Minnesota Prairie Roots

WHETHER YOU LIKE country or Celtic, you’ll find music o’plenty in Faribault on the evening of Friday, March 13.

Just days before St. Patrick’s Day, metro-based Bonnie Drunken Lad takes the stage at the Paradise Center for the Arts for a performance beginning at 7:30 pm. The five-person Irish folk band will play traditional and modern Celtic, sea shanties and pub songs. Their music is sure to get you in a dancing-with-leprechauns, Irish frame of mind.

If you can’t catch the band in Faribault, you can also hear them at Charlie’s Restaurant and Irish Pub/Water Street Inn Ballroom in Stillwater from 11 am-2 pm Saturday, March 14. They’re among a line-up of musical groups playing at a St. Practice Day event. On March 17, Bonnie Drunken Lad will be back at the Stillwater location from 2-5 pm for a music-filled St. Patrick’s Day celebration.

Another option to hear these Irish musicians is from 4-6 pm Saturday, March 14, at Kip’s Irish Pub & Restaurant in St. Louis Park.

For tickets to the Faribault performance Friday evening, March 13, click here.

BLOCKS AWAY from Bonnie Drunken Lad’s show at the Paradise, a local four-piece country band will perform a free concert at the historic Cathedral of Our Merciful Saviour from 7-9 pm Friday, March 13.

The Old Country Boys sing with an authentic twang about daily life, love and hardship. Expect to hear songs by the likes of Merle Haggard, Waylon Jennings, Johnny Cash, George Jones, Hank Williams Sr. and Jr., Charlie Daniels, and Alabama, among others.

Although the concert is free, donations are accepted for Cathedral preservation. This event is part of the Faribault Cathedral Concert Series.

Interestingly enough, last March Bonnie Drunken Lad played at the Cathedral as part of the concert series. Now that I think about it, I’m pretty certain I attended that concert.

I’ve heard the Old Country Boys/Brothers, purveyors of old (not new) country music, play many times in Faribault, at Christ Lutheran Church’s weekly summer wood-fired pizza-concert night, Holy Smoke!

Now, on a Friday evening in mid-March, both groups will be back in Faribault performing country and Celtic music o’plenty at pre-St. Patrick’s Day concerts.

© Copyright 2026 Audrey Kletscher Helbling