's Day program. Every grade would get up on-stage and sing for Monsignor McGee, and he'd throw out candy bars and holy cards and stuff." Clark and Colgan were school buddies who graduated from DeLone Catholic High School together, although Colgan insists that he is not as old as Clark, 48. They became friends when Clark tried to date one of Colgan's other sisters. That didn't work out, but the two boys have been friends since then and have played some kind of music together ever since they unleashed their two-man, skinny teenager rock band called The Sound Experiment from Clark's garage. Of course that's as far as The Experiment went, but it set a fire in both of them that has burned for decades. Aside from Irishtown Road, Colgan still plays classic rock with another brother and Clark plays percussion for the Hanover Symphony and a '50s jazz band. Clark, a large, square-jawed man, and the only band member who won't wear the kilt, reminded me more of a Toughman champion than a drummer who is almost religious about the instrument. Percussion is not just drumming to Clark. "To me," says Clark, "Percussion says more than words do." He plays the drum in church and for meditation, has brought intense emotion out in others and himself through the pulse of the drum, and aspires to visit Africa again and feel the "spiritual drum." Not surprisingly, the rest of the band calls him the "heartbeat."

Louthian, who feels he is more of a performer than a musician, was in a hard rock band for a while, but seems thrilled to have traded in his torn jeans for a tartan kilt. Primarily a bass player, Louthian one day just picked up the mandolin and taught himself to play it. "Well, we needed one in the band," explains Louthian matter-of-factly. "My dad was big into playing bluegrass. So, I had some guidance, but I just kept at it until people stopped making faces."

That's also how Eileen became so skilled on the tin whistle. In fact, she's so good now that Colgan describes her as "wailing on it." Eileen caught me by surprise as she told the story of her self-discipline. "When I was learning the tin whistle, I was recovering from cancer," explains Eileen. "When you're under radiation treatment, it makes your arms feel like lead. So, I'd drag myself to the chair and ask my kids to bring in some pillows and I'd prop up my elbows and be able to hold my whistle up and practice." Lynn, yet another self-taught member of the band, began her musical career by constructing her own harp. "I had a friend who was using a wood shop," says Lynn, "And I got a harp kit to build my own. So there I am, building a precision instrument around people that are building bookcases. I had to explain what I was doing all the time." With that kind of commitment, she soon became an expert at the harp and, at least at this interview, was dubbed "Harpy," the nickname that only your family can get away with calling you. But I have not met a more polar opposite of the ogre-like image that "Harpy" brings to mind. Lynn, like the rest of Irishtown Road, is a genuine joy to be around. No pretension. No artificial sentiment. Just loads of fun, smiling eyes, and real personality. We laughed with every sentence. Whether that joy comes from the music they make or they brought it with them, I can't say. Traditional Irish folk music carries in it the emotional extremes that mankind can endure. And tonight at O'Rorke's, there is a lot of feeling. From rebel songs to drinking songs, from love ballads to battlefield instrumentals so full of pride a priest would take up arms, from jigs and reels to ribald songs warning not to kiss the Blarney Stone because "late at night, the locals they piss on the Blarney Stone," the whole of O'Rorke's was celebrating. The bar was a sweet choir of inebriated singers raising up Guinnesses (I swear that is all I saw being drunk that night) and slapping each other on the back. The cacophony hummed and vibrated the Irish part in every soul. Even if one might not be Irish, he wanted to be.

At the end of "Red is the Rose," a song in Irishtown Road's last set that made two women cry, I put up a single hand to the band saying goodbye for the evening. They all waved back shouting, "Bye, Dave!" and very last patron in the bar turned to me and did the same. I suddenly did not want to leave. But I did, and went back out into the bitter cold of the Gettysburg night.