The year is flying by and as usual March was a fantastic month for Celtic-Punk fans. Some big hitters released their first albums in ages and here’s your chance to catch up with some of them and the others in this month’s Odds’n’Sods. All the news fit to print on what’s going in our wonderful Celtic-Punk world. From the scene’s bands big and small, established or just starting out it’s all in here!
We start this month with one of my favourite Celtic-Punk bands. The new single from ‘Yorkshire Banjo Punks’ SHANGHAI TREASON is The Lighthouse and is taken from the bands upcoming second album.
THE RUMJACKS newly released video of ‘Tell Me What Happened’ off their Hestia album. Shot and edited by Mike in Reggies, Chicago.
THE TOSSERS have a new album out and it’s imaginatively called The Tossers… A mix of auld songs, some interesting and unusual covers and a smattering of some effing brilliant new songs including this the opening track. True heirs to Shane MacGowan’s legacy.
THE LONGEST JOHNS are a Bristol based, acapella folk music band, born out of a mutual love of trad folk songs and shanties. They rock maritime songs alongside the more unusual and less traditional folk tunes. Here’s the lead single from their new &-track EP.
The reb’s are sung loud and proud in NYC with THE IRISH MUTTS giving it plenty live down at the Bungalow Bar last week in Rockaway Beach, NY.
Dutch band MAGGIE’S FLOCK released a great new single dedicated to St. Patrick’s which we somehow missed for the last Odds’n’Sods but here it is!
SELFISH MURPHY formed in 2011 in Transylvania, Romania and until then Celtic / Irish Punk-Rock was unheard there. These folks are real trailblazers! In 2016 the band re-located to Budapest in Hungary where i’m hoping to see them soon!
London Irish Folk and Americana band FOLLOW THE CROWS released ‘Don’t Mind The Rain’ at the beginning of March and accompanied it with a rather good video too.
Bit of a slog at over three hours long but watch the official live stream as the New York Army National Guard’s 1st Battalion, 69th Infantry Regiment once again leads the world’s largest St. Patrick’s Day parade as it marches down midtown Manhattan’s Fifth Avenue in New York.
THE GO SET – The Warriors Beneath Us
THE LEVELLERS – Together All The Way
THE DREADNOUGHTS – Green Willow
FLOGGING MOLLY – ‘Til The Anarchy’s Restored (EP)
THE TOSSERS – The Tossers
UNCLE BARD AND THE DIRTY BASTARDS – These Are The Days – Live In France
CRUACHAN – The Living And The Dead
LANKUM – False Lankum
THE EAST RIVER RATS – The Year Of The Rat
DAOIRI FARRELL – The Wedding Above In Glencree
THE KILMAINE SAINTS – Same Again Tomorrow
THE MUCKERS have started a kickstarter to help fund their next album. You’re invited to help out this amazing band by donating to get the ball rolling! They are offering all sorts of limited-release bonuses to folks who help fund their trip to the studio.
THE KILMAINE SAINTS have a new album Same Again Tomorrow out on April 14th. Six years on from Whiskey Blues And Faded Tattoos it’s their fourth studio album We’ll be on it as soon as it comes out as we bloody love them!
One of the best new bands around are FOGGY DUDE from the Czech Republic. They make great videos and brilliant music and even better for us all is that all their music is available for free download on the Bandzone site here https://bandzone.cz/foggydude
Our good friend CALLUM HOUSTON – Made in Bretagne. Inspired in Ireland – has just released a seven track mini album of acoustic alternative Folk Rock. Accompanied by his friend and regular contributor Alban Bauduin. Pub Poetry is available for download.
THE HEATHEN APOSTLES have a new single out and also announced a whole bunch of live dates for the UK. ‘Gothic Western Haunt’ is from an episode of the animated series “The Goodbye Family”, which made the Top 10 animated series list of 2022 from Vulture magazine.
“This is our newest labor of love: “Green Willow”. Sea shanties, war chants, wassail songs, songs of the sea, and even an Irish-rock rebel tune. Enjoy, eh!!”
So went the announcement for THE DREADNOUGHTS new download album Green Willow. Head straight to song 5 for the best version of ‘The Foggy Dew’ I’ve heard in an age!
Rising Of The Doom the 3rd full length studio album from NYC’s the TEMPLARS OF DOOM has been released this week on vinyl but is also available for download.
We’ve been doing this now for nearly 10 years and in that time we have covered 100’s of bands and musicians but still plenty of bands have passed us by. We can’t see everything after all so this column is to remind us of bands that never made these pages at the time but deserve another mention. These hopefully come with a free download like today so you can help yourself to some free music. Today is the turn of American Celtic-Folk-Punk band BOGTROTTERS UNION from Nevada. A variety of old and popular Celtic tunes reorganized by the band including an amazing version of the Wolfe Tones ‘A Song Of The Celts’.
