There’s a natural magnetism to DUG’s folk brew. The duo, made up of Conor (Lorkin) O’Reilly and Jonny Pickett, are gearing up for the release of their debut album, having formed in 2023–but you’d be forgiven for believing that they’ve been writing together for a lifetime.
Their music stems from roots in musical traditions spanning both sides of the pond. In one breath, echoing the great American folk troubadours, and in another, comfortably channelling the elder statesmen of Irish folk.
This is no accident. DUG have a shared musical heritage, with members having been born in America and Scotland before arriving in Ireland. O’Reilly himself spent almost a decade making and releasing music in upstate New York, having picked up sticks from his native Edinburgh, (Irish mother and Scottish father) before moving to Ireland in 2022 to start a new musical chapter.
And you can hear that lived musical experience in singles like ‘Big Sundown’ and ‘Jubilee’ (shortlisted for two Grammy nominations). Resonator guitar and banjo, the building blocks of DUG’s arrangements, lick and spin, with intricate finger-picking patterns whirling to a compelling whole. Their music breathes, vamping in sync.
They’re damn funny too. DUG’s lyrics catch you off guard, eliciting an honest-to-goodness chuckle in a moment of levity. At their very best, as on their forthcoming album, there’s a bona fide warmth littered throughout their unique take on folk storytelling. Tracks like ‘Wheel of Fortune’ have an easy rapport. It’s catching up with an old friend, all mischief and smiles.
There are allusions to darker moments there too; yearning and melancholy, to lessons learnt the hard way. Taking the heavy with the light, and being able to translate it into a foot-tapping, infectious contemporary folk sound is what DUG do best. They don’t need to posture; their music is naturally playful and honest, inviting you along on their musical journey.
DUG’s love for the musicians that inspired them never steps too far into reverence. They’re an unapologetically modern band. You’ll hear plenty of Irish influence in their music, but you’ll not find any tweed coats or paddy caps here. Instead, the band opts to be themselves-completely natural and organic. It’s part of what gives the group’s work such a strong charisma, and helps establish DUG as having one of the most unique takes on contemporary folk music.
In 2024, the duo signed to Claddagh Records, a label in which they find themselves in fine musical company. A subsidiary of Universal Records, Claddagh Records has spent the last few years becoming a hotbed for some of the most forward-thinking musicians in contemporary Irish folk, home to artists like Niamh Bury, Lemoncello and ØXN, to name a few.
It should come as no surprise that a group that delights in a touch of devilment and so ardently remains true to themselves has built a thriving community of fans, both at their live shows and through their often hilarious social media.
On that note, beyond the release of their debut album, DUG will spend much of 2025 on the road with plans for an extensive international tour. Already announced are Summer dates in the US: Colorado (main stage at Telluride Blugrass Festival), Washington, Portland and Idaho, as well as a debut tour in Australia in October. Irish fans can expect a surely raucous performance at almost every major Irish festival this summer. There’s plenty more dates still to be announced, so it’s well worth keeping your eyes peeled.
Kevin Burke: Fiddle, Dermot Byrne: Accordion, Noriana Kennedy: Vocals and 5-string banjo, Jim Murray: Guitar
Four extraordinary musicians who have shared their music with audiences for over four decades – their programme will feature inspired performances of traditional and contemporary material from artists whose collective experience and creativity have carved a deep impression on the landscape of traditional Irish music.
Audiences can look forward to an evening of remarkable musicianship, rich storytelling and joyful collaboration.
Kevin Burke:
Kevin Burke’s fiddle playing has been at the forefront of traditional music since the 1970s. His far-reaching solo album If the Cap Fits and his work with such distinguished performers as Arlo Guthrie, Kate Bush, Christy Moore and the Bothy Band established him as a ground-breaking artist. Kevin has earned international acclaim in both Europe and America as a solo performer, a teacher and as a member of some of folk music’s foremost groups including the exciting Celtic Fiddle Festival and Ireland’s long admired and respected Patrick Street. He has been the recipient of prestigious awards including Gradam Ceoil TG4 Musician of the Year 2016 and a National Heritage Fellowship, the USA’s highest honour for excellence in the folk and traditional arts.
