Bill Shanley is an internationally renowned guitarist and producer,
working with esteemed artists such as Ray Davies, Gilbert O’Sullivan, Mary Black and Sinead O’Connor.
Dublin based, Bill is one of Irelands top session and touring guitar players and producers. Bill has established himself internationally too, through touring and contributing to albums with Ray Davies, Gilbert O’Sullivan, Paul Brady, Mary Black, Roy Harper, Alexandra Burke, Sinead O’Connor, Judy Collins, Jackson Browne to name a few.
Being an accompanist has always been of key interest to Bill, enjoying the great scope and limitless backdrop you can create as a player for the artist you’re working with. This skill was commented on in the Financial Times review of a Ray Davies show a the Royal Albert Hall…
“Is there a finer sideman around?
It’s unlikely.” – Financial Times Review, Royal Albert Hall
Born in Ennis, County Clare, along Ireland’s music-rich west coast, Gerry O’Beirne is a renowned singer, songwriter, record producer and guitarist (6 and 12 string guitar, tiple, and ukulele, slide guitar among others). He grew up in Ireland and in Ghana in West Africa, and has since lived in England, California, and Mexico. He lives now near Dingle in Co Kerry. His own compositions blend the passion found in traditional music with the freshness of contemporary song.
Gerry’s much loved first solo album Half Moon Bay features The Holy Ground, Half Moon Bay, Western Highway and The Shades Of Gloria which have been sung by Maura O’Connell, Muireann Nic Amhlaoibh, Mary Black and many other great singers. His second album The Bog Bodies And Other Stories: Music For Guitar was named CD of the Month on the American radio show Echoes, and one of its essential albums of the year. “Yesterday I Saw The Earth Beautiful”, a duet album with fiddler Rosie Shipley featured his own songs, settings of poems by Paddy Kavanagh and Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill along with traditional tunes from Ireland and Cape Breton. On his new album Swimming The Horses Gerry performs a new collection of songs and guitar pieces written in Dingle in West Kerry.
Gerry has toured the world as a solo artist and with the Sharon Shannon Band, Patrick Street, Midnight Well, Andy M. Stewart, Kevin Burke, Andy Irvine, and the Waterboys. He has performed at the White House, opened for the Grateful Dead, played electric guitar with Marianne Faithfull and thought nothing of playing with a Romanian orchestra and choir in a cemetery in Transylvania at night. He has written music for film and theatre and appeared on Garrison Keillor’s A Prairie Home Companion. Recently he has been working with New York composer Peter Gordon on a recording of the music of the legendary Arthur Russell, and recorded recently with Peter Gordon and Tim Burgess of the Charlatans.
His songs were celebrated in a special concert at Sligo’s Fleadh Cheoil in August 2015 and his song All Down The Day was nominated for song of the year at the Fok Awards 2019.
In 2022 He performed a concert of solo guitar improvisations at Féile na Bealtaine in Dingle.
He has produced albums including Promenade by Kevin Burke and Michael O’Dhomhnaill (winner of the Grand Prix Du Disque at Montreux), Irish Times by Patrick Street, Man in the Moon and Donegal Rain by Andy M. Stewart, The Connaughtman’s Rambles by Martin O’Conner, Up Close by Kevin Burke, Silver Hook Tango by Australian singer-songwriter Kavisha Mazella, albums by Sarah McQuaid, and Lumina by Irish piper, low whistle player, and composer Eoin Duignan. His latest production is So Ends This Day by the great West Kerry singer Éilís Kennedy.
