About Shamrock Showband
SHAMROCK SHOWBAND are just back from a wee tour of Scotland with Jinx Lennon and are now gearing up for an Irish tour and the release of their second album SHANKILL ROAD MISSION which they will launch Upstairs at Whelan's on the 17th of June. Tickets on sale via Ticketmaster and MCD.
There’s been a growing buzz about the Showband for the last few months now in the run up to this new album. Nialler9 called them his ‘new favourite band’ and described them as ‘If Father Ted and CMAT had a baby’ High praise indeed! They have received radio play from BBC Radio Ulster, been included in Irish track of the week lists by The Thin Air and Chordblossom and got a shout out in an article in The Irish Examiner as well.
Spotlight tracks for the release of the album are Fascist Boogie (NSFW) which is about the assination of Charlie Kirk (lol) and Northern Train (SFW) which is about the old train line, no longer with us that could have gotten you from Dundalk to Donegal, something that would make band practice a lot easier if it was still about.
Fascist Boogie was written a few days after the big lad himself met his untimely end. The irony of being killed as a result of gun violence moments after downplaying mass shootings was too delicious not to mark with a song. Thoughts and prayers and all of that but at the end of the day we’re all just very glad he’s gone.
In direct contrast to a song about being glad someone is gone, Northern Train is a song about longing for what once was, namely the northern train line. With a wee nod to Big Tom in Castleblaney, it is an upbeat homage to a time gone by, when country was king and you could get the train home no bother at all.
Another standout on the album is a cover of Newry Bird by Jinx Lennon. The band learned this tune for the various pub gigs they’d played over the years, the more it was played the nicer the arrangement became until they got the thumbs up from Jinx to do a wee recording of it. It’s one of the more sentimental moments on the record, highlighted beautifully by Catríona Ní Gribben (Mary Walloppers, HUARTAN) on the accordion, Ultan Lavery (Zoe Basha, David Murphy) on the clarinet and Chris Barry (Jinx Lennon, Myles Manly) on guitar.
From one sentimental tune to another Rory Gallagher Standing in the Rain is a nostalgic look back to the yearly childhood family holidays to Ballyshannon, going to the beach and your dad and your uncles having a few tins at the barbecue. Some of the lyrics were influenced by Patrick McCabe’s The Butcher Boy.
Sausage Tree is a spiritual sequel to Patriots from the first Showband record. It’s a dreamy meandering reflection of where one lives, addressing one’s own prejudice as a southerner and how southerners tend to be more partitionist than any other group on the island. ‘You want Ulster back but you’ve never been in it, if you want thirty two, you should come up to the six.’
SHAMROCK SHOWBAND are a psychedelic country and Irish band consisting of Conor McAuley (DUG) on fiddle, Jamie Bishop (MUCKNO, Jinx Lennon) on guitar, samplers and synthesizers and Joel Harkin (Pedal & Lever Society) on pedal steel guitar. They hail from the border counties of Louth (Dundalk), Monaghan (Castleblaney) and Donegal (Convoy) respectively.