“A superior instrumentalist in any idiom……impressively virtuosic”The New York Times [on Burke]
Dermot Byrne:
Dermot Byrne’s seemingly effortless playing, combined with great subtlety and a faultless ear, makes him one of the finest accordion players of his generation. Hailing from the Inishowen peninsula of Co. Donegal, Dermot was a member of the renowned Irish traditional music band Altan from 1994 to 2013. He has also collaborated with Séamus and Manus McGuire, Sharon Shannon, Frankie Gavin and Bríd Harper. Outside of traditional music, he has recorded and performed with household names including Dolly Parton, John Prine, Vince Gill, Alison Krauss, Paul Brady and the late jazz violinist Stephane Grappelli. His recent recordings with Canadian fiddler Pierre Schryer (2Worlds United), French harpist Floriane Blancke (Dermot Byrne and Floriane Blancke), Yvonne Casey (As We Feel It) and Steve Cooney (The Donegal Melodeon) have received widespread critical acclaim.
“A timeless delight that straddles centuries with the agility and ease that Byrne’s fingers ricochet across the reeds”The Irish Times [on Byrne’s self-titled album]
Noriana Kennedy:
Half Irish and half Filipino, Noriana Kennedy possesses a captivating voice lauded by the Irish Times as ‘a knockout: translucent and tenacious in equal measure’. Since her debut album Ebb n Flow was released in 2011, her career has soared, touring extensively in the USA with renowned traditional group Solas and sharing the stage with highly respected artists like Pauline Scanlon, Eilís Kennedy, Muireann Nic Amhlaoibh and John Spillane. In 2013, Noriana joined Nicola Joyce and Noelie McDonnell to form the stunning songwriting trio The Whileaways. Together with her bandmates, Noriana has contributed to four albums, earning several RTÉ Folk Award nominations along the way.
“Kennedy’s vocals … full of layered textures that promise to lodge deep within an audience’s subconscious for later savouring”The Irish Times
Jim Murray:
Joining them is Jim Murray, one of the world’s leading acoustic guitar players. For over twenty years he has toured, performed and recorded with artists such as Sharon Shannon, Sinéad O’Connor, Steve Earle, Shane MacGowan, Séamus Begley, Mike McGoldrick, Altan and Mary Black. In 1998, he began his professional career, having been invited to tour Japan and Australia with accordion legend Séamus Begley, whilst also in the same year touring America with piano accordion ace Alan Kelly. In 1999, Jim was invited to become guitarist with world renowned Irish musician Sharon Shannon and has recorded and toured with her across five continents. Jim had an extraordinary musical partnership with accordionist and singer Séamus Begley and their debut album Ragairne, released in 2001, received both The Irish Times and Hot Press Traditional Irish Music Album of the Year.
“Enormous vim, vigour and at the same time, remarkable subtlety”The Irish Times [on Murray]
<<This event is free as part of Culture Night however due to limited capacity you must register for a ticket in order to attend>>
Hailing from the Comeragh Mountains of County Waterford, The Wran are four brothers: Tommy, Danny, Seán and Stephen Dunford. They bring a fresh voice to Irish music, blending trad with punk and a hint of psychedelia to create music that feels both timeless and new. Drawing inspiration from Planxty, The Pogues and Lankum,
The Wran combines traditional and modern instrumentation, including banjo, harmonium, acoustic guitar, bass VI and drums. They are dedicated to keeping the Irish language, traditional songs and storytelling alive while continuing to push it forward in their own way.
