Coughlans Live Promotions presents Ye Vagabonds at Cork Opera House .
** 2019 RTÉFolk Awards - Best Traditional Track, Best Group, Best Album - WINNERS**
So sing Ye Vagabonds on their powerful, cinematic fifth album, All Tied Together. With this release, the multi-award-winning Irish band deliver deeply evocative original songs infused with memory, tribute, and gratitude. Throughout, a strong sense of home prevails, both their own hard-won digs, past and present, and an inner refuge for anyone longing for connection beyond time and geography. “All these songs have addresses,” says
co-frontman Diarmuid Mac Gloinn. “They’re about specific locations and specific people.”
Community has always been an integral part of Ye Vagabonds. With All Tied Together, they’ve brought that ethos to their music as never before. Rising from the ashes of the 2008 economic collapse, the Mac Gloinn brothers – Brian and Diarmuid – first performed in the streets together as buskers. They coalesced into Ye Vagabonds while simultaneously creating now-legendary music nights and community-building events in their native Carlow, and later in Dublin. At these gatherings, a vast array of musical styles unfolded: jazz, folk, punk rock, blues, traditional Irish fare, Sardinian pipers, the Beatles, everything. The brothers soaked it all up for their work.
Ye Vagabonds have since evolved into a robust collective – a sonically unique ensemble featuring layered acoustic and electric guitars, trumpet, upright bass, Moog synthesizer, harmonium, bouzouki, fiddle, and the blood harmony of the siblings’ distinctive, multi-hued voices. For All Tied Together, the whole shebang was recorded mostly live in an old Galway house, with acclaimed producer Phil Weinrobe (Big Thief, Adrienne Lenker) at the helm. “We kept seeing his name on stuff we loved,” says Brian. Both Weinrobe and multi-instrumentalist Shahzad Ismaily (Laura Viers, Cass McCombs) flew over from Brooklyn. “Shahzad brings a magic to it,” says Diarmuid. “He is a wonder, one-of-a-kind.” The dynamic All Tied Together arrangements are credited to a collaborative group of (sometimes ten) musicians. No one wore headphones.
While initially achieving renown as purveyors of their ancestors’ music mixed with folk-based originals, the Mac Gloinns have increasingly focused on honing their own material, enlisting trusted co-conspirators to distill voice and vision into potent tunes. Prepping for All Tied Together, they created a Dublin-based songwriters’ meetup and enrolled in online workshops, studying the craft like a full-time job. Diarmuid says, “I treated it like my 9-to-5. I was going to a desk in our rehearsal space five days a week. For months. The days I wasn’t working, I was reading about the process, for both songwriting and short stories.” The brothers cite fiction writers George Saunders and Claire Keegan as particular inspirations.
Brothers Brían and Diarmuid Mac Gloinn grew up playing music together around their hometown of Carlow, a small town in the southeast of Ireland. After moving to Dublin in 2012, they quickly became a staple of the live music and session scene in Ireland, playing their own original songs as well as folk songs from Ireland, Scotland, England and America.
“Reflective and reverent, with Nine Waves Ye Vagabonds prove once again to be at the forefront of an ever-evolving, flourishing Irish folk scene and have done so in the most understated and inspired fashion imaginable.” Folk Radio
“A cavern of delights... A labyrinthine treasure trove” - The Irish Times
“They remind me of my first days at ‘Les Cousins’ in Soho in 1965... Ye Vagabonds are a modern expression of a tradition that is truly robust and important to these islands.” Roy Harper
