With an adventurous spirit and a passion for charting the road less travelled, Beoga have shown that Irish traditional music can take fresh new directions. That world-facing potential was proven by the popularity of their collaborations ‘Galway Girl’ and ‘Nancy Mulligan’ with Ed Sheeran on his all-conquering ‘÷’ album. ‘Galway Girl’ has been streamed over 1.4 billion times on Spotify alone.
After a 4-year break from touring and releasing music, Beoga are excited to return to a vibrant Irish music scene that is bursting with talent and creativity. Their latest offering ‘Anne Bonny’ is a new song written in the traditional style with echoes of the past deftly combined with Beoga’s signature contemporary flavour. The track previews their new album ‘Phases’ which follows on June 6th. It sees the band revisit their traditional roots and original, classic sound scape, whilst continuing to explore new ground in production and instrumentation.
Niamh Dunne of Beoga commented:
“There is a wealth of incredible Irish musicians on the scene right now and it’s a very exciting time for traditional Irish music. It’s really great to be back making new music and adding our own voice to the cannon, and I really feel like this album is a reflection of who we are as a band, and an amalgamation of all the different influences we have encountered and explored in the last 2 decades.
Anne Bonny was an Irish pirate who sailed the high seas in the 1700s and is one of the few female pirates recorded in history. I’m always drawn to singing strong female characters into being and we really leaned into the tradition to write this one. She was a badass!”
‘Anne Bonny’ is the second taster to preview ‘Phases’ following ‘Shore Road Punk’, a poignant tune written in memory of the band’s good friend Paddy ‘The Punk’ Devlin with Paddy’s voice included at the end of the recording.?
Damian McKee of Beoga commented:
“With his wit and endless stories to recount, he was at every music session, festival or event up and down the country and knew music and traditional song inside out.? Ireland is full of characters and ‘The Punk’ was one of our finest.?Honoured to be joined by his son Odhran on bass on this one.”
Phases’ arrives at a time when the band feel hugely excited by the music they are making as a 5 piece. After several years of working on their own individual and diverse musical projects they are energised to be back as Beoga. “We keep coming back to each other” laughs Eamon Murray of the band. “It was fantastic that we all took some time to work on other projects, but ultimately we are like homing pigeons and are drawn back to Beoga; it’s pretty special.”