Paahto & The Bull - The 123 (2026) [Hi-Res]

Paahto & The Bull, the guitar duo project of Patrick “Paahto” Cummins and John Francis Flynn, will release their debut album The 123 this year via Claddagh Records on August 21st, and play Whelan’s on Wednesday October 28th.

The album is called The 123 after the Dublin bus route – “The 123 was the bus that went from John’s road in Marino all the way to Paahto’s road in Drimnagh at the opposite end of the route.”

Cummins and Flynn have been playing together since 2011, first cutting their teeth at The Maple Hotel on Dublin’s Gardiner Street before going on to co-found Irish traditional group Skipper’s Alley in 2013. The pair have remained close musical partners ever since, including a run with the short-lived, more progressive-leaning project Once There Was A King.

Paahto & The Bull began during the Covid-19 pandemic, when the two started experimenting with music written for two guitars, drawing on Cummins’ interest in bluegrass flat-picking and Flynn’s own distinctive approach to accompaniment. What started as an Instagram page for posting rough recordings gradually grew into a proper project, with the pair working towards a full album with the help of Brendan Jenkinson and Ben Rawlins.

Despite both being multi-instrumentalists and singers, the project sticks to a strict two-guitar setup, a deliberate choice in keeping with the duo’s approach: “This is what we play. This is how we play. And this is what we are going to play.” It’s also a departure from what people might expect from two players so associated with Irish trad, a banjo-and-guitar pairing would have been the obvious choice, but the two guitars format reflects the kind of lateral, progressive thinking that’s defined their playing together for the past 15 years.