Let There Be Folk

The Mac Gloinn brothers…

teeped in the native music of not only from their beloved Ireland but Scotland, England and America too, Brían and Diarmuid Mac Gloinn might just be brothers out of time.

They were not yet teens, after all, when they fell under the spell of Willie Clancy, Andy Irvine and Nick Drake.

To name but three of their early folk heroes.

As Ye Vagabonds, the brothers now find themselves sitting comfortably at the fore of a new wave of Irish folk, their three albums – 2017’s eponymous debut, 2019’s The Hare’s Lament and 2022’s Nine Waves – picking up a slew of awards.

More importantly, the lads have been taking their particular brand of folk harmonising – which Diarmuid describes as being “connected with the Ulster singing tradition with harmonies that draw on American traditional music” – to stages around the world.

And building up one heck of a live following.

Which may explain why their show at The Whale on Friday, June 21st sold out stupidly quick. You can join the waiting list here.

In the meantime, we asked the brothers Mac Gloinn to dig deep for their musical inspirations…

Diarmuid…

Lisa O’Neill Neillie’s Song
I’ve been a big fan of Lisa’s music since the first time I met her at the first Spirit of Folk festival a number of years ago. The album Same Cloth Or Not had a massive effect on me. Neillie’s Song in particular has brought tears to my eyes more than once.

Andy Irvine Bonny Woodhall
There was a period of a couple of weeks when I was listening to the Andy Irvine and Paul Brady album a lot in the run up to the tribute gig that we played with a lot of other Irish folk musicians. This song always seems to catch me off guard. I feel like some songs are more cathartic because the story is far enough from your daily experience that you don’t guard yourself against the cliches like you might with a more conventional love song.

Tyrannosaurus Rex She Was Born To Be My Unicorn
This is a beautiful album and a beautiful song. Again the great thing about this is that it’s too far out to be a cliche. It’s also fantastical and imaginative in a way that it seems to live in its own little world. I used to climb into that world and live there at times during my early twenties. Pure escapism but you need that sometimes when you’re an angsty youth.

Skara Brae Táim Breoite Go Leoir
This used to be the car music on family trips to our mother’s home-place on Arranmore Island in Donegal. It’s a beautiful Irish language version of the well-known Lord Randall ballad of which there are many amazing English language versions, including Buried in Kilkenny by Mary Delaney. This album is there to make an absolute show of everyone else. I believe they recorded it in a day and the youngest of them was thirteen or fourteen at the time.

The Beatles Within You Without You
I received Sgt. Pepper’s as a birthday gift from my sister Aoife when I was 12. Needless to say my mind couldn’t have been more blown. I listened to it a lot. This song was the first that ever brought cosmic tears to my eyes. By this I mean when a song or an experience elicits an almost spiritual feeling and you have a realisation of some kind that’s beyond words and find tears in your eyes. ‘Life goes on within you and without you…’. Fair play to George Harrison.

Brian…

Sweeney’s Men Dreams For Me
This song and the album it was on completely changed my life and attitude towards music. I remember the day I heard this song first, and I listened to it on repeat about 15 times while I waited in the car for my Mam to finish work. I just thought it was the coolest music I had ever heard.

The way they brought Irish music into the cosmic, psychedelic world on their second album blew my 11 year-old mind. I had never noticed the bouzouki before either, and I got obsessed with the sound of that instrument and the way Johnny Moynihan played it.

Last year I was fortunate enough to meet Johnny and got a chance to play the original bouzouki he played in Sweeney’s Men, and the first bouzouki to come to Irish music. It was a fairly special experience for me.

Nick Drake From The Morning
When I was 15, I spent a good three weeks of summer holidays in Arranmore with my parents on my own without many other family or friends around, and all I had to entertain myself with was a little travel guitar and a handful of my sisters’ CDs. That was when I discovered Pink Moon and Nick Drake for the first time. There’s something beautifully sad but uplifting about this song that I took refuge in as a slightly sad and lonely teenager. This was the first song I figured out how to play in DADGAD tuning, and I started making up loads of my own Nick Drake-inspired songs that summer in that same style.

Willie Clancy The Bold Trainer O
I heard this air for the first time while on my way down to Kerry in the beginning of December a couple of years ago. The light was just about fading from the sky as I was reaching freezing north Kerry. The tune is played for the first couple of times around on the pipes without drones, just a lone chanter, and by then you think you know the feeling of the air. Then he kicks in the drones in a completely unexpected minor key, and the mood totally changes. It is so dark, desperately mournful, but absolutely beautiful.

Ian Lynch The Dark Eyed Gypsy
Ian came in to a session we were playing in the Harbour Bar in Bray one evening last year with a low concertina, and the noisy bar fell completely silent for about 8 or 9 minutes for a heart-breaking rendition of this Ulster ballad. The song tells a story of a woman who runs away from her husband, children, houses and land to be with a gypsy she’s fallen in love with. I’ve heard Lankum perform this song a number of times since, but I can’t reproduce my experience of that first time I heard the song. There’s life experience and story telling in Ian’s voice that made that rendition of that song particularly special for me.

The Incredible String Band First Girl I Loved
Vinny Kehoe, a teacher in my primary school in Carlow taught me to play the guitar and fed me a lot of great music when I was 11 or 12. He gave me a double CD compilation of music that influenced the British folk revival and First Girl I Loved was one of the songs in that collection. The song is so brilliantly honest. I love every element of the song; the theme, the amazing guitar playing, the whimsical singing, the colour of the lyrics, and the relatable emotion behind it. It gives a much more realistic account of a first romance than any other song Iíve heard. The Incredible String Band became a very important band to me after that.

You can find out more about Ye Vagabonds on their website here, follow them on Instagram here, Facebook here or X here, and go join that June 21st waiting list right here.