The Dubliners
The Dubliners formed in 1962 in the folk sessions of O'Donoghue's pub in Dublin, taking their name from Joyce's story collection at Luke Kelly's suggestion. Against the polished, dinner-jacket balladeering of the day, they played Irish traditional songs and rebel ballads raw and rowdy — Kelly's fierce, red-bearded roar and Ronnie Drew's gravelled rasp trading verses over Barney McKenna's virtuoso tenor banjo and John Sheahan's fiddle. Their 1967 recording of 'Seven Drunken Nights,' kept off Irish state radio, became an unlikely UK Top 10 hit via pirate radio and a 'Top of the Pops' appearance. For fifty years, through changing lineups, they carried the pub-session repertoire onto concert stages worldwide, shaping how Irish folk sounded to the modern world.
we haven’t charted The Dubliners yet
this stretch of the river isn’t mapped. we trace the watershed one artist at a time — and we’re always heading further upstream.