Muireann Bradley, 17 year old Donegal blues guitarist sensation who stole the show on Jools Holland’s Hootenanny on New Years Eve plays Dolans on Friday April 5. Tickets on sale this Friday from 10am.
Muireann Bradley performs Country Blues & Ragtime Blues from the 1920s & 30s, also Folk, Roots and Americana. She grew up with her father listening to these old records and playing and singing the music himself. When she was nine years old she asked him to teach her to play and so her love of guitar began.
During the covid lockdowns she decided to start posting videos on You Tube, the first of which was her rendition of Blind Blake’s “Police Dog Blues”. It received a lot of attention, it’s now had 110,000 views.
She was soon contacted by Josh Rosenthal of Tompkins Square Records who suggested she record an album.
‘I kept these old blues’ was released in December 2023.
Her influences include Rev Gary Davis, Blind Blake, Mississippi John Hurt, Blind Lemon Jefferson, Robert Johnson, Elizabeth Cotten, and Memphis Minnie to name just a few. She delights in interpreting & performing the music of these early blues masters, always putting her own unique stamp on the tunes.
The songs and instrumentals were all recorded live in the studio in one or two takes in an attempt to make the process as similar as possible to that of the original classic country blues artists of the 1920s and 30s.
The great Arlen Roth has described her as “a natural!”, Jorma Kaukonen said that kid is really good and I don’t mean really good for a kid, I mean REALLY GOOD, while Stefan Grossman said “ A wonderful player, I can now retire, the torch has been passed”.
