BEOGA are in the UK recording new tracks for their upcoming album when Limerick Post catches up with violin player/vocalist Niamh Dunne.
As the band like to say, they are “four nordie lads and a lass from Limerick”. Since 2002 the band have release six albums, have been nominated for a Grammy and performed at BBC’s Proms in the Park and have been called the, “most exciting new traditional band to emerge from Ireland this century.” by The Wall Street Journal.
So far so good,And then in January 2017, as Niamh Dunne married her bandmate Sean Og Graham and the wedding party moved to Dolan’s Warehouse to dance and sing into the night, news filtered through that Beoga had been recording with Ed Sheeran.
That resulted in Beoga featuring on ‘Divide’ with two tracks Galway Girl and Nancy Mulligan. They joined Ed at Glastonbury, toured Ireland with him and accumulated 687 million streams on Spotify.
It has been a dramatic 20 months and Beoga are ready to capitalise on the success of the past year and a half and signed to Spirit B-Unique records, a label that has promoted hit records for Kaiser chiefs, Primal Scream and Kodaline.
“The work we did with Ed has opened all sorts of doors for us.” says Niamh.
“We have grabbed the opportunity that has come our way and we have decided to run with it as much as we can working with some great producers and we are also making a different kind of an album more rooted in the pop world.”
Beoga have collaborated with Foy Vance and Johnny McDaid (Snow Patrol) amongst a host of other producers, the first single We Don’t Have To Run sung by Ryan McMullan is a change in direction to a more mainstream sound with more to follow – a new single is slated for the pre-Christmas market.
The group have also caught the attention of other musicians and producers,, their raised profile has led to lots of networking and new project ideas.
“The phone is ringing off the hook. You wouldn’t believe it. There has been lots of networking with different people and different groups. There is stuff in the pipelines that I would love to tell you about, but at the moment I just can’t. We will get our own stuff right and see what happens after that!”
Beoga are on a short Irish tour and will be playing some of their new material for the first time to a live audience with Niall McCabe from Cork guesting on vocals.
“We will be testing the water with some of the new stuff. We’ll see how it goes in terms of the live setup. It will be an interesting gig.”
“it will be a nervy enough ol’ night, laughs, but it will be great I think.”
Special guest for this show is Emma Langford Beoga play Dolan’s this Saturday September 22.
