Macdara Yeates - Traditional Singing from Dublin (2024) [Hi-Res]

Macdara Yeates is a folk singer from Dublin, self-described on his Instagram profile as a “singer of auld songs, doer of projects, and part to blame for ‘The Night Before Larry Got Stretched.” Folk scholars may recognise the latter as the name of an 18th-century execution ballad, but as Yeates explains, it has come to mean something else: “It’s probably a bit of a mouthful in hindsight—most people just call it ‘Larry'—but it’s the name of our singing session in The Cobblestone.”

The Cobblestone is, of course, Dublin’s home for traditional music, a pub recently under threat of demolition and famed for fostering folk talent. “It was about 2012,” Macdara explains, “and Sinéad Lynch [now a member of harmony folk group Landless] had been singing in the Cobblestone, and Tom [the owner] encouraged her to set up a session… It was good timing. Around then, there was a few of us, younger singers like Ian Lynch [now of Lankum], Ruth Clinton [now of Landless], and myself, that just so happened to be lurking around singing sessions… At that time, there weren’t many younger singers on the scene. The average age of a singing session was around sixty-five… Sinéad had the vision we should have a space of our own. And ‘Larry was born.”

And, as Macdara explains, it didn’t take long to catch on: “We formed a little committee to make sandwiches and call singers, and, within a few months, the place was packed… I’d love to take credit for it all, but we were just in the right place at the right time. It seemed like there was swathes of young people waiting in the wings for an event like this… And it wasn’t long before some of the older singers from neighbouring sessions started to come, and it became a really beautiful, inter-generational thing.”

A few short years later, ‘Larry was going strong, and the wider Dublin folk scene was preparing for take-off. In March 2014, Landless released their first EP. In May, Lankum released their debut album, Cold Old Fire. And in the autumn, two brothers, recently landed to Dublin from Carlow and performing under the moniker ‘Ye Vagabonds’, went semi-viral with their rendition of the Scottish ballad Willie O’Winsbury. Ten years on, the fruits are plain to see. Lankum, when not earning Choice Prize wins and Mercury nominations, have become one of the nation’s best-loved bands. Ye Vagabonds and Landless are established acts, the former scooping up RTÉ Folk Awards on the regular and the latter quietly gaining five-star reviews from the Guardian. Throw in a Lisa O’Neill, a John Francis Flynn, an OXN—you get the idea.

This autumn, Macdara Yeates throws his hat in the ring with an album of folk songs simply titled Traditional Singing from Dublin. When asked what took him so long, Yeates explains, “It took me a while to get out of my own way. I’ve been pretty active on the scene, running ‘Larry and other community folk projects, but I was always a bit crippled by self-doubt when it came to releasing something on my own… But I’m older now. The songs have had a few more years to bed in, and it just feels like time… cheesy as that sounds.”

And time it most certainly is. The humble title, coupled with Yeates’ unassuming demeanour, would give no indication that he is the owner of a fog-horn voice that would be better suited to the mountain top than the pub corner. His power and projection are matched only by a rich, leathery tone, with each note seemingly conjured from deep in his boots before cascading out into the world. Throughout Traditional Singing from Dublin, Yeates lends his stentorian voice to ten songs, ranging from the epic and historical to the local and nonsensical. Fans of the classics will be pleasantly surprised by the dissonant guitar arrangement of Johnny I Hardly Knew Ye, the 19th-century anti-war ballad, sounding ever-relevant in today’s geopolitical climate. And more discerning folkies are sure to be charmed by The Herrin’, a Dublin version of a comic song detailing the dismemberment of a large fish.

What is most striking about the record, however, is its sparseness. Half of the tracks are served neat, featuring nothing other than Macdara’s raw, unadorned voice, with the other half accompanied sparingly on guitar or bodhrán. This, Macdara explains, was a point of principle: “I am no purist… But I believe in starting with a blank slate, creating a sort of musical ground zero, and building from there. Lord knows what my future records will sound like, but I always knew I wanted the first one to be just as it is—uncluttered, unadorned, just the songs as they’re sung in the pubs and house parties where I learned them. There’s plenty of time for everything else down the line.”

Turning over the album sleeve notes, one is struck by a large black-and-white photo of an early session of The Night Before Larry Got Stretched in 2013. The eagle-eyed will be able to pick out the faces of the who’s who in Irish folk music today, but the photo tells a different story: this is a group of singers, drinking, laughing, in the before time, with little else on the agenda other than singing songs for the enjoyment of each other’s company. And it’s fitting: although a solo record by a solo artist, this album teems with a sense of community and collective.

Words by Niall Ó Lochlainn