Junior Brother recorded one of his early low-fi records in his kitchen in Kerry. A couple of years and many gigs later, he talks to Martin Cook about his evolution as an experimental folk singer.
Ronan Kealy, known to fans as Junior Brother, took his stage name from a play by Thomas Middleton called The Revenger’s Tragedy. It suited the time period his songs are drawn from, he says. “But it’s also quite mad and experimental.”
The folk singer brings together acoustic guitar and a rhythmic foot tambourine. He sings in his Kerry accent, thanks to the influence of his uncle, who said he should have a listen to Damien Dempsey, who sings in his own Dublin voice, and made Kealy realise that “I can just sing in my own accent and it’s grand.”
Kealy was in Dublin recently to perform some of his songs at Marrowbone Books in The Coombe, including the popular “Hungover at Mass” and “No Snitch”. Before the gig, he talked to Martin Cook about all this and more. Have a listen.
Mel Keane took the stage Saturday as part of Dublin Digital Radio’s annual festival, Alternating Current, at The Complex.
“Pitched as ‘avante hyperpop’, her music can sound like what Mariah Carey might cook up if she spent more hours hanging out in video arcades and reading radical literature.”
Filmmaker Sarah Share’s “The Graceless Age: The Ballad of John Murry” tells the story of the Mississippi-born musician, who is now living in Ireland.
Ellen Be, and the band Cozinha Preta, brought a message of cultural awakening and ancestral power.
