Barley Mob – happy music with a social conscience
Using reggae rhythms to complement their own sound, The Barley Mob play The Townhouse Bar on Saturday, November 9. Based between Kildare and Dublin, the band formed in 2010 when lead singer Adam Daly wanted to start a new project.
“I knew Andy [Moore], our guitar player, from school,” says Adam. “I’d been writing songs for a while, and prior to The Barley Mob I’d been playing music with Jack L for a couple of years. When that finished up, I decided to put my own band together.
“I went online looking for a drummer. Neil replied and we were a three-piece. We started gigging around Dublin, doing some singer/songwriter stuff, like The Ruby Sessions. Basically, as many gigs as we could do.”
John Heraghty, the band’s bass player, joined The Barley Mob after chancing upon them at a gig in Tallaght.
“He came out to promote the studio where he worked, in Clara [Co Offaly],” Adam recalls. “During the conversation he said he played bass. The following week he met us and we did Balcony TV in Dublin. We were straight into festivals then as a four-piece.”
The Barley Mob is completed by Conor Byrne on keys and vocal and Sean Behan on guitar. Their line-up expanded recently, however, when they celebrated the release of their debut album with a gig in The Village, Dublin.
“With the launch gig we were lucky enough to get a brass section in, and a small choir and we had a whistle player – I think it was a 13-piece!” Adam says. “That’s the dream, to have that big band set-up all the time. It does something to you when you’re in front of it; it has quite an effect on people.”
Reggae runs through much of The Barley Mob’s music, and Adam feels it’s a genre that suits the lyrics in their songs.