Like many Trenton-New Hope-Princeton corridor musicians, it took a while for Ewing guitarist-balladeer Bill O’Neal to find his niche, but once he did, it opened up dozens of new doors and new venues for his musicianship.
O’Neal was 29 or 30 when he was hired to play an Irish pub near the Red Bank train station, after being introduced to the place by fellow Trenton-area singer-songwriter Frank Pinto.
“I played in Trenton a lot over the years, but it was mostly in duos and smaller groups. (Veteran area bluesman Joe Zuccarello) and I grew up in the same neighborhood [in Ewing] and we went through school together,” O’Neal recalls.
Pinto, who also happens to be Zuccarello’s cousin, was playing at the pub in the early 1980s.
O’Neal says, “He needed a ride for one of his gigs, so he ended up helping me get a gig at the Dubliner Pub (now the Dublin House).”
“I ended up getting my own gig at the Dubliner, and (the patrons) wanted to hear nothing but Irish songs. I didn’t know that many at the time, so I just kept learning new ones, and the owner at that time wanted a mix of Irish songs and pop tunes. I started playing Irish music in Red Bank, and I did that for years almost once a week. Then Billy Briggs hired me at Billy’s Irish Pub (on Olden Avenue in Trenton), and now I work a lot at Tir na nOg.”
Tir na nOg, located at 1324 Hamilton Avenue on the Trenton/Hamilton border, is known for its friendly atmosphere and Irish jam sessions. O’Neal hosts one on Sunday afternoons at the pub once a month and performs there frequently in duo or trio settings that often include Joe Kramer, his wife Mary on guitar, and former Mercer County Commissioner Andrew Koontz, who is now involved with the parks commission.
O’Neal grew up the son of a housewife mother, Jean, and a father, Bill O’Neal, who was a master sergeant in the U.S. Army and taught military strategy at Princeton University.
O’Neal’s father retired when he was faced with the prospect of moving his family once again and took a job as a salesman.
O’Neal was 19 when his father died, so he went to work to support his six younger siblings.
About his past, he says, “My mother was a good Irish Catholic, but my father was raised a Baptist, so it was always very interesting growing up,” he said, laughing.
“My father was very musical. He had a country western band that was the house band over at the Frontier Room at the Whitehorse Bowling Academy (in Hamilton), and there are photos of him on my website. The Frontier Room was a very popular country place, and they had all the big names there over the years,” says O’Neal, adding that his father also worked as a DJ, playing country music on Trenton-area radio stations.
“I was raised with a lot of traditional country music playing in the house all the time and that’s part of the reason I don’t play it,” he says. Today, he appreciates the great old traditional country artists like Ernest Tubb, June Carter and Johnny Cash, Ray Price, Patsy Cline, and Kitty Wells.
“I appreciate it now, but the problem for years was my father died very young from cancer and it would remind me too much of him, and that’s why I couldn’t play it,” he says, recalling how his father’s band would often rehearse at his childhood home in Ewing.
O’Neal went to work for Amtrak as a traffic controller in New York City for a dozen years before deciding to go to college, earning a B.A. in philosophy from Trenton State College and a master’s degree in education from Rider College.
He then worked for Educational Testing Service for 20 years and taught English at Trenton High School.
“Now, I don’t want to do anything else except keep playing music,” he says.
At O’Neal’s Irish sessions, he, Kramer, Koontz, and his wife freely mix up traditional Irish sing-along tunes with pop and rock staples from the Eagles, Beatles, and other well-known classic rock bands and musicians.
However, when he started out playing in clubs in the late 1960s, he considered himself more of a folksinger, modeling himself after people like Richie Havens and Joan Baez and The Byrds.
“Back then they would call me mellow rock,” he says, adding, “Richie Havens was a real favorite of mine, and he wasn’t strictly folk, either.”
We asked O’Neal, what exactly is the definition of an Irish session or “seisiun”?
He says, “A traditional Irish seisiun usually involves instrumental music. They can be open or closed. They’re getting more popular again, because there’s one in Hillsborough, one in Lambertville, one in New Hope and there’s the one that I have in Trenton.”
O’Neal sees himself as a guitarist and singer, a ballad singer, and though he’s written some original tunes, he never saw the need to put out a disc of his own songs.
O’Neal says he’s been blessed to play extended three-week engagements at select pubs in County Down over the years. The last trip he made to Ireland was in 2013.
“When I played in Northern Ireland I would go in for three weeks at a time and I would lead the sessions, and then, whoever would come in would come in and it would be all different levels of musicianship. We’d usually go around in a circle and take turns playing,” he says.
Now 71, O’Neal doesn’t care to be out late at night anymore. Working with Kramer, Koontz, and Mary, he says, “These days, we do a lot of private parties, weddings and birthday celebrations for people, and we do cocktail hours at Irish pubs.”
Pressed about a big break in his performing career, O’Neal says all of his trips to Ireland have been extremely gratifying and there may be more to come.
“I never got a big break anywhere along the line, and now I don’t know if I would even want a big break. Once I found Irish music, I found my specialty, and I was totally at home with it.”
Bill O’Neal will be performing at Terhune Orchards in Lawrence Township, on Sunday, Nov. 5 from 1-4 p.m.
He can also be seen hosting the Irish Section at Tir na nOg on Hamilton Avenue in Trenton on Sunday, Nov. 19, from 3-6 p.m., and on Sunday, Dec.17, from 3-6 p.m.
For more information, visit irishbilly.wordpress.com.
Bill O'Neal performs at the Morrisville Irish Festival on Sunday, September 17.,
