Spending an evening listening to a 19-year-old play 100-year-old songs, in a building almost 200 years old, might not sound that enticing to a lot of people.
But when the 19-year-old is the prodigiously talented Donegal native, Muireann Bradley, singing a mix of wonderfully curated old blues, self-penned songs and adroitly chosen covers, and the building is the beautifully renovated McConnell’s Distillery, based in the old Crumlin Road jail, then your evening starts to take on a different hue. In truth, it’s a night to remember.
Muireann is here ostensibly to promote her EPs, ‘Rose Dogs’ and ‘Blackwood pew’, and in doing so turns in a dazzling night of quite incredible music, quite amazing dexterity about the fretboard, all delivered with her beautifully versatile vocals.
There is so much to admire.
Hard to credit that it is less than three years since her seismic appearance on Jools Holland Hootenanny Show. Her barnstorming delivery of the Rev Gary Davis’s ‘Candyman’ took the place by storm, resulting in the hitherto unknown Donegal native entering the UK download top 10.
The song is, of course, given a classy outing tonight, along with many others from her debut album, ‘I Kept These Old Blues’. The intimate nature of the venue allows the select crowd to watch her incredible guitar play and breathe new life into music, neglected by many.
‘Black Horse Blues’, ‘Dancing on my grave’, and ‘Bad Luck Blues’ are all delivered with a smile, as the young performer’s confidence continues to grow. Her fingers become a blur on the fretboard, as she elicits wonderful sounds as a background to bad stories of love and death.
The new material again displays her prowess with blues song, but for me, it’s her sweet delivery on Jackson Browne’s ‘These Days’ that really showed her versatility, and the possibility of a rich, diverse future ahead. Even as she sings
“Don’t confront me with my failures, I have not forgotten them”, at such a tender age, with such conviction.
A gorgeous reading of the Daniel Johnson song, ‘ True love will find you in the end’, was another real highlight in her set.
Kudos to Mark McKowski as promoter of the gig, for offering the distillery as an unusual and attractive new venue for live music.
There is a real joy to singing the Blues. Keep an ear out for Muireann Bradley. She is the real deal, and here for the long run.