THE three core members of The Mary Wallopers are standing at the bar in Camden’s Dublin Castle, surveying the signed photos on the wall: there’s Madness fooling about, flanked by an older Suggs, and Amy Winehouse on the night she got engaged. “Imagine a pub wanting us on the wall,” says Charles Hendy while they wait for their pints of Guinness to settle.
“One of us would have to die first,” replies his brother Andrew. “Bagsy not me.”
A fatality may not be necessary, the way the Wallopers are going. Truth be told, this collective from Dundalk, Ireland are in a curious situation, steadily gathering fans and acclaim while actively seeking neither. Of course, it’s their rebellious attitude and lack of hunger for stardom that makes them such a powerful, enticing prospect; but their forthcoming second album, the riotous, swaggering Irish Rock N Roll, will do little to halt their rise. “I don’t like fame, I don’t think,” says Charles, once we’ve found a table in the pub’s empty back room. “It’s shit. It’s nice when people appreciate the music and all, but if you’re not pissing off some people then you’re probably not doing anything worthwhile.”
“We went through years of everyone being like, ‘What are you doing? You’re an eejit’,” adds Andrew. “Now the exact same people are all like, ‘Ah Jesus, fair play to you, you’re doing great.’ But we’re just doing this because we need to express ourselves – regardless of how many people are watching us, we’d still be doing that. You have to be a bit mentally ill… which we are.”
Ireland has long had its fine purveyors of traditional folk – the likes of Lankum, John Francis Flynn and Lisa O’Neill are just the most recent – but few are as raucous, good-humoured and thrillingly ragged as this County Louth crew. Playing together in pubs since 2016, they began to make a wider impression during the pandemic, when they started regular livestreams from a
