Roy Harper returns to DeBarras ahead of his UK Theatre tour in March to celebrate 50 years of monumental classics including McGoohan’s Blues…
Bill Shanley will accompany Roy on the night with support from Junior Brother
Roy Harper on Tour – March 2019
Celebrating 50 years of monumental classics including McGoohan’s Blues…
“Partly because many of the things I wrote about in McGoohan’s Blues are still very relevant 50 years later, and partly because my third record was a watershed moment in my recording life, it’s been long in my mind that I should dust it off and bring it on tour again. I’ll be joined by Bill Shanley and an ensemble of musicians which might have to be slightly more versatile in terms of instrumentation this time, although I have to say that the players we brought out last time provided me with the best accompaniment I’ve ever had in my life. I was overjoyed with what we produced, so we’ll just have to see whether we can equal that.”
Bill Shanley
Dublin based, Bill is one of Irelands top session and touring guitar players and producers. Bill has established himself internationally too, through touring and contributing to albums with Ray Davies, Paul Brady, Mary Black, Roy Harper, Gilbert O Sullivan, Alexandra Burke, Sinead O’Connor, Judy Collins to name a few.
Being an accompanist has always been of key interest to Bill, enjoying the great scope and limitless backdrop you can create as a player for the artist you’re working with. This skill was commented on in the Financial Times review of a Ray Davies show a the Royal Albert Hall – “Is there a finer sideman around? It’s unlikely…”
Junior Brother:
Junior Brother is an experimental alternative folk singer/ songwriter from Co. Kerry, Ireland, playing sometimes humorous, sometimes heady tunes. Strange stories, poetic and arcane, unfold with reckless abandon upon an idiosyncratic Guitar and Foot Tambourine accompaniment, taking musical influence from his upbringing in rural Ireland.
Chosen as one of RTÉ’s Rising Irish Stars of 2018, Junior Brother has been steadily building a fanbase in Dublin, and around the country, winning followers with his unique and powerful live shows. He performed at many festivals in 2018 including the 14th Clonakilty International Guitar Festival & Other Voices.
“Irreverent is too small a word to describe Kerry singer Junior Brother. Armed with a battered acoustic guitar and a tambourine, his gaunt and guttural tunes sing with a gallows humour that will chime with anyone who’s been dragged up in Ireland between the triangulation/strangulation points of church, school and da drink.”
– Alan Corr, RTÉ
“If Nick Drake was born in the Kingdom, and received a lifetime full of Healy Rae harrassment and sanctimonious sour looks, it might sound like this.”
– Jinx Lennon
