Harmony reigns as The Henry Girls have fun

Groove Tube with Jimy McDonnell – tribunegroove@live.ie

Hailing from Malin in Donegal, The Henry Girls make a welcome return to Monroe’s Live on Thursday, July 21, as part of this year’s Galway International Arts Festival. Fusing Americana with an Irish roots sensibility, sisters Joleen, Karen and Lorna McLaughlin have recently returned from a gig in Italy.

“We were playing in the north, in a place called Arizagno,” Lorna says. “We played one festival, and then we came back – so it was just two days.  It was great, an outdoor gig in a park overlooking the city. Warm weather, there was a great crowd – there must’ve been 350 people. It went really well.”

Overall, The Henry Girls project itself seems to be going well. Over the past five years, the sisters have played shows across Europe and the US. Is there any gig in particular that stands out for Lorna?

“We were up in the north of Norway, in a very rural area,” she says. “We’d been invited by the mayor, who’d seen us play in Iceland. We didn’t know what to expect, but we were blown away by the hospitality and the venue he had organised for us to play in. It was a sold-out show, 300 people. We just couldn’t believe it – it wasn’t a city or anything, just a peninsula – like Inishowen.”

The Henry Girls recently released the Sketches EP, which was recorded in their aunt’s house in Malin Head by their regular collaborator Callum Malcolm.

“The first time we recorded with him we went to Scotland, but Callum can now set up his studio anywhere,” says Lorna. “He’s got all the equipment, his computer, his hard drive, all that stuff – he can just bring it with him on the plane. It was really nice to be at home.”

There is a huge well of old songs to draw from in the folk world, but Lorna is proud that The Henry Girls has evolved into a band that pen their own tunes.

“To be honest, I’m a bit of a hoarder. I’m sentimental – I keep everything,” she says. “We’ve been playing together for over 10 years, and I was looking at old set-lists the other day. It used to be we did all covers, and one or two original set-lists. But I was looking at a recent set-list, and it was nearly all original songs.”

High Octane Lady is a number with a catchy chorus and a pop sensibility that you don’t necessarily hear in folk music. How did that one come about?