Album hits right note despite tough birth

Stephen Young & the Union, an Irish band steeped in Americana, play Monroe’s Live this Sunday, November 23. Duty Free 200 is the latest single from Dublin based five-piece, an old song Stephen found in a box of demos when he was moving house.
“I wrote it in 2004, in college I think,” says Stephen. “Coming back to it now, it felt really fresh. It felt like I’d just written it yesterday. I latched on to it when we were recording – it was the one song I was paying a lot of attention to.
“It’s probably one of my favourite songs on the album, but I’ve shown the album to other people and they go ‘no, I prefer that one’. Everyone always has their different opinions.”
The band’s second album, which evokes artists like Bob Dylan, Wilco and Ryan Adams, is called Eagle Fort Rumble. Where did this peculiar title come from?
“The place where we recorded was The Eagle’s Nest in Tipperary,” Stephen says. “We spent six weeks up there. It’s very isolated, there’s no landline, no coverage on your phone. After a while, there were a couple of arguments. That led to a lot of tension and one of the guys left. It was just madness, chaos – a rumble.”