Forfocséic: Irish Songs of Liberation

Volume 3 in my Irish Folk Punk music series, Love & War, is out March 1 via Bandcamp and March 10 on all other digital music platforms. This new album features drum performances by Craig Wesley Divino; violin work by Rose Drucker and Jacqui Cheng; and tin whistle by Paula Arzac. Did I mention it’s the best one yet? (I’m getting better at this every time, I swear)

You can listen to the album below, or check it out wherever you listen to your tunes!

It all started with a stupid tweet.

I cracked a joke on Twitter about the similarities between the NWA hip-hop anthem “Fuck tha Police” and the classic Irish rebel song, "Come Out Ye Black and Tans."I was rehearsing for an upcoming Irish folk music gig, and realized that NWA was really just doing an updated take on Dominic Behan. The tweet took off, so I quickly recorded a mash-up of the two songs, which swiftly garnered tens thousands of plays, and it became a fun part of my Irish music sets.

That was 2019. The following year, I booked a string of St. Patrick's Day shows as his mashup got more and more popular — but the world had other plans for March 2020. When it began looking like I wouldn't get to return to the stage in March 2021 either, I decided to find another way to share my favorite Irish songs. I wanted to record something that my dad would listen to with his friends at the pub, but also something that would catch on with my indie rock and hipster fans, that highlighted some of the more revolutionary parts of Ireland's post-colonial history. Things like workers rights, and indigenous language rights, and prison reform, and colonial oppression, and immigrants issues — issues that are sadly still relevant to so many struggles today. To reinforce those themes, I reached out to friends across the country, including women and people of color, to collaborate on the album, to ensure their voices all were heard as well.

This home recording effort became "Forfocséic, Vol. 1," — named for the Gaelicized slang version of a common English utterance in many Irish and Irish-American homes. "Forfocséic, Vol. 1" featured 7 songs about liberation (plus a Rubberbandits cover, just for shits and giggles). As soon as the album took off, fans began asking when there'd be a volume two. So I turned "Forfocséic" into an annual tradition, with a second collection featuring songs about whiskey and worker's rights in 2022, and a third album in 2023 focusing on songs of love and war. Each recording experience has also became an opportunity for me to practice and hone my producing and arranging skills. (You’ll even find a few Celtic Punk remixes, just so I could learn and experiment some more.)

And that is how a random joke about a 90s rap song and the original IRA turned into the most prolific project of my 20+ year musical career.