“I wrote this song in response to the tangible feeling of dread and anxiety I felt across Dublin city during my first few months living there. Increasingly hostile and violent evictions, police complicity in such acts, the housing crisis in general, among other factors seemed to cultivate a distrust of authority, particularly in the youth of the country. The day after a police-backed violent eviction of peaceful protestors from an abandoned house in North Frederick Street, Dublin, I stood with many others my age outside the empty house,and remarked upon seeing the photograph of the balaclava’d police next to the thugs dressed in all black that you couldn’t tell the goons from the guards. I joined the dots between this line of inquiry and the expectations of masculinity in society, which in turn led me around to posit the notion that a better society does not come quick, and before things change, this future must “wait like a woman”, in hope and frustration.”
An idiosyncratic, challenging and richly lyrical singer/ songwriter, Junior Brother is the pseudonym of Co. Kerry, Ireland singer Ronan Kealy. Following his acclaimed debut album Pull The Right Rope (a Choice Music Prize nominee for Irish Album of the Year), Junior Brother has whipped up a dedicated following thanks to unmissable live shows, and music both excitingly forward-looking and anciently evocative. His strange stories unfold with reckless abandon upon an idiosyncratic guitar and foot tambourine accompaniment, influenced as much by the avant-garde as music from the middle-ages and his home place in rural Ireland.
Spreading the good word in iconic venues such as The Beacon Theatre (New York), Blackpool Opera House (UK) and Vicar Street (Dublin), he has played support for a variety of like-minded acts such as The Proclaimers and Glen Hansard, the latter bringing him on a tour of the US East Coast in July 2019.
Pull The Right Rope, Junior Brother’s trailblazing debut album, was nominated for the Choice Music Prize Award for Irish Album of the Year. Two nominations were also earned at the 2019 RTÉ Radio 1 Folk Awards, for Best Folk Album and Best Emerging Folk Act. Vigorous approval from modern-day Irish figureheads such as the Rubberbandits and Cillian Murphy has furthered Junior Brother’s stock, the latter playing Junior Brother several times on his BBC6 Music Radio Show. Along-side further airplay in Ireland on all major national radio stations, his television performances include appearances on the Tommy Tiernan show, Other Voices and the Choice Music Prize Prize night in Vicar Street.
No Country For Young Men, the new single from Junior Brother is out on 9th February on Strange Brew. It will be available on all your digital yokeys, as well as limited edition gold 7” backed with a vinyl only exclusive B-Side. Pre-order now from strangebrew.ie and juniorbrother.com
Junior Brother Tour Dates
16 April – Spirit Store, Dundalk
22 April – Connolly’s Of Leap, Cork
23 April – Seachurch, Ballycotton
05 May – Button Factory, Dublin
14 May – Dolan’s Warehouse, Limerick
10 – June De Barra’s, Clonakilty
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