Like many musicians learning how to hone their craft, Niamh Bury paid her dues by busking on the streets of Dublin many years ago. She even recalls a trip to Europe with her guitar in tow, where she took to the streets of various bustling cities; Vienna, she says, was the most lucrative city for her beautiful folk-tinged songs.
“I made a killing in Vienna,” she nods, when we meet over steaming cups of tea in a Dublin city centre hotel. “That was the best busking spot by far – I guess because it’s kind of a musical city. I busked outside St Stephen’s Cathedral and made loads of money, and then me and my friend went to the famous Sacher Hotel and bought ourselves some cake,” she adds, referring to the hotel’s Sachertorte, “which felt very extravagant”.
That is, I tell her, the most un-rock’n’roll thing I’ve possibly ever heard; where are the late-night drug binges, the wild parties, the hedonism? “This is why I do folk music,” she says. “I’m way more into coffee and cake than all that other stuff.”
Bury, from the north Dublin seaside town of Portmarnock, is fast becoming one of the most talked-about artists amid the current boom of Ireland’s flourishing young folk scene. Yet “folk” is almost a misnomer for what the 32-year-old does, considering her forthcoming debut album Yellow Roses blends folk with elements of jazz and trad, too.
“I wouldn’t say I’m resistant to that label, necessarily,” she says. “But to me, genres are just kind of a guideline for people in general; almost like the packaging that you put on something, so people will have an idea whether they like it or not. There’s a bit of classical influence in there, too; I ended up working with two amazing string players, who play in orchestras. And growing up, I listened to a lot of grunge and alt-rock, so that comes into play in my lyrics a little bit. I do love folk music,” she says. “It’s just not the only thing in there.”
I suppose I just always loved sharing the thing I was good at with other people
It is somewhat inevitable that Bury would pursue music in some way. Her father Terry is a pub singer; her sister Fiona is a trained opera singer who formerly sang professionally with a group in Australia. Her brother is a session musician who has played with various Irish bands over the years, while her mother Angela is a classically trained pianist turned science teacher, who oversaw the school musicals.
“I was really, really shy as a kid,” she says. “But for whatever reason, performing always came easily to me. I was in local musicals from a really early age on stage, because my sister and dad would’ve always been in them – but I was always the background kid.” She smiles. “But I think I found my feet as ‘the one in the class who could sing’ pretty early on and I remember getting the solo at the communion and graduation mass. I suppose I just always loved sharing the thing I was good at with other people.”
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Some of that endearing shyness seems to have followed Bury into adulthood, too. She is a warm but somewhat reluctant conversationalist, apparently happier to blend into the background and let her music do the talking. And although she denies a starring role in any school musicals, a quick Google search after our interview throws up the quirky fact that she once starred as Fantine in a school production of Les Mis, opposite former Irish Eurovision hopeful and reality TV competitor Ryan O’Shaughnessy’s Jean Valjean.
Bury went through a period of her teens, she admits, where those aware of her powerful voice suggested that she should enter reality competitions.
“People would always say it to me when I was a teenager, because it did seem like the obvious avenue, I suppose,” she says, shrugging. “And not to knock those shows; they are fun and they are entertaining, and there’s value in that, as well. But it’s not the kind of music I wanted to make. And it didn’t really seem like…”, she pauses, trying to find the right words. “The people who ended up making careers from those shows, they’re not really musicians any more; they’re TV presenters, or whatever. And that’s great too – but I was very aware that I wanted to stay well clear of that.”
“And then I found a really nice folk scene in Dublin in my early 20s which was the complete opposite of that. With traditional sessions and singing sessions, it’s not necessarily about your voice – it’s about being able to hold a room, and tell a story. I think there’s something really beautiful [in that] and more in tune with what we’re made to do with each other as people – which is to communicate, without all the glitz and glamour.”
Perhaps that goes some way to explaining her reluctance to see music as something to be studied, too. After school, she did a degree in english at Maynooth, although she initially studied music – the same course that Dermot Kennedy pursued a degree in – before dropping out of that course after a year.
