John P. made an excellent point worth repeating: "One of the 'things' (for me, anyway) about traditional folk music is that it is local music. The concept of learning everything there is to know about local music from somewhere else and then trying to play it like it is played somewhere else seems almost the antithesis of traditional musianship. It's really scholarly musicology, isn't it? Of course you are not doing traditional Irish music. As you say, you're a bunch of Americans."

When I've gone to Ireland and have sung songs like "Kevin Barry" and "Gilgarry Mountain," someone invariably points out that I do them differently from than how they are done there. Not wrong, just differently. If anything, the people in Ireland are curious about how their songs evolved after having taken root in America. And they still look on those songs as Irish music.