By Amanda Estes 

Staff Writer

Put together three firefighters, a computer network technician and a teacher; add a banjo, a mandolin, a couple of guitars and a digital piano and what do you get? If you’re lucky, you get, Box O’ Crackers, a group of high-energy musicians who are putting their own contemporary spin on traditional Irish folk music.

“We feel like the electric instruments really add to the intensity,” Box O’ Crackers’ pianist Tess Prince says. “We like to add our own little spice to it.”

A Friday night rehearsal at Prince’s Portland apartment feels like a reunion between old friends. Prince, a 23-year-old network technician at Southern Maine Medical Center, sits down behind her portable piano, set up in a corner of her living room. Lead vocalist and guitar player David Finitsis, a 35-year-old South Portland firefighter, settles into an armchair with his acoustic guitar. Tom Haskell, a 61-year-old retired South Portland firefighter, grabs a seat on the couch, with his banjo strapped around his shoulder. Anne Murray, a 45-year-old Portland High School teacher, perches on a stool with her mandolin. Murray also sings and plays the accordion. Jason Perry, a 36-year-old South Portland firefighter, plugs in his electric guitar to complete the circle.

The rehearsal begins with the band striking up Men at Work’s “Land Down Under,” and it becomes evident the group does not limit itself to the folk tunes of yester year. They play a U2 song with traditional instruments and even came up with their own version of Bob Marley’s “No Woman, No Cry.”

“They sound all right, but we think, “Ah, it’s not really us,’” Haskell says of some of their deviations.

Foot tapping ensues when the band strikes up the Irish drinking song, “All For Me Grog.” They follow the lighthearted tune with “Paddy on the Railway,” which Finitsis says captures a sense of the homesickness and the abuses endured by the Irish who helped construct the Transcontinental Railroad. 

“Most Irish music, I think, is born of joy and pain, heavy on the pain,” Finitsis says. 

Finitsis, who played in garage bands and tried the solo coffee house route before joining an Irish trio in the 1990s, says the group is blending styles more and more to include elements of bluegrass and rock. The group has also started to perform their own songs. Finitsis is reluctant to take credit for all of the songwriting and says the band collaborates to transform a “skeletal structure” into a song. 

During the recent rehearsal, the band practices a song Finitsis wrote, called “Off to the Docks,” which recalls his experiences working at a Portland fish pier. 

“I rose at three this morning like I rose up from the grave,” Finitsis sings. Later in the chorus, he sings, “The boats are in again and I’m off to the docks once more.”

Box O’ Crackers is scheduled to open for a group of local comedians at the March 15 South Portland Historical Society benefit, “An Afternoon of Comedy.” The show is scheduled to kick-off at 1 p.m. at the South Portland High School auditorium.

On St. Patrick’s Day (March 17), the band will perform for a rowdier crowd at the Portland pub, Brian Boru’s, where the band made its debut two years ago. 

“It was lucky that it was St. Patty’s Day because the crowd was pretty well oiled,” Haskell says of the group’s first professional performance. “The audience wouldn’t realize it, but we were having trouble hearing ourselves and hearing each other. It wasn’t a very discerning audience and we were all good enough to sort of hack it out, I guess you could say.”

But, Haskell adds, everyone on stage had a great time and the crowd seemed to love the group. 

“We didn’t have any other sort of gigs planned,” Prince, who has been playing piano off and on for 10 years, says. “[But] after it went well and we had a really good time, we realized, ‘How can we part ways now?’ I love playing with everyone here.”

Murray, who has played the mandolin for three years and just started to pick up the accordion, agrees the group has its own energy.

“We feed off each other quite a bit,” she says. 

Haskell, who has been playing the banjo off and on since high school, says it wasn’t until the end of his 36-year career with the South Portland Fire Department that he discovered there were two fellow musicians in the department. Haskell says he heard bluegrass playing at the station one day and, a bluegrass fan himself, he tracked down the person responsible for turning it on, which happened to be Finitsis. Haskell says he thought he would just sit in and play with Perry and Finitsis once in a while, but he ended up being “the banjo player” for the group.

“He’s kind of like Sean Connery with a banjo,” Finitsis jokes. 

Perry chimes in, “Dave will announce at shows, ‘Our banjo player is single; he’s handsome.’”

Each member of the band has varied musical influences, but Irish music seems to be something they all enjoy, Perry – a former member of a San Diego punk band – says. No one in the band, however, has Irish heritage in his or her blood. 

During rehearsal, the band spends about as much time cracking jokes as they do playing music. 

“Pretty much half an hour before a gig, [Finitsis will] introduce a new song,” Haskell says.

“Or during,” Murray adds. 

Attempting to defend himself, Finitsis says nothing beats the energy of playing a piece of music for the first time.

“We’re about this close from a ‘Behind the Music,’” Finitsis jokes.

“An Afternoon of Comedy,” is scheduled for 1 p.m. on March 15 at the South Portland High School auditorium. Ticket prices are $10 in advance or $12 at the door. Tickets are available for purchase at Hannaford Supermarket in Mill Creek, Uncle Andy’s Café and J.P. Thornton’s. For more information, call 767-3268 or visit www.southportland.org.