Get the latest gossip

‘People of all ages get very emotional at our gigs’: how ‘trad punk’ folk band the Mary Wallopers became a live sensation

Their punked-up versions of traditional Irish songs have wowed audiences. Ahead of recording a third album, the Dundalk band talk about their journey from playing for beer and whisky to this year’s Glastonbury

At the heart of this is their ability to move seamlessly between crackling cabaret-style banter, raucous tales of pintmen, laughter and getting laid, chaotic, Pogues-style punk velocity – limbs and spilled pints everywhere – and pin-drop silence for heartrending songs about the vicious crimes of the Catholic church, or renowned Irish Traveller singer Pecker Dunne. Photograph: Piaras Ó Mídheach/Sportsfile/Getty ImagesOn a Tuesday afternoon two weeks after Glastonbury, the original Mary Wallopers trio – the Hendy brothers and their friend Seán McKenna – are gathered in the sunlit beer garden of O’Carroll’s bar in the Seatown area of Dundalk. Dundalkis also a town with a rich musical heritage – after picking me up from the bus station, the Hendy brothers show me the now-closed pub McManus’, and its mural of the Corrs, a local band who started out there, just as the Mary Wallopers did.Bill Clinton, his nose in a Guinness, has found his way into the painting too.

Get the Android app