The Tossers
The Tossers are a Celtic punk band from right here in Chicago. They've been around since 1993 and I've been a fan for a little more than a decade. I'm not sure how I discovered them, but I did, and that's all that matters. I currently have the full LP of On a Fine Spring Evening, which includes the songs "Katie at the Races," "The Rocky Road to Dublin," and "St. Stephen's Day," among many other great songs as well as the songs "Siobhan" from Agony and "Goodmornin' Da" from The Valley of the Shadow of Death. They can be pretty hard rocking but contain some traditional Irish instruments like mandolins and fiddles to round out their sound. I really need to check out their new album The Emerald City, which just came out last year.

"The Tossers Live" by Mygoditsboring - Own work. Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons.

Cool little tidbit: Scott Lucas of Local H and Scott Lucas and the Married Men has toured with The Tossers as their bass player.

Street Dogs
The Street Dogs formed in 2002 and are more well known just as a street punk band as opposed to Irish punk. I still think they make for a good listen on St. Patrick's Day, though. I only discovered them over this past weekend when I decided to add something to my St. Patrick's Day repertoire and found them via a Last.fm similarity comparison to The Tossers. As of now, I only own the re-released EP Back to the World that came out back in 2005 and was produced by Nate Albert, formerly of the Mighty Mighty Bosstones. Really good, energizing modern punk music.

"Streetdogslive" by Allen Bearce - http://www.flickr.com/photos/arbearce/3371532789/sizes/o/in/photostream/. Licensed under CC BY 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons.

Cool little tidbit: The lead singer of Street Dogs, Mike McColgan, got his start as the lead singer of Dropkick Murphys before quitting in 1998 to become a Boston firefighter. He returned to music after realizing how much he missed it.

Rory Gallagher
I only list The Man last because I feel like I'd lose you after all the gushing I'm about to do and you would never learn about The Tossers or Street Dogs. So, start humble, then go for the jugular!

Rory Gallagher is a late Irish blues rock guitarist very much in the vein of Stevie Ray Vaughan or early Eric Clapton. It's not "Irish" music, per se. But as he is one of the most well known Irish guitarists in history behind maybe only Edge of U2, I like to listen to him around St. Patrick's Day. I own Irish Tour '74 and love it because it's a great live compilation of some of his best stuff including "As the Crow Flies," "A Million Miles Away," and "Tattoo'd Lady." Yesterday morning, 93XRT aired a segment called Lin's Bin all about Irish music and he, like me, ended with a dedication to Gallagher. I tweeted the final bit of it I loved it that much.

"Rory Gallagher steeped the Blues in a pint of Guinness and sent them back to us." -- @LinBrehmer, @93xrt Amen.

— KevinIL (@kapgar) March 16, 2015

No need for a cool little tidbit. Everything about Rory is cool.

"Rory Gallagher 1982" by Harry Potts - http://www.flickr.com/photos/harrypotts/4649572228/. Licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons.