The Press Gang (L-R, Alden Robinson, Chris Stevens and Owen Marshall) performing at last fall’s Dorchester Irish Heritage Festival. Sean Smith photo

If you were a fellow in the prime of life back about, oh, a couple of hundred years or so in the British Isles, a press gang was the last thing you wanted to meet. Listen to a few traditional songs from the period (“Arthur McBride,” “William Taylor,” “All Things Are Quite Silent”) and you’ll know that press gangs constituted an altogether nasty form of military recruitment, notorious for using bribery, deception, or brute force to compel young men into serving in the Royal Navy.

But today, if you meet a Portland, Me.-based trio calling itself The Press Gang, there’s no need to fear, especially if you’re a fan of Irish music. That’s because the combo of Alden Robinson (fiddle), Chris “Junior” Stevens (accordion, concertina), and recent Boston-area arrival Owen Marshall (guitar, bouzouki, harmonium, banjo) has established itself as one of the more compelling New England trad bands to emerge in the past several years. Their love of and respect for tradition is apparent, as is the sheer ebullience with which they play, and the overall joviality they bring to the whole enterprise, whether in their sometimes adventurous approach to material and arrangements, or their good-natured, even self-deprecating sense of humor.