After an explosive live debut in 2025, including accoladed performances at Glastonbury, Green Man, All Together Now, and Electric Picnic, the band went on to support The Scratch and Kíla, play Dublin’s Notable NYD festival, and sell out their first Irish tour. Beginning 2026 with a sold-out UK tour, The Wran are fast establishing themselves as one of Ireland’s most vital new bands.
“the sound of a band on the cusp of greatness” Rolling Stone UK
“To highlight Cliffords as ones-to-watch does a disservice to the staggering power and unlimited potential on display here: this is far more than just hype.” DIY Magazine
“[the EP] represents more than just a musical beginning; it captures what makes Cliffords such a compelling proposition” DORK
It’s been a busy and exciting few months for Cliffords as they introduced themselves to the wider world with their second EP, Salt of the Lee. It’s the sound of a band who made their initial moves outside of the glare of the music industry, and whose self-financed debut EP landed with much promise but without any pressure of expectation beyond their own. Salt of the Lee fulfils all that promise emphatically, and another thrilling next step for a band who are quickly on the rise.
Whilst Cliffords certainly continue to develop and discover both themselves as a band and their sound, they’ve already become a compelling proposition whose word-of-mouth live shows are the sound of a band on the brink of something very special.
Paul Brady has won Lifetime Achievement awards from both The Irish Recorded Music Association and the BBC. He was inducted into the British Composers and Songwriters Academy in 2004 and the (Irish) IMRO Songwriters Academy in 2013 and was further honoured by the President of Ireland with a Lifetime Achievement Award in 2015.
Here’s why.
Paul Brady
Paul Brady, singer, songwriter, musician and producer has for over fifty years been at the forefront of popular music in Ireland. Spending the first decade and a half of his career absorbing influences from Jazz, Blues, Pop, Soul and Irish folk music in bands while at college in Dublin, and later with The Johnstons, Planxty and Andy Irvine, his dramatic interpretations of classic traditional ballads such as Arthur McBride and The Lakes of Pontchartrain firmly established him as one of the cornerstones of the new wave of Irish music and song in the 1970s.
Around the end of that decade, he began to write his own songs and has since forged a reputation as one of Ireland’s finest singer-songwriters, releasing many popular and critically acclaimed records. Songs such as The Island, Crazy Dreams, Nothing But The Same Old Story, Nobody Knows, Follow On, The Long Goodbye, The World Is What You Make It and Paradise Is Here have, over the years, given joy and emotional sustenance to generations of Irish at home and abroad.
Not long after he released ‘Hard Station’, his first album of his own compositions in 1981, his songs started to come to the attention of artists worldwide and his first ‘cover’ came the following year when Santana recorded ‘Night Hunting Time’. Since then, his songs have been recorded by many international artists including Tina Turner, Cliff Richard, Cher, Carole King, Art Garfunkel, Bonnie Raitt, Joe Cocker, Eric Clapton, Trisha Yearwood and Phil Collins and closer to home, Ronan Keating, Joe Dolan, Dickie Rock, Maura O’Connell, Liam Clancy and Mary Black.
Paul continues to write, record and perform either solo, in trio or full band. A Paul Brady concert is always a special event.
He has been with his partner Mary Elliott since 1975. They have two grown-up children, Sarah and Colm and five grandchildren, Lyra, Sean, Finn, Leo and Olive. Paul lives in Dublin.
Leah Song is a storyteller, song-catcher, and cultural bridge-builder, best known as the frontwoman of Rising Appalachia alongside her sister, Chloe. She plays claw-hammer banjo, bodhrán, and guitar, and is a keeper of both traditional and contemporary songs. For over two decades, she has carried her voice across borders, blending Appalachian folk and global roots music into songs that honor both land and lineage. Her repertoire includes Southern folk, old-world balladry, and Appalachian traditionals.
