It was 18 years ago when singer Cathy Jordan packed her bags and departed from the Irish county of Roscommon and linked up with a group of guys who had recently formed a band in Sligo. What was supposed to be a few gigs over the summer has turned into nearly two decades of touring throughout the world with the traditional Irish band Dervish. The group performs a 7:30 p.m. concert Friday (Sept. 28) at the David Marr Auditorium (Shasta Learning Center), 2200 Eureka Way in Redding.

In addition to crisscrossing North America several times. Dervish has performed in packed venues from the Great Wall of China to the Middle East to Rio De Janeiro.

"We just started off and had enough material for one album. It was just supposed to be a one off," Jordan said in a phone interview from Bellingham, Wash. "It just took off. Every year the gigs grew and it fueled the fire all the time. There was always a dangling carrot for us to strive for. It's amazing. --It brought us all around the world. It's an adventure we've had just playing the old music of Ireland."

The band's music is traditionally rooted, but the group loves to stretch boundaries. Last week. Dervish released its newest album "Traveling Show," with the single "Gypsies, Tramps and Thieves," an Irish take on a Cher song from the 1970s. The album, the group's 10th release, also includes original songs, arrangements of traditional tunes and a song by Suzanne Vega.

In concert, the band also plays such material as Bob Dylan's "Boots of Spanish Leather" and Dire Straits' "Brothers in Arms."

"We experiment without straying too far from the roots," Jordan said. "We give people something familiar, yet it's in the genre of traditional music. It's all the instrumentation of Irish music. But it plays with people's perception a bit."

Jordan said the band's songs tend to filter into one of three Irish elements -- goltrai, so sad it brings tears; geantri, so lively it makes a person wants to dance; and suantra, so soothing a person wants to sleep. The group particularly loves it when it finds an audience unfamiliar with Irish music. These musical "guinea pigs" are often hooked for life. Once, a woman e-mailed to say that the group helped cure her cancer.

"It's great when we get people who have no preconceived notions of what we're supposed to be," she said. "We're playing to them and watching their development into the whole world of traditional music."

In 2003, Dervish performed a sold-out show at the Red Lion Inn and audience members purchased every CD the band brought with them, said Chris Alexander of the Shasta Celtic Society, co-sponsor of the show. Proceeds from Friday's concert will benefit public television KIXE Channel 9. In addition to Jordan, the group includes Brian McDonagh on mandola, Liam Kelly on flute and whistles, Tom Morrow on fiddle, Shane Mitchell on accordion and Michael Holmes on bouzouki. All the members reside in Sligo, Ireland, with the exception of Morrow, who lives in Dublin. The group has shared the concert billing with such acts as James Brown, Oasis, Sting, REM and Beck. Though Dervish didn't set out to be ambassadors for Irish music, the group's members have certainly felt that way when sharing their tunes in out of the way venues across the world.

"You leave your normal life behind and take to the road of the world and sing songs," Jordan said. "You end up in the most bizarre places and ask. Are we really here?' For instance, in Brazil, the majority of that audience would have never heard music like ours. You really do feel like an ambassador then."

-by Jim Dyar