Folk Alley Sessions: The Murphy Beds

(This Session was originally published in July, 2015)

Eamon O’Leary started playing Irish music while growing up in Dublin through his friendship with the Mayock family, traditional musicians from County Mayo. When he moved to New York City in the early ’90s, he immersed himself in the city’s traditional music scene and travelled widely, performing with many of the great players in Irish music. Jefferson Hamer is a guitarist and singer based in Brooklyn, NY. In 2013, he and songwriter Anais Mitchell released ‘Child Ballads,’ a collection of new adaptations of English and Scottish folk songs which won a BBC Radio 2 Folk Award.

O’Leary and Hamer met in New York while performing traditional Irish music. They discovered a shared love of the old songs – from Ireland and throughout the British Isles. They joined together on an album that became the name of their duo – The Murphy Beds – which O’Leary says is a mystery to their audiences in Ireland.

In 2015, the pair visited Saranac Lake, NY for an exclusive Folk Alley Session recording to play the traditional music that they have “decorated.”

Watch video performances and hear an interview with the duo.

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(This Folk Alley Session was produced by Beehive Productions for Folk Alley.)