Leah has studied and worked alongside some of the greatest musicians and culture keepers of our time, including Clarissa Pinkola Estés, Bobby McFerrin, Bruce Molsky, Béla Fleck and Abigail Washburn, Sheila Kay Adams, Martin Hayes, Cathy Jordan, Moya Brennan, Martin Shaw, Winona LaDuke, Joanna Macy, and more. She is joined on stage by a rotating cast of incredible musicians and multi-instrumentalists. Join her in gathering tools and teachings of resiliency, music, mythology, and celebration through sound.
“Oh my gosh!!! You are all so rad!!! You sound great!!!” – Sharon Van Etten
Formed to pay homage to trailblazing women in music, exciting five piece The Kates, from West Cork, comprises of Eve Clague, Liz Clark, Mary Beth O’Mahony, Míde Houlihan and Paula K O’Brien. All five members have played, sang and written their own music for years, each releasing albums of original work. The five piece have now written a collection of original songs and the resulting Pictures Here Of Dreams EP is out now. Debut single ‘All That Talk’ was on RTE Radio 1 recommends list for two weeks. Unbalancing also made it onto the rte recommends list, receiving great reviews.
BABYRAT
Bursting out of the heart of Cork City, BABYRAT has the future of music looking Pretty in Punk with their abrasive bitch-pop sound.
Sonically landing somewhere between The Strokes and Olivia Rodrigo, BABYRAT’s sing-along melodies are intertwined with unapologetic lyrics that are thrust forward by the electrifying future-nostalgia sound that the band have created. BABYRAT delivers “an infectious energy with a confidence and chemistry that is unmatched” – Mia Tobin Power, University Express.
Formed in November 2024, BABYRAT have already generated a loyal following since playing iconic Irish venues such as The Grand Social and a sold-out Cyprus Avenue. Circulation of their unreleased music created the excitement which earned them support slots with local heavy-hitters such as The Love Buzz and Ten Hail Marys.
Nick Harper announces new tour and album ‘58 Fordwych Rd.’, release: September 26th 2025.
Those who have witnessed Nick Harper’s spellbinding, one-man shows will tell you his his 20 years plus of crafting songs & touring the land after a childhood growing up surrounded by the musical prowess of some of the 60’s most revered songwriters & musicians, not to mention being son of Roy Harper, has spawned a truly one-off, original guitarist & songwriter who stands an artist to be cherished & revered in his own right.
Following a prolific creative chapter that has seen three studio releases since 2020, Nick returns to the setting of his childhood living room in a small flat in Kilburn, London in the mid 1960s ’58 Fordwych Rd.’. The flat was an after hours hang-out for the legends who played at Les Cousins in Soho at the height of the acoustic explosion in swingin’ sixties London. People like Bert Jansch, Davy Graham, John Renbourn, Paul Simon, Marc Bolan, David Bowie, John Martyn, Sandy Denny & others dropped in, to drop out, jam & try new tunes. But, all along, there was someone else there… a toddler, part of the family, inhaling the music & absorbing the vibe; Roy’s young son, Nick Harper.
Nick invited these acoustic legends back into the room and toured this unique story to ecstatic receptions across the UK and Ireland, picking up a coveted Herald Angel Award for excellence in performance at The Edinburgh Fringe along the way. It was here that 58 Fordwych Rd. was recorded, capturing Nick at the height of performance prowess. The craftsmanship and care with which Nick handled the repertoire coupled with his unique viewpoint meant the shows transcended tribute, Nick applying his own new twists and deft performance swagger to the songs he heard directly from the greats when growing up.
In 2025 Nick finds himself alongside Roy once more, headlining Glastonbury Festival, at de Barras for the Clonakilty International Guitar Festival and providing lead guitar duties at a trilogy of farewell concert hall shows including The London Palladium. The narrative of 58 Fordwych Rd continues to reverberate and so the live album of the same name had to see a release.
“Betjemen with a guitar” — Guitarist Magazine.
