With summers spent on Arranmore Island, off Donegal, it is no surprise that Ye Vagabonds are building their music career out of a love for folk music.
The duo have, just this weekend, released two new tracks via Rough Trade’s imprint River Lea.
Brothers Diarmuid and Brían Mac Gloinn learned I’m A Rover from their mother when they were young, and believe it travelled from Scotland to her home on Arranmore Island, becoming this distinctly unusual version of the song on its oral journey.
The Bothy Lads is a song Ye Vagabonds learned and honed at singing sessions, before becoming a highlight of their spellbinding live shows.
“We first heard this from our good friends Luke Mercier and Anthony Mannion in Walsh’s Stoneybatter one night, and they introduced us to the singing of Cilla Fisher and Artie Trezise, from whom we learned this song,” said the boys from Carlow.
The delightfully calming video for I’m a Rover, which is available on all digital platforms and on vinyl, was shot in a beautiful lakeside location in Switzerland in December 2019, when Ye Vagabonds were playing some gigs there.
Watch the video:
Speaking about the making of the video, Brían said: “René Reusser and his partner Mirjam run the most beautiful gigs in a venue at their home in Brienz, Switzerland. We visited in December 2019. They do nothing by halves there. Even their posters are made in the spirit of adventure that often require a small team to pull off and photographers dangling from trees.
“René had an idea to make a video with the two of us in one canoe and himself and Martin, the cameraman, in another. One-take videos are hard to pull off. You need a good idea. In this case, it also required René‘s very steady paddling.”
The vinyl cover photo was taken by fellow Vagabond Alain McFadden, backstage at Dublin’s National Concert Hall before the band’s biggest headline gig to date, in October 2019. The sleeve was designed by Brían and Diarmuid’s brother-in-law, Jesse Smith, whose fiddle playing was central to the sound of their The Hare’s Lament album. Both songs are available on the vinyl release.
Order the vinyl from River Lea/Rough Trade: https://tinyurl.com/y6ksy3mk
Order “I’m a Rover” on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/album/4gCYrHbYgj9cFRRCYL7CHr?si=wJ0Y974zSzqN7Iv0R3If4g
