In September last year, we featured Adrian Crowley’s single “Golden Streets, Bitter Tears”, the first release in the ‘Bring Your Own Hammer’ series. The latest project offering comes from Carol Keogh, who has been part of the independent music scene in Ireland since 1994.
Bring Your Own Hammer is a project in which historians and composers collaborate to create new and original song cycles based on historical sources. It is rooted in the history of nineteenth-century Ireland and of the Irish Diaspora and involves leading Irish composers, musicians and singers. The latest song in the series is from Carol Keogh, who has been part of the independent music scene in Ireland since her first band, The Plague Monkeys, garnered critical acclaim for their debut EP Navigator in 1994. Over the years, Keogh has collaborated with many well-known Irish artists, including Sharon Shannon (co-author of Shifting Sands), Jerry Fish (duetted on Back to Before), Colm Mac Con Iomaire (co-author To The Wild, Dare to be Wild soundtrack) as well as guest-singing with many others. In 2022 Keogh released the first part of a multi-album solo project under the moniker The Wicc. “Wolf” was critically noted as “a conspicuously individual work by an important Irish artist” (Irish Times). Part two will follow later in the year.
‘A Pair of Packed Valises (before the Dunbrody), 1849’ offers a striking and rich re-imagining of the departure of two women, Catherine Keogh (aged 20) and Biddy Keogh (aged 25), from Ireland to the United States. It is inspired by a passenger list from the Dunbrody, a ship that left from New Ross, Co. Wexford, for New York in early 1849, in the latter years of the Great Irish Famine. The listener may want to imagine themselves standing on the quays of New Ross, Co. Wexford, on a spring morning in April 1849 or observing the passengers disembarking from the ship in New York a few weeks later, on 4 May. We are particularly delighted to release this record in May 2023 – 174 years after the Keoghs’ first arrived in New York.
Streaming: https://orcd.co/byohcarolkeoghvalises
Bandcamp: https://bringyourownhammerpresents.bandcamp.com
Other artists who have contributed to the BYOH project are Agu, Linda Buckley, Adrian Crowley, Cathal Coughlan, Neil Farrell, Eileen Gogan, Tony Higgins, Wally Nkikita, Brigid Mae Power, Sean O’Hagan, Michelle O’Rourke, Michael J. Sheehy, Mike Smalle, Simon Fisher Turner, Jah Wobble and James Yorkston. An album featuring many of these luminary musicians has been completed and is planned for release in 2023.
For biographies, mission statement and more information, visit: https://byohammer.com/
For more information on Carol, visit: https://carolkeogh.ie/