Muireann Bradley – Rose Dogs & Blackwood Pew

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1. These Days
2. Special Rider Blues
3. Clay Pigeons
4. Sligo River Blues
5. No Name Blues
6. Last kind words
7. Dancing On My Grave
8. True love
9. Clementine
10. I want you
11. Not going back

Mit gerade einmal 19 Jahren gilt die Irin Muireann Bradley als eine der vielversprechendsten Neuentdeckungen der internationalen Folk- und Blues-Szene. Was mit beeindruckenden Fingerstyle-Interpretationen klassischer Blues-Stücke begann, entwickelt sich nun zu einer außergewöhnlichen Karriere als Singer-Songwriterin. Am 23. Oktober erscheint über Fontana Records die Doppel-EP „Rose Dogs & Blackwood Pew“ auf Vinyl und CD.

Die Veröffentlichung vereint erstmals die fünf Songs der 2025 digital erschienenen EP „Rose Dogs“ mit den sechs Songs der neuen EP „Blackwood Pew“, die gleichzeitig digital veröffentlicht wird.

Schon mit ihrem Debütalbum „I Kept These Old Blues“ (2024) sorgte die junge Künstlerin international für Aufsehen. TV-Auftritte bei Jools Holland’s Hootenanny und The Late Late Show, ausverkaufte Konzerte in Europa und Nordamerika sowie Festivalauftritte an der Seite von Künstlern wie Neil Young, Lana Del Rey und Beck machten deutlich, dass hier ein außergewöhnliches Talent heranwächst. Mit ihrer scheinbar mühelosen Fingerstyle-Technik verbindet Bradley technische Virtuosität mit einer bemerkenswerten Wärme und Reife – Qualitäten, die ihr weit über die Blues-Community hinaus große Anerkennung eingebracht haben.

Mit „Blackwood Pew“ beginnt nun ein neues Kapitel. Erstmals steht Muireann Bradley nicht nur als brillante Interpretin, sondern als eigenständige Songwriterin im Mittelpunkt. Die EP umfasst drei neue Eigenkompositionen sowie neue Bearbeitungen ausgewählter Klassiker. Gemeinsam ergeben sie ein Werk, das tief in Country Blues, Folk und irischer Musik verwurzelt ist und zugleich den unverwechselbaren Charakter einer jungen Künstlerin offenbart, die ihre eigene musikalische Sprache gefunden hat.

Produziert wurde die EP gemeinsam mit Declan Gaffney. Ergänzt durch Ella Walker (Wildes) und weitere hochkarätige Sessionmusiker erweitert Bradley ihren bislang überwiegend akustischen Sound behutsam um Bass, Schlagzeug, Slide-Gitarre und Keyboards. So entstehen atmosphärische Arrangements, die den Blick über traditionelle Genregrenzen hinaus öffnen, ohne ihre intime Handschrift zu verlieren.

Der Titel „Blackwood Pew“ verweist auf die Gitarre, die auf sämtlichen neuen Aufnahmen zu hören ist: ein maßgefertigtes Instrument aus australischem Blackwood-Holz, dessen Boden und Zargen aus einer über 200 Jahre alten Kirchenbank aus Tasmanien gefertigt wurden. Gebaut wurde sie von Steve Brown, der nach einem Konzert so beeindruckt war, dass er Bradley das Instrument anfertigte – ein außergewöhnliches Geschenk, das sinnbildlich für die Begeisterung steht, die ihre Musik weltweit auslöst.

Mit der Doppel-EP „Rose Dogs & Blackwood Pew“ dokumentiert Muireann Bradley eindrucksvoll ihren nächsten Entwicklungsschritt: von einer gefeierten Interpretin traditioneller Musik zu einer eigenständigen Songwriterin mit unverwechselbarer Stimme. Die Veröffentlichung zeigt eine Künstlerin, die bereits jetzt zu den aufregendsten jungen Talenten ihres Genres zählt – und deren musikalische Reise gerade erst beginnt.

BIOGRAPHY

Muireann Bradley makes music that feels timeless. The 19-year-old blues guitar prodigy has earned acclaim for her intricate fingerstyle playing, transforming technical brilliance into performances of remarkable warmth, clarity, and emotional depth. Her forthcoming Blackwood Pew EP, due in October via Fontana Records/Verve Forecast, marks a defining new chapter.  The new collection follows her acclaimed 2024 debut I Kept These Old Blues and introduces Muireann as a songwriter for the first time, pairing her original compositions with fresh reworkings of classics that feel every bit as enduring as the tradition that inspired them.

