Muireann Bradley

Muireann Bradley is an Irish musician from County Donegal who sings and plays rural blues and ragtime on guitar, in the fingerpicking style of artists active in the 1920s to 1940s. This concert takes place at the Hare & Hounds in Birmingham.

Muireann Bradley began playing guitar at the age of nine, encouraged by a father who loved the blues, and learned largely by ear. Bradley studied the recordings of Blind Blake, Mississippi John Hurt and Memphis Minnie, pioneers whose fingerpicking shaped the approach heard in performance. The debut album, I Kept These Old Blues, was released in 2023 and has become a sought-after collector's item.

The more recent Blackwood Pew EP marks a move into songwriting, with original compositions placed alongside new versions of older material. Its songs draw on blues, ragtime, country and Irish traditional music. Bradley has headlined concerts on both sides of the Atlantic, and Jools Holland invited Bradley to perform on the Hootenanny.

Hare & Hounds is a Birmingham venue that mainly hosts concerts, and its programme is centred on pop, rock and indie music. This concert brings a rural blues and ragtime guitarist and singer to a venue whose usual bill leans towards those styles, offering a different register within the city's live music calendar.