“I was doing a performance degree and I was being examined on my voice, and I really hated it,” she admits. “I never wanted to train my voice. Looking back now, I think it wouldn’t have done any harm, but at the time I was very precious about how I sounded, and I didn’t like being critiqued on it. So I dropped music, and I focused on English, which I loved – and I ended up doing a Master’s in English, too.”
Around that time, an invitation to take part in the Inishowen Singing Festival in Donegal proved a pivotal moment in her life and career.
“I went up with no real knowledge of what it was”, she says, chuckling at the memory. “Someone I’d met had spotted me singing in a hotel in Donegal, and they recommended that I go up [to the festival]. They do this amazing thing for young singers; they have a young bursary where they’ll put you in a house and introduce you to other young singers. So I got the bus up and I met loads of singers who were my age and into traditional singing, and I’m still really good friends with all of them today.”
Meeting other young people of a similar mindset was “a revelation” to Bury. “Because growing up in school, I didn’t know anyone who was into the same music as me”, she says, adding how despite her love of contemporary artists like Fiona Apple and Jeff Buckley, she would also have attended the Willie Clancy Festival regularly with her family. “So it was amazing to find like-minded people who liked really old stuff.”
These days, Bury helps organise The Night Before Larry Got Stretched, a monthly traditional singing night in the famed Dublin pub, initially founded by members of the bands Lankum and Landless. There is a simple joy, she says, in experiencing singing in its purest, occasionally imperfect form.
“Just the other day, we had a young singer called Eva Carroll from Feakle in Clare, who sings beautifully in Irish and English. So to have that space for people of all ages, all backgrounds, all classes….”
She shakes her head. “It’s very intergenerational and anything could happen at those sessions. We had an Italian Men’s Club in a few months ago, singing Molly Malone in five-part harmony,” she recalls, smiling. “I love performing on stage, but I think it’s really nice to go back to the grassroots and strip everything away, and just sing with your voice and nothing else. And to hear other people doing that too, is really important and really inspiring.”
After her stint at Maynooth, Bury spent time in Norwich studying for a Master’s Degree in English at the University of East Anglia. It’s best known to many as the hometown of Steve Coogan’s fictional DJ Alan Partridge, but is “a gorgeous medieval city”, she insists. While there, she met her English partner, also a musician, and extended her stay “for love”, she admits, grinning. They began their own short-lived singing night in Norwich, modelled on The Night Before Larry Got Stretched, but moved back to Dublin in 2019 because Bury missed the Dublin scene.
“English traditional music and singing is also amazing,” she says. “I’m a big fan of the Watersons, the Wilson Family, and I love Martin Carthy, he’s amazing. But it’s just not the same. The sessions aren’t the same. I haven’t found anywhere else like Dublin.”
Reflecting on it now, a lot of the songs were written in my mid-20s. And it sounds a bit weird, I think a lot of it was processing what it means for me to be a woman, and what kind of woman I want to be
Bury has her own theories about the current explosion of young artists taking the folk and trad genres and filtering it through their own experiences. Like her, some of them – including Lankum and John Francis Flynn – are from the northside of Dublin.
“I think there’s a number of factors,” she nods. “Our parents probably would have been of the generation who grew up listening to Planxty, Mary Black, Van Morrison – so I think we’ve probably all had that as a background. Some people have a theory that it kicked off in 2010 after the recession, which I would probably agree with to some extent – because again, going back to the session, you don’t need any money to sing with your friends; it’s really going back to this basic form of just being together and entertaining each other. I don’t deny that there’s a scene, but I don’t think people should be limited by genres or by labels, necessarily. But I’m really proud to be from Dublin and really proud to know these people.”
Talk turns to Bury’s musical proficiency, which can be heard in full flow on Yellow Roses. The album was recorded with Brían Mac Gloinn, one half of acclaimed folk duo Ye Vagabonds, acting as engineer and co-producer. Bury is an excellent guitarist and pianist, but agrees that there is a tendency to dismiss women merely as “nice singers” without acknowledging their technical prowess.