“That boy’s too good.” — Bert Jansch
“Harper has so much musicianship in him that it just leaks out all over the place.” — The Times
“If you’ve never seen Harper live, you’re missing out on one of the musical phenomenons of our age.” — Herald (Glasgow)
Few surviving songer-songwriters from the counterculture of the 60s have kept their reputations intact. Of the generation of troubadours who came of age in the London folk clubs of that era, some have passed away, while others have surrendered to the regurgitation of the blandest form of acoustic folk music. But among the survivors, there is one figure whose body of work, comprising 23 studio LPs and almost as many live and compilation releases, has come to stand for a particularly single-minded form of integrity. That man is Roy Harper.
Now officially ‘retired’, and living in a secluded corner of Ireland, Harper has recently been hailed as a key influence by a much younger generation of devoted starsailors who instinctively recognise his innovations, his refusal to compromise and his visionary world view. It is rumoured that Joanna Newsom insisted she’d only play her recent UK shows if he would support her. The likes of Fleet Foxes and Jim O’Rourke are avowed fans; and in previous decades he has enjoyed public endorsements and tributes from the likes of Led Zeppelin, Kate Bush, Pink Floyd’s Dave Gilmour and many more.
A former participant in the skiffle revolution in the mid-50s, around 1964 Harper found himself joining the stream of bohemian rambler-buskers hitching and singing their way around Europe and North Africa. On his return to Britain he pitched in to the London coffee-house folk scene and secured a residence at legendary folk club Les Cousins, where he was spotted by the obscure Strike label.
Beginning with 1966’s Sophisticated Beggar, Harper’s music has consistently rattled the cage of received ideas. His versatile, poetic sensibility was employed in a wide range of song styles from romantic love songs to late-night mantras to blackly comedic throwaway numbers. A brilliant, percussive guitar stylist in his own right, he extended the form of folk music over the next few years, allowing himself the space to stretch out in long, lyrically dense and mantrically repetitive odysseys of poetic thought. “I was writing long poems in the 50s,” says Harper, “none of which unfortunately made it past the first few moves of living quarters. My first inspiration was John Keats’s Endymion.”
The first inklings of his expansive approach on record came on the ten minute “Circle” on 1967’s Come Out Fighting Genghis Smith – produced by Shel Talmy – and was vastly ramped up on the following year’s Folkjokeopus, which contained an 18 minute “McGoohan’s Blues”, named after the lead actor of TV’s The Prisoner and whose enigmatic verses were laced with anti-establishment rants.
By this time Harper was a favourite at the outdoor Hyde Park Festivals, where he was exposed to the wider attention of the underground scene. Now produced and managed by Peter Jenner, and signed to EMI’s progressive label Harvest, his 1969 LP Flat Baroque And Berserk reflected his reputation as a bloodyminded, truculent troubadour, reflecting turbulent times with anger, wrath and sardonic humour, singing – like the mistle thrush after which his next opus would be named – into the eye of the storm.
Stormcock (1971) is generally regarded as a masterpiece: a sprawling but focused suite of four lengthy tracks which explored the inner space of Abbey Road Studio to rhapsodic effect. Like Astral Weeks refracted through the pages of OZ magazine, the songs span an enormous spectrum of experience, from the frontline of social unrest to the secluded, birdsong-infested lanes of the English countryside. Led Zeppelin’s Jimmy Page added guitar, disguised as ‘S Flavius Mercurius’, highlighting a relationship with the group that had begun at the 1970 Bath Festival of Blues and Progressive Music. “Hats Off To (Roy) Harper”, an incoherent, gutsy blues workout on Led Zeppelin III, paid tribute to the singer’s status as a beacon of integrity for the underground scene.
