Bring Your Own Hammer

Adrian Crowley’s “Quinn The Adventurer” follows James Quinn, who left Belfast in 1920, surfaced in Hollywood as a silent-film extra, and was sentenced to San Quentin over a collection of shrunken heads. Out today on Dimple Discs with Bring Your Own Hammer, it precedes “From The Tombs”, a 21-song double album on the history of crime, law and order in Ireland and its diaspora.

Bring Your Own Hammer returns with two new singles, giving voice to figures the archive left in the margins. “The Cruel Father,” from Lavinia Blackwall and Neil Farrell with SJ McArdle, draws on an 1860s ballad about a father who abandoned his infant son. “The Girl from Spark’s Lake,” sung by Sophie Coyle, follows a runaway chasing bluebells.

Sung by Eileen Gogan and featuring Neil Farrell, listen to ‘The Female Cabin Boy’, the latest single in the Bring Your Own Hammer series. It’s an outstanding interpretation of a ballad that circulated in Britain and Ireland in the nineteenth century.

The latest song in the Bring Your Own Hammer series comes from Carol Keogh (aka The Wicc). Watch the accompanying video for  ‘A Pair of Packed Valises (before the Dunbrody), 1849’ which offers a striking and rich re-imagining of the departure of two women from Ireland to the United States.

Bring Your Own Hammer is a new project in which historians and composers collaborate to create new and original song cycles based on historical sources. Listen to the first single from Adrian Crowley, featuring Brigid Mae Power, also our Song of the Day.