They don't come any more chill than teenage blues wunderkind Muireann Bradley.
The 18-year-old native of Ballybofey in Donegal has already had quite a few `pinch me’ moments in her short career but she remains as cool, calm and collected as the old blues masters she plays homage to her with her dexterous and heartfelt music.
There’s already been a performance on Jools Holland Hootenanny on New Year’s Eve 2023, a Late Late Show appearance, a record deal with Decca (home to Billie Holliday, Nina Simone and Ella Fitzgerald), and next week, she takes off on a tour of Australia, followed by a musical Caribbean cruise alongside guitar great Joe Bonamassa.
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One of three siblings, Muireann first got a taste for the music of blues greats like Rev Gary Davis, Memphis Minnie, Elizabeth Cotten, Mississippi John Hurt, and Robert Johnson from her father, John, who is a musician himself and who now manages his fast rising daughter.
Originally released as a limited pressing in late 2023, her debut album, I Kept These Old Blues, has now been remastered by Grammy-nominated engineer Kevin Reeves but the songs remain the same.
The album features her guitar picking interpretations of standards by Memphis Minnie and Mississippi John Hurt and for Muireann, it’s all about purity. "I didn’t re-do any of the songs," she says. "They’re all the original recordings from the original album but there is one extra song - When The Levee Breaks.
"When I was recording I wanted to do it like they did back in the 1820s and 30s so with most of the songs, I did my best to do it in the first and second take and most of the tunes on the album are the first or second take. Back in the 1920s they would have only had a chance to do one take."
It all began when Muireann uploaded a clip of herself on YouTube playing in her garden in Ballybofey when she was only 13. She is now the toast of the blues world with long established players enthusing that the torch truly been passed on to the kid from Donegal.
It’s a great story - how did a teenager from Ireland reach back to the very beginnings of rock `n’ roll and become bewitched by the music of long gone legends, some of whom lived broken down, dissolute lives very different from her own?
"There is a mystery to it. Robert Johnson singing about the devil and all that," she says. "Some of these people were only photographed once. I’ve read about them and my dad knows all the history so I would have asked about it when I was learning these songs."
What started out as a love of the music has become somewhat of a quiet mission to bring that lost world to a new audience.
"I never thought there was any of chance of me getting young people into this music," she says. "Or that there was any chance of me being able to make a career out of it because nobody listens to it, it’s so unheard of.
"I think now I’ve really gotten into the idea of bringing it to a younger audience. There are so many people who have never heard of Robert Johnson, legends like that. They should be introduced to young people.
"I have noticed recently that there are a lot more young people at my gigs. It makes me really happy when I see that."
There is, of course, the Rory Gallagher connection - the late guitar god was born fifty KM up the road from Muireann in Ballyshannon "I’ve only started getting into him recently," Muireann says. "I’ve always been into acoustic blues but I’ve started getting into electric and I'm thinking of getting an electric guitar. I’ve never played electric at all. Only acoustic."
She has also recently started writing her own songs. "I only started this year and I haven’t had a lot of time to give it a proper go," she says.
"I’ve been so busy but when I get spare time I sit down and start messing around with different licks on the guitar. Getting instrumental pieces together comes easy to me but lyrics aren’t so easy."
Before she went full time with music, Muireann was heavily involved in sport. She trained in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu and competed at national level and won an Irish title in 2019.
"At the minute I am going to focus on music. I have stopped training in Jiu Jitsu because there is a real danger of risking your fingers so I can’t let that happen!"
The world awaits and as for her friends in Ballyfofey, they are unfazed by her success. "They don’t really think much of it to be honest probably because of the music I play. It doesn’t mean that much to them. I’m just the same old Muireann, travelling around."
I've Kept These Old Blues is out now on Decca Records
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