Blackwood Pew opens outward in every sense. With contributions from producer Declan Gaffney and Ella Walker (aka Wildes), the EP broadens its author’s sonic palette with richly layered bass, drums and slide guitar, played by an array of top session players and keys by producer Declan Gaffney. From the themes of longing that shape ‘Not Going Back’ to the evocative, Velvet Underground-inspired ‘Clementine’, the record draws on a lifetime immersed in ragtime blues, American old-time and country sounds, alongside the Irish trad music Muireann grew up with. It feels like a door opening onto new ground; familiar in its roots, yet stepping into something more expansive.

While working on the EP in Hackney, Bradley arrived with the momentum of touring internationally, writing through and into her growth as both human and artist. She recorded the new songs on a handcrafted guitar built for her by Steve Brown of Wallace Brown Guitars in Gippsland in Victoria Australia who, having seen her perform, was inspired to build her a custom instrument. It features Australian Blackwood back and sides reclaimed from a 200-year-old church pew from Tasmania, a King Billy Pine top also from that island, and a distinct copper pickguard. The guitar has become her constant companion on stage and in the studio – so much so it gave rise to the name of the EP.

It’s this level of connection that Muireann’s live shows consistently draw, first building a devoted following through YouTube before translating that intimacy to the stage. She has sold out headline gigs on both sides of the Atlantic and was handpicked by Fontaines D.C.’s Tom Coll and folk collective Broadside Hacks to top the bill at Féile Moth, an Irish cultural festival in London. On television, just weeks after turning 17, Muireann captivated the studio audience at Jools Holland’s Hootenanny with her spellbinding take on blues standard ‘Candyman’, performing in front of Ruby Turner and Sir Rod Stewart, before later delivering a knockout rendition of Memphis Minnie’s ‘When The Levee Breaks’ on The Late Late Show.

Muireann explains that for “a very long time”, even as her trajectory expanded across the UK festival circuit with appearances at Green Man, End Of The Road and Bearded Theory, she questioned whether audiences would “want to engage with this kind of music” in a live setting. Growing up in County Donegal with no contemporary reference points – she had “never, ever met” anyone who shared her tastes – that relative solitude became the foundation of her craft, shaped in her childhood bedroom with the encouragement of her father, whose love of the greats seemed to pass to her by osmosis as he introduced her to Tom Waits, early acoustic Bob Dylan and Irish guitarists Arty McGlynn and John Doyle.

Raised in what she calls a “music house”, Muireann’s father kept a dedicated room lined with guitars and stacks of CDs (Blind Blake, Blind Lemon Jefferson, Mississippi John Hurt) which she would sneak into and pick up his prized vintage Gibsons; he’d pretend to be annoyed, but was secretly delighted that his daughter was so intrigued. When the pandemic sidelined Muireann’s interest in boxing and Brazilian jiu‑jitsu, she turned to the guitar to channel that discipline into mastering a demanding, dexterous fingerpicking style.

“There’s a lot of pressure when you go into a boxing ring, and that prepared me for going on stage,” Muireann explains. “I also really like the challenge of learning this kind of playing style. It’s difficult and not many people play it. I get a real kick out of figuring things out by ear. I’ve always been the kind of person that’s really good at locking themselves away and doing something until they get it.”

At this point in her burgeoning career, as Muireann spends chunks of each year travelling, Blackwood Pew arrives with a sense of homecoming. Her world has opened up – from trips to North Carolina’s MerleFest, where she and her dad met a number of bluegrass greats – yet the idea of home has become something like an inner glow: sparked by taking in the rolling coastlines of County Donegal and reminiscing about the county’s folk festivals; by hearing a local accent, or walking past the Balor Arts Centre where she performed in youth musicals.

For Muireann, being back in Ireland is “grounding” as her profile grows, an anchor against the nagging anticipation of constant change. The downtime it affords has also opened up her imagination: more recently she has engaged with film, especially black comedies like Withnail and I, and that influence leans into the impressionistic imagery that runs through ‘Clementine’. Elsewhere, she writes from a blend of open‑to‑interpretation narratives and personal experience, while ‘Not Going Back’ was born from not overthinking the words and letting the mood of the music guide her. ‘Dancing On My Grave’, which features a hypnotic, haunting layered vocal, began life as a spare guitar part before Muireann interwove lyrics inspired by the story of Delta blues great Robert Johnson’s death by poisoning in 1938.

While I Kept These Old Blues revolved around revitalising other people’s songs and putting her ‘in the know’ among record collectors, festival bookers and genre devotees, Blackwood Pew widens the frame, as Muireann wants her own material to eventually sit alongside the canon. The EP, therefore, is the product of a passionate storyteller who values the graft of slow, attentive work and trusts it to bear fruit and carry her towards greatness.

“I’m excited to record more of my own songs,” she concludes. “I want to get them out there and see what people think, to make more albums and keep moving forward, developing my style and my songwriting.” A new, pivotal chapter now opens for Muireann, as she begins to chart where her curiosity might lead and the possibilities ahead feel abundant.

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