I wanted to put my own stamp on these old songs – but I’m writing my own tracks now, says Muireann Bradley

MUIREANN Bradley is a young lady who sings the blues.

Listening to the Irish teenager is like being transported back in time to the heyday of Billie Holliday, Ella Fitzgerald or Nina Simone.

Now Muireann, who turned 18 this month, has signed a transatlantic deal with Decca and Verve Forecast, labels synonymous with those three iconic singers.

It is a deserved reward for her beguiling voice and dazzling finger-picking guitar skills.

Her debut album, I Kept These Old Blues, has been remastered for re-release in February and comes with an extra track, When The Levee Breaks — a song she loves to sing live.

Some of you might remember Led Zeppelin’s full throttle, electrified When The Levee Breaks which closes their fourth album.

But Muireann returns the song to its folk roots, basing her interpretation in equal parts on Memphis Minnie’s original and a take by Philadelphia guitar picker Ari Eisinger.

The lyrics tell of the devastating Great Mississippi Flood of 1927, which makes Muireann’s story all the more remarkable when you consider that she hails from the hills of County Donegal just outside the small town of Ballybofey.

At an age when most girls listen to Taylor Swift on repeat, she is immersing herself in old blues songs from America’s Deep South.

Many of the original singers had poverty-stricken lives but became acclaimed in later life during the 1960s blues revival.

Now Muireann is launching her own revival of their rich and important legacy.

‘I was shocked by the standing ovation’

As she tells me via video call: “Nobody of my generation has heard of artists like Blind Lemon Jefferson or Blind Blake.

“I would really love to spread their music. They were such amazing artists.”

Muireann received wider attention a year ago thanks to Jools Holland’s annual Hootenanny when she appeared on a bill alongside Rod Stewart, Raye and Joss Stone.

She gave an enchanting performance of Candyman by the Reverend Gary Davis — and was the only artist to receive a standing ovation from the assembled New Year revellers.

“The Hootenanny really helped because I don’t think anybody had heard of me,” says Muireann.

“I’d only played three or four gigs before that and it was my first time on television.

“I didn’t actually know they had given me a standing ovation because I was facing away from the audience.

“Then my dad told me. I was very shocked. It was an amazing experience.”

As interest exploded in the wake of her performance, Muireann was invited on to The Late, Late Show, Ireland’s long-running equivalent of The Graham Norton Show.

She found herself on a sofa next to two Irish film stars constantly in the spotlight, Paul Mescal and Andrew Scott.

“Getting to meet them was very cool,” she reports. “I’ve been watching The Late Late Show all my life so it was great to play a song and do a wee interview afterwards.”

These are exciting times for Muireann but it’s clear from talking to her that she has her feet firmly on the ground.

I ask how she came to follow her singular musical path and she hands much of the credit to her father John.

She says: “I grew up listening to old country blues, Delta blues and ragtime because my dad has always been obsessed with it.

“He was also a stay-at-home dad. Even when he was collecting me and my siblings from school, he’d have Blind Blake blasting from the car speakers.

“And the house has always been full of my dad’s guitars and his massive collection of CDs.”

Muireann says that an early favourite was Candyman with its child-like quality and “lyrics that don’t make much sense”.

“I just loved it. My dad would play it himself and when I was very small, maybe five or six, he taught me to sing it with him. We’d trade the words, call-and-response.”

Around the same time, she started learning her first musical instrument — the piano.

“I didn’t like it and gave it up,” she says. “A few years later, when I was seven or eight, I asked my dad if I could play the guitar.”

“He waited till my ninth birthday when he got me a little travel guitar because I was so small for my age. Then he began teaching me how to play.

“I wanted to finger pick because I thought it was much cooler than just being able to strum.”

It’s strange to think that in the ensuing years, music wasn’t Muireann’s first passion and that she achieved success in an entirely different field.

“I left the guitar behind me when I got into combat sports — jiu jitsu and boxing — competing all the time,” she says.

Remarkably, Muireann reached national level in both disciplines but, in 2020, when she was 13, the Covid pandemic stopped her progress in its tracks.

“When lockdown hit, you couldn’t do any of that contact stuff so I
went back to playing the guitar,” she continues.

“I started listening and practicing with a new intensity and focus. In a very serious moment, I wrote out a list of tunes I was going to learn.”

First, she returned to a traditional tune she learned as a nine-year-old, Vestapol, which dates back to the 19th Century.

She says: “Once I got it up to scratch, me and dad put it up on YouTube. Then I learned Blind Blake’s Police Dog Blues and that went up, too.

“I didn’t have any subscribers or anything like that but they were my first two videos.

“There was a very good reaction. I got a lot more views than I’d expected. It was crazy how it blew up.”

By posting these expertly realised, authentic-sounding songs, Muireann caught the attention of Josh Rosenthal from American roots music label Tompkins Square.

He was so impressed that he signed her when she was still only 13 and, over the next two-and-half years, she recorded her debut album I Kept These Old Blues.

Every track was recorded live in the studio with Muireann singing and playing guitar simultaneously “with no overdubs or modern recording tricks”.

Most of the final masters came from first or second takes, the resulting LP sounding fresh and vital but mirroring the style of the original analogue recordings made decades ago.

‘I am starting to write my own songs’

Some songs are dark murder ballads such as Delia and Stagolee (familiar to listeners of Johnny Cash and Nick Cave respectively) while others such as Candyman have a lighter touch.

Of Candyman, she says: “It is one of the most fun things you can do on a guitar once you’ve mastered it and it’s often the first tune I play when I pick one up.”

I suggest to Muireann that it’s good to have a new female voice interpreting these songs.

She draws my attention to Elizabeth Cotten (1893-1987) whose songs Shake Sugaree and Freight Train are highlights on I Kept These Old blues.

She says: “I’ve always really loved Elizabeth Cotton since I was really young. My dad told me about her hard life and how she only became famous in the 1960s.”

There’s a wonderful 1967 recording of Shake Sugaree with Cotten playing guitar accompanied on vocals by her 12-year-old great-granddaughter Brenda Evans.

Muireann explains: “Because Elizabeth is strumming, I was also inspired by Stefan Grossman’s fingerpicking version. Mine’s kind of based on that.”

Although Muireann talks with great fondness for all her inspirations, she’s also determined to bring her own character and style into play.

“I wanted to put my own stamp on these old songs,” she says. “Most of them have something in there that I came up with.”

This, plus her high profile TV appearances, helps explain why Muireann has landed a major label deal with Decca and Verve Forecast.

She says: “I get such an incredible thrill when I think about my debut album being re-released on such historic and iconic labels.”

She’s well aware of following in the footsteps of a legend like Billie Holliday (who performed Lady Sings Blues) and being in the same stable as contemporary artists like Melody Gardot.

So does Muireann intend to take things a big step further by writing her own songs?

“I am starting to write already,” she says, before adding modestly, “but nothing’s quite ready yet.

“I’d like to record my own songs and albums but I will continue covering the old blues songs as well.”

In Muireann Bradley’s hands, the songs of Blind Blake, Elizabeth Cotten, Memphis Minnie, Rev. Gary Davis, Mississippi John Hurt and the rest, have a thrilling new lease of life.

The songs she performs maybe as old as the hills but this teenager from County Donegal is one of SFTW’s faces of 2025.