Tuam singer keeps it real with strong sense of place

Groove Tube with Cian O’Connell

Darragh O’Dea’s evolving brand of folk-rock explores old and new elements of the genre with equal fervour. Narrative and colloquial, his work has drawn welcome comparisons with Christy Moore and the Saw Doctors – but, while he cites both as influences, the songs and stories in his catalogue, sung emphatically in a quintessential Tuam accent, are, to some extent, very current.

Though many of the songs on his upcoming debut album deal with stories from an older Ireland, his voice and pride of identity fit right in with the vernacular boom the country has experienced in recent years.

Darragh’s latest single, Guerrilla Warfare in Your Back Garden, was released on July 30. It tells of the Irish culture around land ownership that has often led to bitter, longstanding familial disputes.

The song has existed in some form for over five years, but it has gone through a long string of changes to reach its final form – a toe-tapping, layered instrumental to supplement a mesmerising narrative.

“About five years ago, I was living abroad and I was telling someone about land and how precious it is in Ireland and how people fall out over it,” Darragh recalls.

“It’s well documented here in movies and books. After that, I sat down with the guitar and it just came to me. I thought it was a song Christy Moore would have written and I hadn’t really written that kind of song before. I thought I was always going to do it in that style.

“I recorded it like that and then felt it was missing something so I brought in a band to do it… It didn’t feel right either and I nearly gave up on it. I thought maybe it wasn’t meant to be and sure maybe I’d find a way to get it to Christy Moore and sure he’d love it.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.

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