Muireann Bradley

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Muireann Bradley
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Tickets on sale Friday 30 October @ 10am

Muireann Bradley is a 19-year-old prodigious guitarist mixing traditional playing & fingerpicking with personal and mature interpretations of classic blues songs, and live performances of remarkable warmth, clarity, and emotional depth. Her forthcoming Blackwood Pew EP, due in October via Fontana Records/Verve Forecast, marks a defining new chapter. The new collection follows her acclaimed 2024 debut I Kept These Old Blues and introduces Muireann as a songwriter for the first time, pairing her original compositions with fresh reworkings of classics that feel every bit as enduring as the tradition that inspired them.

Blackwood Pew opens outward in every sense. With contributions from producer Declan Gaffney and Ella Walker (aka Wildes), the EP broadens its author's sonic palette with richly layered bass, drums and slide guitar, played by an array of top session players and keys by producer Declan Gaffney. From the themes of longing that shape ‘Not Going Back’ to the evocative, Velvet Underground-inspired ‘Clementine’, the record draws on a lifetime immersed in ragtime blues, American old-time and country sounds, alongside the Irish trad music Muireann grew up with. It feels like a door opening onto new ground; familiar in its roots, yet stepping into something more expansive.

It’s this level of connection that Muireann’s live shows consistently draw, first building a devoted following through YouTube before translating that intimacy to the stage. She has sold out headline gigs on both sides of the Atlantic and was handpicked by Fontaines D.C.’s Tom Coll and folk collective Broadside Hacks to top the bill at Féile Moth, an Irish cultural festival in London. On television, just weeks after turning 17, Muireann captivated the studio audience at Jools Holland’s Hootenanny with her spellbinding take on blues standard ‘Candyman’, performing in front of Ruby Turner and Sir Rod Stewart, before later delivering a knockout rendition of Memphis Minnie’s ‘When The Levee Breaks’ on The Late Late Show.

Muireann explains that for “a very long time”, even as her trajectory expanded across the UK festival circuit with appearances at Green Man, End Of The Road and Bearded Theory, she questioned whether audiences would “want to engage with this kind of music” in a live setting. Growing up in County Donegal with no contemporary reference points – she had “never, ever met” anyone who shared her tastes – that relative solitude became the foundation of her craft, shaped in her childhood bedroom with the encouragement of her father, whose love of the greats seemed to pass to her by osmosis as he introduced her to Tom Waits, early acoustic Bob Dylan and Irish guitarists Arty McGlynn and John Doyle.

Raised in what she calls a “music house”, Muireann’s father kept a dedicated room lined with guitars and stacks of CDs (Blind Blake, Blind Lemon Jefferson, Mississippi John Hurt) which she would sneak into and pick up his prized vintage Gibsons; he’d pretend to be annoyed, but was secretly delighted that his daughter was so intrigued. When the pandemic sidelined Muireann’s interest in boxing and Brazilian jiu‑jitsu, she turned to the guitar to channel that discipline into mastering a demanding, dexterous fingerpicking style.

“There’s a lot of pressure when you go into a boxing ring, and that prepared me for going on stage,” Muireann explains. “I also really like the challenge of learning this kind of playing style. It’s difficult and not many people play it. I get a real kick out of figuring things out by ear. I've always been the kind of person that's really good at locking themselves away and doing something until they get it.”

At this point in her burgeoning career, as Muireann spends chunks of each year travelling, Blackwood Pew arrives with a sense of homecoming. Her world has opened up – from trips to North Carolina’s MerleFest, where she and her dad met a number of bluegrass greats – yet the idea of home has become something like an inner glow: sparked by taking in the rolling coastlines of County Donegal and reminiscing about the county’s folk festivals; by hearing a local accent, or walking past the Balor Arts Centre where she performed in youth musicals.

“A softly assured trailblazer who enraptures all who come across her work”
Clash Magazine

“Seldom have these familiar pieces been executed with the verve and grace, as well as the skill,
of this young Irishwoman”
★★★★ MOJO

“To describe her as a guitarist is like describing Picasso as someone who dabbled in a bit of drawing”
Blues In Britain

“Much like how Laufey has brought Jazz standards to Gen Z, we can see Muireann being a torchbearer for Blues and bringing a new generation to the genre”
Record of the Day

“Muireann Bradley is not just a young talent; she is a torchbearer for the rich tradition of country blues”
Blues Matters Magazine
 
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