Totally out of the blue we found out that THE YOUNG DUBLINERS are hitting London at The Hootananny in Brixton on Wednesday 5th April supported by rowdy London Irish Folk-Punks ARSE CRAIC. Saturday 8th April sees THE MEN THEY COULDN’T HANG live at the Powerhaus. THE LAGAN of-shoot SUCKIN’ DIESEL are playing The Lamb in Surbiton (see below for directions) on Thursday 13th April. Great venue that’s always free entry. With the demise of the 4 piece Wolfe Tones and the inevitable split into two bands and while both offer a great night out we can’t recommend DEREK WARFIELD AND THE YOUNG WOLFE TONES enough. Power, passion and history with their charismatic leader. Playing the 229 on Great Portland Street on Friday 2nd June. American Folk-Country-Doombilly band the HEATHEN APOSTLES play The Lexington in Kings Cross on Wednesday 19th July. The founders of Alt-Country THE LONG RYDERS are coming back to these shores with a full Europe and UK tour.
BRYAN McPHERSON / ANTO MORRA PLAYING LIVE IN LONDON!
Words can’t describe how happy we are to be able to put on BRYAN McPHERSON. Eight years on from his first and only visit to these shores it’s been a long time coming. Born and raised on the mean streets of Dorchester, a blue collar working-class Irish-American Catholic neighbourhood in Boston, that was also home to half the members of the original Dropkick Murphys. He was inspired at a young age by the raw energy and angst of Punk Rock, as well as the lyrically driven American folk songs of the early 1960’s. His first performances were street corners, house parties, and subway stations in Boston’s inner city. In 2001 he burst onto the acoustic music scene, he has played the length and breadth of North America and was recently spotted opening up for the Dropkick Murphys’ at their famed St. Patrick’s shows in Boston. This is passionate, acoustic-punk from the heart. Street life, politics, addiction and moments of beauty, anguish, clarity and dissent litter the alleys of McPherson’s songs. Recently he was awarded the #1 Folk/ Roots Album Of 2022 on the London Celtic Punks web-zine. The words are as honest as they are urgent…every second counts!http://bryanmcpherson.com/
https://www.antomorra.com/
http://www.thebirdsnestpub.co.uk/
https://www.lambsurbiton.co.uk
Entry for both shows is free but their will be a whip round (as you can imagine getting here from the States as a DIY musician isn’t cheap) and every single penny from London Celtic Punks merchandise on the night will go directly into Bryan’s pocket.
Our gig last month with The Whipjacks was a great success and great fun but now we are broke again! All money we raise from our merch we put back into the Celtic-Punk scene so if you like what we do then you can support us by checking out our online store and buying something. The Harp’n’Bones design is back in all sizes and also on black or white shirts. Also we have the last few remaining polo shirts, nifty woolly hats and Green’n’White ‘Skully Cap’ ringer shirts that we need to get rid of. Click the link below for the full range of all our other tatt. Shirts, badges, stickers, flags, CD’s and fridge magnets – all the discerning Celtic-Punk fan could ever need! Help keep Punk Celtic! https://the30492shop.fwscart.com/
Facebook is rubbish and I can’t wait to see it go broke and a return to the era of paper flyers and fanzines. It has a stranglehold on all forms of expression that is far from healthy. If you are thinking of leaving and still want to keep up with us you can do via the London Celtic Punks group on the phone app Telegram. Similar to What’s App but completely free from outside interference. Join us on Telegram, don’t miss a single post and even receive the odd exclusive and special offer! https://t.me/londoncelticpunks/
The response to the new London Celtic Punks badge has been amazing. Not surprising really as they are just about the nicest bit of merchandise in Celtic-Punk if you ask me! Comes with butterfly clip and made in Ireland (Guaranteed Irish!) available for just £5 – UK and £7 – EU post-paid and we’ll throw in a few stickers and a button badge too. For further overseas contact us and we’ll work it out. Send to Paypal (friends & family) to londoncelticpunks@hotmail.co.uk
Even though we hate it Facebook does supply the (very) occasional ray of sunshine so a shout out to some good friends of ours over on Facebook. The Dropkick Murphys – Fan Page and the Celtic Punk, Folk And Rock Fans are two of the best music forums on FB let alone Celtic-Punk. Ran By Fans For Fans just like you and me. Like and join in the fun!