Harper enjoyed a special relationship with Led Zeppelin, and his subsequent albums began to move into harder rock territory with the addition of various key collaborators including, as well as Page, orchestral arranger/keyboardist David Bedford, David Gilmour, Chris Spedding, Bill Bruford and John Paul Jones. Lifemask (1972) contained several songs written for the film Made, directed by John Mackenzie, which starred Harper as an edgy, high-maintenance rock star. Valentine (1974) was launched with a gig featuring Page and Bedford plus Ronnie Lane and Keith Moon. He was invited to sing lead on the single “Have A Cigar” from Pink Floyd’s classic album Wish You Were Here (1975). In the same year Harper released HQ, a rock based album notable for the closing track, “When An Old Cricketer Leaves The Crease”, an elegiac hymn to unchanging ways and mortality which BBC DJ John Peel insisted should be played in the event of his death.
With the dawn of the 1980s Harper took part in a musical exchange with Kate Bush, who guested on The Unknown Soldier (1980), while Harper returned the favour by appearing on Bush’s hit single “Breathing”. Harper rode the unsteady waves of the music industry during the early 1980s but kept up a productive output that saw his music taking on a prophetic role, expressing more explicit concerns with environmental disaster, religious fundamentalism, urban poverty and the first Gulf War, on releases like Once (1990), The Dream Society (1998) and The Green Man (2000). In 1994, exhibiting typical desire for autonomy and self-sufficiency, he set up his own record label, Science Friction, to curate and rerelease his entire back catalogue, along with a clutch of CDs of live and unreleased material covering his entire career. In his book, The Passions Of Great Fortune (2003), he published his complete lyrics together with photos, annotations and re-evaluations of every one of his songs. In 2005 Harper was awarded the Mojo Hero Award by the staff of Mojo magazine. The award itself was presented by long time collaborator and friend, Jimmy Page.
2011 saw Roy Harper’s incredible, visionary catalogue of work enter the digital domain in time for his music to take on a new, urgent and timely appeal, in an age in which the hypocrisies and injustices he railed against are more present than ever before. Roy featured heavily in all of the major music magazines, UK broadsheets, on radio and made appearances on prime time television including the BBC Breakfast show and Later with Jools Holland. To end the rush he performed a special show at the Royal Festival Hall in celebration of his 70th, joined on stage by his son Nick Harper, Joanna Newsom, Jonathan Wilson and a surprise appearance by Jimmy Page. It was an amazing show, selling out in just a few days. The response was extraordinary.
It’s been a damned good innings and he’s still not out. In January 2013 Harper received the BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards Lifetime Achievement Award. In September 2013 Roy Harper: Man & Myth – The Documentary, directed by George Scott, was broadcast on Sky Arts and his first album in thirteen years, ‘Man & Myth’, was released on Bella Union followed by three special concerts. The album received rave reviews.
18-year-old blues sensation Muireann Bradley, a remarkable talent hailing from the small town of Ballybofey in County Donegal, Ireland, signs with Decca Records/Verve Forecast to re-release her acclaimed debut album, I Kept These Old Blues, on 28th February 2025.
Bradley’s journey from playing in her bedroom to performing on Jools Holland’s Hootenanny this year has captivated audiences, establishing her as one of Ireland’s brightest emerging stars. Now she is poised for a global breakout.
Her newly remastered album will also feature previously unheard track ‘When The Levee Breaks’, which Muireann performed on The Late Late Show and wowed her fellow guests, Oscar and Golden Globe-nominated actors Paul Mescal and Andrew Scott (see the performance and interview here). Speaking about the track, Muireann says, “Originally recorded in 1929 by Memphis Minnie and Kansas Joe McCoy, ‘When The Levee Breaks’ is probably my favourite tune to perform live. Memphis Minnie is one of my biggest heroes, and I love her guitar picking on that record. My arrangement is a tribute to another one of my heroes, the great Philadelphia pre-war blues revivalist and teacher Ari Eisinger, who has been one of the biggest influences on my playing.”
Muireann’s signing with Decca Records solidifies her place as a torch-bearer for the new generation of blues, paying homage to the genre’s history while bringing her own fresh perspective to the stage.
