It’s time to meet my favourite new band – Shamrock Showband and their Irish country and western-inspired music.
CMAT blew open a portal in Irish music around 2020 and hasn’t closed since. It’s the one that leads to a parallel Ireland: the Ireland of showbands, of country and western, of Brendan Shine on a Friday night in a ballroom in Rooskey, of rhinestones and reverb and songs about lorry drivers and lost loves.
CMAT blasted it open wearing a Stetson and a broken heart and wrote some of the best Irish pop songs of the decade. In her wake, some young Irish musicians realised that Irish country wasn’t camp or embarrassing – it was rich, strange, deeply funny and entirely underexplored. Somebody had to go the full way. Shamrock Showband went the full way.
Showband inspiration
The Irish showband era ran from the 1950s to the early 1980s – large touring ensembles of seven to twelve musicians who played the ballroom circuit across Ireland, covering everything from rock and roll to traditional music for rural audiences who had few other forms of entertainment. At their peak, bands like The Miami Showband and The Royal were bigger in Ireland than the Beatles, before the Troubles, the rise of lounge bars and changing tastes brought the era to a close.
The Belfast-based trio of Conor McAuley on fiddle (who plays with DUG), Jamie Bishop on guitar, samplers and synthesizers (aka MUCKNO and the Jinx Lennon Band), and Joel Harkin on pedal steel – hail from the border counties of Louth, Monaghan and Donegal respectively. They are, in their own words, paying homage to and trying to revive the Irish showband era – a psychedelic country band built on a very specific kind of Irish sensibility.
Father Ted-core?
It’s Father Ted-core. That peculiar frequency of Irish life that the show captured so precisely: the damp fields, the parish hall, the complete sincerity of things that could easily be played for pure comedy but aren’t.
Shamrock Showband operate in that register, but they are not a novelty act. They are completely serious about music that sounds like it was recorded in a marquee in a field in 1987 and also somehow sounds like nothing you’ve heard before.
Their self-titled debut album was released on last May and contains 11 tracks with titles like ‘Luas, Pride of Abbey St’, ‘See You Through The Hedge’, ‘Hawk Is A Mule’ and ‘Hail Against The Barndoor’. The band were a duo of McAuley and Bishop then, with Harkin (pedal steel), Ultan Lavery (organ and more), Alannah Thornburgh (harp, and tin whistles) and Catriona Gribben (accordion) contributing.
These are songs that understand the specific poetry of Irish vernacular speech and Irish life with ‘Patriots’ treating dunderheaded Irish patriotism with the same straight-faced absurdism that Father Ted applied to the Catholic Church – “get the bus to Dundalk to bust heads in the square / raise the tricolour round with my head full of air”. The song was originally a Muckno song with a very different air.
The music itself is harder to pin down than the concept suggests. Their sound is built on a fascination with country and Irish records, old-time American fiddle music, sampling and punk – which is a more adventurous set of ingredients than most bands with the word “showband” in their name would attempt. They’ve played Electric Picnic’s Brutopolis stage, opened for Gurriers and Jinx Lennon, and are heading out on tour this summer.
CMAT proved that there was an audience for Irish music that engaged seriously and playfully with the country and ballroom tradition without condescension or irony. Shamrock Showband take that permission and go somewhere murkier and stranger with it. Less glitter, more diesel fumes, wee cars and damp hay.
They are one of the more interesting bands operating in Ireland right now and they are gearing up with recent single ‘My Wee Car’ the song that opened up the Shamrock Showband portal for me – an earworm about a lovely little motor that I could not, or did not want to shake.
New single ‘Last of Cromwell’ is out on Wednesday May 13th. It’s part of the ‘Last of…’ family of tunes in old-time music – traditionally composed for someone about to be executed. The band, with characteristic logic, have composed one for Cromwell posthumously, to celebrate his posthumous execution. It’s an instrumental featuring fiddle from Ultan Lavery (Zoe Basha, David Murphy), Catriona Gribben on accordion (Mary Wallopers/ Huartan) and Chris Barry of the Jinx Lennon Band on electric guitar. “It’s a fun, dancy instrumental tune that’ll really make you lose your head” is how they describe it.
Their second album, Shankill Road Mission – recorded at Swimming Pig Studios on the top floor of the Shankill Road Mission building in Belfast – follows later this year. They launch it at Whelan’s Upstairs in Dublin on Tuesday June 17th. A full Irish and Scottish tour runs from May through June, taking in Edinburgh, Glasgow, Belfast, Dundalk, Bray, Letterkenny, Wexford, Monaghan and more.
Shamrock Showband tour
- ☘️25 April – The Duncairn Arts Centre – Belfast
- ☘️15 May – Sneaky Pete’s – Edinburgh
- ☘️17 May – McChuill’s – Glasgow
- ☘️22 May -The Belfast Empire – Belfast 2025
- ☘️23 May – North End Bar – Dundalk
- ☘️28 May – Harbour Bar – Bray
- ☘️6 June – Left Éire – Dundalk
- ☘️14 June – Blake’s Bar – Letterkenny
- ☘️17 June – Whelan’s Upstairs – Dublin
- ☘️19 June – Sky & The Ground – Wexford
- ☘️20 June – Brehon Brewery – Monaghan
- ☘️21 June – Studio Runda – Belfast
Niall Byrne is the founder of the most-influential Irish music site Nialler9, where he has been writing about music since 2005. He is the co-host of the Nialler9 Podcast and has written for the Irish Times, Irish Independent, Sunday Times, Totally Dublin, Cara Magazine, Red Bull and more. Niall is a DJ, co-founder of Lumo Club, event curator, Indie Sleaze club promoter, and producer of gigs and monthly listening parties & events in Dublin.