Never miss a post by getting them straight to your in-box
means that that the band that I go on to review are not a Celtic-Punk band but are utterly brilliant and have a fiddle /accordion / banjo in them. Well welcome to the Heathen Apostles. A dark (very dark) Country-ish band with their very own genre’s – ‘Doombilly’ and ‘Bloodgrass’. Heathen Apostles do to Country / Bluegrass music what the bands we all love here do to Celtic music but they also add on a dash of Goth as well. They may be based in LA but they sound like they’re from the Appalachian’s harkening back to a bygone chapter of American history while firmly keeping one foot planted in the present-day. The band features 
Some great live gigs coming up if you live here in the belly of the beast. It’s been a long, dark year and a half for the live music industry, both here and beyond, but the resurgence of live music has begun and is returning to London once again. For lovers of Celtic-Metal you in for a treat with a rare London appearance from extreme metal masters PRIMORDIAL over from Ireland supported by one of my genre favourites SAOR down from Scotland as well as Hellripper and Fen. It’s all at The Electric Ballroom in Camden, north London August 29th. Tickets £25 from 
carved into the granite by Gutzon Borglum from 1927 to 1947. It’s also an area where huge numbers of Scots and Scots-Irish settled. This may explain the propensity for moonshine in the area! Production of illegal alcohol that is still widespread today. Another possible by-product of the Celt on the local population is widespread mistrust of all government institutions and even today in a age where yuppies and hipsters seem to have overtaken everywhere you are unlikely to find a Vegan coffee shop or a demand for stricter gun control laws in the Black Hills. Having been forced out of their homes over here they brought that mistrust with them and it still permeates through the local populace.
1. 
years so it just makes it all the more clear how much we all miss Waldo and his fantastic 
Each year the number of Celtic-Punk and related releases we receive here at 30492- LONDON CELTIC PUNKS continues to amaze us. Now this is great news but 
Anyone expecting a pulsating Quebecios folk fusion, in the vein of La Bouttaine Souriante/ Genticorum and such like, will be in for quite a surprise here. Released to accompany a fall tour from Montreal 5 piece Rosier this 4 track EP blends a very lush, dreamlike, multi -layered indie folk organically together with strong Quebecois folk traditions- which while always having a sense of exploration and development, never loses its distinct lightness of touch.
Now I was first attracted to The Lucky Eejits thanks to their name and it’s ‘Gaelic’ meaning. Eejit of course being the way an working class Irish person would pronounce ‘idiot’. Playing straight forward punk rock this trio blast high speed and high energy upbeat punk music and their is simply no let up on Out Of Time with its catchy riffs in your face punk rock edge. Based in Oakland California the band began life as a Celtic-Punk outfit featuring six eccentric Irish-Americans but after a change in the bands line up The Lucky Eejits were reborn as a more than solid Punk-Rock band. The album is twelve songs long and lasts just over a half hour. Not bad for a album chockablock with songs played at breakneck speed. From the fast Pop-Punk of opener ‘Get Out’ to the final song, a nod to their Celtic-Punk days perhaps, ‘Warm Guinness’, about the perils of tour life, it’s an album that never lets up. Album highlights include ‘Champion’ and ‘So Far So Good’ which they released as singles with the latter as a pretty damn good official video.
The main problem with albums like this is that everyone on it treats their song as if it’s either the opening or finale of the whole thing and produces something incredibly over the top. A female only tribute to the legendary Tom Waits sounds great on paper but it is rather overblown and judging by Corinne Bailey Rae’s version of ‘Jersey Girl’ they’d have been well to invite Mariah Carey to perform here! Twelve artists of Tom Waits greatest ballads covered by Aimee Mann, Patty Griffin, Rosanne Cash, Phoebe Bridgers, Joseph, Shelby Lynne, Allison Moorer, Corinne Baily Rae, Courtney Marie Andrews, Kat Edmonson, The Wild Reeds, Iris Dement and Angie McMahon and yet 
So far here we have reviewed a Folk album, a Punk album and a sort of Bluesy compilation album so none of our usual uptake and that doesn’t change with this review of the latest EP from Heathen Apostles. They play a sort of Gothic Americana Blues crossed with alternative alternative country. Born By Lightning comes hot on the heels of their recently released album Dust To Dust, their fifth to date, and five new songs of what one reviewer described as “the bluegrass of Bill Monroe put into the woodshed with the Gothic tendencies of Siouxsie And The Banshees”. Label mates of one of my all time favourite bands 
Andy the Celtic Punk Author
celticpunkcast
classicalbumreviewer
essexmarv
gtmellon
kevingrooney
The Don
shaneoneill1888
Stephen Francis Bourke
theold69th
londoncelticpunks.wordpress.com 
Recent Comments