“Beautiful… Exuberant and lyrical sound… an album so full of melodic warmth that it can barely be contained… one of the most perfect acoustic albums I’ve heard in a while …. a career defining album” — John Diliberto of Echoes about “The Bog Bodies And Other Stories: Music For Guitar”
“ “O’Beirne’s 2000 LP Half Moon Bay is beloved for good reason, and i’d highly recommend giving a listen to his latest effort, Swimming The Horses, which was self-released in May 2019. Even for listeners largely uninterested in Irish folk music, “The Last King Of Feothanach” and the alluring title track are beautifully haunting ballads, and O’Beirne has managed to write perhaps the canonical musical setting of James Joyce in “Golden Hair”.” – Colorado Springs Independent. ” — Colorado Springs Independent
“An intimate amphitheatre where the gracefulness of O’Beirne’s composition finds full expression.” — Irish Times
“The instrumentals are out of this world. A self taught master of the 6 and 12 string guitar, the playing of O’Beirne is superlative and subtle beyond words.” — The Sunday Times
“His works are simple, elegiac and exquisitely worded pen pictures of life’s experiences.” — Rock ‘N’ Reel
“Material comes from Paul Brady, Mary Chapin Carpenter, Shawn Colvin and Lennon & McCartney, but the highlight is Gerry O’Beirne’s beautiful ‘Half Moon Bay” — Q Magazine (of Maura O’Connell’s ‘Stories’)
“He should be compulsory listening for any aspiring ambitious guitarist. It’s not just his technical dexterity and brilliance that catches the imagination, it’s the inventive use of arrangements, lyrics and melody.” — The Word
“Intelligent, articulate, insightful musicianship from a real craftsman. Not a wasted word nor an untrue note”— Pay The Reckoning
“A sublime talent….opens new creative vistas for acoustic guitar music” – fRoots
ZOH AMBA:
Zoh Amba is a songwriter, composer and multi-instrumentalist from Tennessee residing in New York. She began her musical journey steeped in the musical traditions of the South and has taken it from coast to coast and is mainly known as a saxophonist who blends avant-garde, noise, and devotional hymns, though has not shied from incorporating folk melodies into that world. Over the past several years Amba has been also been focusing on writing songs on guitar with lyrics that come from the heart and her love of nature and experiences. She has been performing her folk songs primarily in NYC both solo and with her band consisting of Adam Brisben (Buck Meek) also on guitar and Jeremy Gustin (Joan is Police Woman) on drums but also performs solo. Throughout the years Zoh has collaborated with a variety of high profile musicians such Glen Hansard, Tyshawn Sorey, Bill Orcutt, Brian Chase (Yeah Yeah Yeahs), Jim White (Dirty Three), etc. Amba has performed at well respected venues and festivals all over the world and has taught workshops and masterclasses at institutions such as New School (NY), Oberlin (OH), and various European festivals.
EOIN ‘STAN’ O SULLIVAN:
Eoin ‘Stan’ O’Sullivan (The Ceili Allstars, Stanley Super 800) explores the wild edges of Sliabh Luachra fiddle music—armed with an electric guitar.
Irish musicians have long worn their traditional roots with pride, even as they’ve pushed into contemporary sounds—but this is something else. This isn’t the polished innovation of Moving Hearts or the Celtic-glam of Horslips. Stan and Shane sound like they’ve come from a parallel timeline—one where the Public Dance Halls Act of 1935 was never passed, and traditional music naturally rode the same electric wave as rock ’n’ roll, psych, and punk.
The result is raw, rooted, and defiantly off-road—traditional music reimagined on dirty guitar and big drums. There’s a surprising likeness to the Desert Blues of artists like Tinariwen or Mdou Moctar—something the duo leans into proudly. As Stan puts it:
“If Ali Farka Touré played accordion, we might say he sounded like Joe Cooley. I think the resemblance shows the kinship of all folk music—and those parallels become obvious when the tunes are sung in the same language: electric guitar.”
ZOÉ BASHA:
Zoé Basha is a musician, composer and carpenter, of French and American origins. Based between Ireland and the traveling life for over a decade, Zoé blends traditional singing with jazz and blues. Her original pieces and traditional songs explore the crossover between the sway of Appalachian mountain songs, the fervour and solemn ornamentation of Irish traditional songs, and the pulse of American ragtime through playful, syncopated guitar and a booming voice reminiscent of some old jazz record you can’t quite put your finger on.
After growing up between the U.S. and France, traveling by thumb, freight trains, and taking the scenic route with rust-bucket vans, she played music in the streets for years to sustain the journey. In a milieu blending feminism, radical politics, queer theory and traditional music, she made her home in Dublin.
In 2023, she was a featured singer at Féile Róise Rua, and a Music Network RESONATE Residency recipient. Following the release of an album with vocal harmony trio Rufous Nightjar in March 2024, Zoé recorded her debut solo album ‘Gamble’ – set for release on April 17th 2025. The album was recorded at Black Mountain Studios in Dundalk, with a band of esteemed musicians adding organ, upright bass, fiddle, dobro and drums, to voice and guitar. It was mixed and mastered by Grammy-award winning engineer Ben Rawlins.
“A deft new voice in folk”— The Guardian (Folk Album of The Month)
“soulfully authentic and fearlessly genre-blending”— Earmilk