Paahto & The Bull & guest David Murphy #CLMF26

Coughlan's, Douglas St.

Mon 28th Sep, 7:30 pm

Paahto & The Bull is the guitar-duo project of Patrick "Paahto" Cummins and John Francis Flynn.  Having met and played together since 2011 and having cut their teeth at The Maple Hotel on  Dublin's Gardiner Street, Paahto and John helped form the Irish traditional group Skipper's Alley in  2013 and would remain long-term sparring partners and an integral cog in Dublin's traditional and  folk music communities. Once There Was A King was another of their musical endeavours which  reached into a progressive musical space in its short-lived timespan. However, as with any  collaboration between these two players, Paahto & The Bull is beyond a meeting of two musical  minds and encompasses a very personal element.  

During the covid-19 pandemic, the pair experimented with music on two guitars inspired by  Paahto's interest in bluegrass flat-picking and John's very original approach to accompaniment.  Beginning with just an Instagram page to post some amateur material, Paahto & The Bull decided  to take the project more seriously and gradually worked towards recording an album with the help  of Brendan Jenkinson and Ben Rawlins. The ethos for the duo has always been to focus on  simplicity and only features the musicians playing their guitars despite them both being multi instrumentalists and singers.  

The music of Paahto & The Bull is a very honest reflection of the unique kind of sound that  Cummins and Flynn have consistently created with each other over the past fifteen years and,  although one might have expected their initial release to be a banjo/guitar product, the lateral  thinking that went into choosing a guitar duet is also very in line with the particular flavour of  progressive that these lads strive for. The statement is firm: "This is what we play. This is how we  play. And this is what we are going to play." 

Having signed with Claddagh Records in late 2025, Paahto & The Bull will be releasing their debut album during 2026.


David Murphy is a musician and producer based in Cork, Ireland known best for his work with the pedal steel guitar, taking the instrument outside the confines of its traditional roots with frequent ventures into a range of genres, spanning Americana and Traditional Irish to ambient, experimental music and film soundtracks.

Alongside his solo work, he is also known as a frequent collaborator with artists such as The Lost Brothers, Arborist and The Delines, accompanying M.Ward or Jolie Holland or contributing sonic soundscapes to the writings of modern literary greats like Patrick McCabe and Willy Vlautin. His critically acclaimed debut album Cuimhne Ghlinn: Explorations in Irish Music for Pedal Steel Guitar (Rollercoaster Records) takes the pedal steel from the well-worn roads of the dusty American south to a new place in contemporary Irish music, resulting in numerous Album of The Year shortlists for 2024. This all-instrumental record recasts ancient Irish harp tunes and historic airs into the 21st century with the swelling, expressive and mournful sounds of the pedal steel guitar. This continues Murphy’s quest to expand the vocabulary of the instrument, taking it deeper into a world much closer to home and, for the very first time, present it in a modern Irish framework.