“It’s not that I’ve experienced it very often, but I think [I’ve seen it] with other female musicians, definitely,” she says. “People do tend to focus on female voices. Growing up, someone like Lisa Hannigan was big for me as a role model, because she was writing her own songs and actually playing her instruments; that wasn’t very common. Whereas now, you’ve got the likes of Anna Mieke who’s an amazing guitarist, but I think that’s not really focused on as much as her voice, perhaps.”
“Niamh Regan is another example of that. I think it is definitely changing, though, because there’s a few musicians like [Donegal’s] Muireann Bradley, and Grace Bowers – a really young American blues/rock guitarist – who is this amazing virtuoso. It’s really, really good to see that because we do need more female role models. But I think it’s becoming less and less of an anomaly, which is really nice to see.”
Although Yellow Roses was a gathering-in of songs, some written as far back as 2015, one of its unifying themes is exploring womanhood in all its forms. Bury gets unexpectedly emotional when she begins talking about it.
“Reflecting on it now, a lot of the songs were written in my mid-20s,” she nods. “And it sounds a bit weird, but I think a lot of it was processing what it means for me to be a woman, and what kind of woman I want to be.” Her voice catches in her throat as she wipes a tear away, embarrassed. “Sorry, I don’t know why I’m getting emotional,” she says, chuckling. “It’s just an emotive topic. A few of the songs ended up being about my family members. The title song, Yellow Roses, is about my nana, who would’ve had a fairly difficult life for different reasons but she just found great solace in nature and animals and beautiful things. So I think in a way, that song is a good summary of the album as a whole: just striving to see the good in things.”
Now that I’ve done one, I’m really excited to do the next one; I’ve been chipping away at writing all the time
The album was recorded with Mac Gloinn at his Black Mountain Recording Studios overlooking Dundalk Bay, while Covid was still raging during 2021. It was the first time that Bury had been in a proper studio, which makes the time-worn, classic feel of Yellow Roses all the more astonishing.
It also explains why Bury was snapped up by Claddagh Records, the label originally cofounded by Guinness heir and arts patron Garech Browne in 1959. The recently revived label made Bury and doom-folk supergroup Øxn its first signings in 18 years, and Bury says that she had intended to release the finished album herself, before the label stepped in. While other Irish young folk and trad acts have been signed by the likes of Rough Trade in the UK, it has been gratifying to sign to an Irish label – although she laughs as she contemplates what trad and classical purist Browne, who died in 2018, might have thought of Yellow Roses.
“I don’t think he actually liked guitar,” she chuckles. “I think that he was pretty against having guitar on any of the recordings because it’s not a traditional instrument – so I hope he’s okay with this new departure, wherever he is now. But I think there’s so much amazing music here, and it’s really nice to have a home for it. People are pushing boundaries in different ways, and it’s really important to showcase that and have a home for it in Ireland, as well.”
Considering how easy-going she has been about her musical journey so far, going wherever her nose leads her, it’s unsurprising to hear that Bury’s dream is a simple one. “I honestly just want to keep making albums,” she says, nodding. “Now that I’ve done one, I’m really excited to do the next one; I’ve been chipping away at writing all the time and I’m really interested in production, too. There’s so much you can do with a song, so we’ll see what happens on the next one.”
And if this whole music career thing doesn’t work out as planned, it’s safe to say that she’ll continue to do what she loves, regardless. “Oh, I’ll always be singing”, she says with an emphatic nod. “Whether it’s professionally or not, it doesn’t really matter to me.” She smiles, perhaps remembering those early performances in school plays. “I didn’t do it professionally for many, many years, and it brought me joy. So as long as it continues to do that for me, there’s no reason to stop – no matter how many people I’m singing in front of.”
Yellow Roses is released on March 29th. Niamh Bury tours nationwide throughout April. See niamhbury.com
