Feel the Byrne

For decades, Belmar-based Irish singer Bobby Byrne has been performing two or three times a week, and he shows no sign of slowing down.

Posted December 21, 2007 by Shannon Mullen

It was back in 1989, at a biker bar in Bogota, that Charlie Warwick became a true believer in Bobby Byrne.

Warwick, a keyboardist, had just joined Byrne’s band, which had a gig that night at what had been a regular Irish pub when last they played it. This time, they arrived to find dozens of Harleys lined up out front. Inside, one of the bikers took a look at the band’s ruddy faces and red-and-white-striped matching shirts and snarled, “You aren’t gonna play any of that Irish shit, are you?”

Now, audience sing-alongs have been a hallmark of Byrne’s shows since the 1960s. But suddenly, Warwick had visions of this audience lobbing longnecks at the stage. That didn’t deter Byrne.

A decorated Vietnam vet, he charged into his usual hearty stew of Irish, Broadway, and sing-along standards as if he were performing for the Friendly Sons of the Shillelagh back in his native Bayonne. Nobody so much as looked at him—“except for this one biker chick,” Warwick recalls—and when Byrne charmed her into doing the goofy hand motions to “The Unicorn,” a miracle occurred: One by one, the bikers all joined in. From then on, Warwick says, “I thought Bobby was God.”

Four decades removed from the days when Byrne and his big brother, Jimmy, were the Byrne Brothers, one of the Jersey Shore’s hottest acts ever, Bobby remains among the state’s most enduring and enigmatic entertainers.

A jovial tenor who looks a bit like Merv Griffin, Byrne, 65, can still whip crowds into a frenzy with “Harrigan,” spellbind them with a moody “Music of the Night,” and get them humming along on their official Bobby Byrne kazoos to Neil Diamond’s “Sweet Caroline.”

“You can’t help but love him, he’s so positive and dynamic,” says Sandy Pichetto of Dumont, president of the alumni mothers’ club at Bergen Catholic High School, whose March 31 fundraiser will feature Byrne for the seventh straight year.

Bobby and Jimmy, who parted in 1976 to pursue solo careers, are planning their long-awaited Byrne Brothers reunion shows on August 18 and 19 at Asbury Park’s Paramount Theatre. Bobby has a bad case of arthritis, though you’d hardly know it to watch him twist his beefy frame to “Jailhouse Rock.”

“People always come up to me and ask, ‘Where do you get your energy?’” he says, sunk into a leather lounge chair in his rustic, Irish-themed den in Belmar. “I tell them, ‘I just gave it to you!’” Performing, he admits, “just knocks the crap out of me.”

He’ll recharge from March 11 to 22 on a Caribbean cruise with his wife of 37 years, Pat, and a shipload of “Bobheads.” It’s one of five trips he leads every year, advertised solely through his newsletter (bobbybyrne.com), which boasts 60,000 subscribers.

Though he has scant downtime, Byrne has still managed to write what he considers his masterwork, a musical autobiography that he envisions becoming an off-Broadway show. Part of the script connects his experiences in Vietnam to the war in Iraq, which he vehemently opposes—a stance he knows risks alienating his more conservative fans. But in characteristic fashion, Byrne is plunging forward, mindful of what a priest friend told him early in his career.

“He said, ‘Someday, you’re doing to do something really good. And I think,” Byrne says, referring to the autobiography, “maybe this is it.”

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