12 Interviews of Christmas – Amble: "I was teaching the primary kids at St. Pius in Terenure, when an email came through saying, ‘You’ve got a record deal with Warners in L.A.'"

Originally published in Hot Press in April 2025:

No matter how good your St. Patrick’s Day Eve was this year, I’d wager it wasn’t as good as the one Robbie Cunningham, Ross McNerney and Oisín McCaffrey, AKA Amble, had in Sydney.

The chaps were Down Under at the request of Dermot Kennedy who invited them, The Frames, Matt Corby, Kneecap, Meg Mac, Sorcha Richardson, The Scratch, Susan O’Neill, Fynch and Cliffords to open for him at his inaugural Misneach festival, which then with a different Amble-less bill hotfooted it to Boston for two more sell-outs.

With, we should add, a goodly part of the proceeds going to Barretstown and Pieta.

“It was an amazing day with 20,000 people in a venue overlooking Sydney Harbour,” Robbie enthuses. “We got a mail from Dermot asking, ‘Would you be interested in playing this festival I’m putting on?’ Our answer was actually ‘No’ because that’s when we’d originally planned to release our album. We were devastated because ever since Amble began, it’s been a dream of ours to go and play in Australia because there are so many Irish people there. Then things changed and we suddenly had a free month and were able to say ‘If the offer still stands, Yes!’ We managed then to organise our own little tour taking in Perth, Brisbane, Melbourne, Auckland and back again to Sydney. It was just a dream month.”

“Before the festival, Dermot had followed us on Instagram and liked a story of ours, which totally freaked us out – in a good way!”  Ross takes over. “I remember going to see him early on in Whelan’s, the Olympia and Vicar Street and being blown away by his voice. When somebody who’s taken over the world is writing to you, it genuinely takes you aback. And then to find that he’s such a nice, down to earth, approachable guy. You see some musicians going completely off the rails but stardom really seems to suit him.”

Dermot Kennedy isn’t Amble’s only celebrity fan.

“We’re all texting each other going, ‘Did you see your man’s just followed us?!” Ross continues. “My whole life before Amble was sport, so finding out that rugby guys like Jordie Barrett, Robbie Henshaw and James Lowe are fans is massive. We’ve got a lot of big GAA players like Brian Fenton and soccer players like John O’Shea, who followed us the other day, Damien Duff who was at our Olympia gig and Andy Reid, who we’ve had some great nights out with in Nottingham. He’s there one minute telling you these funny stories about playing in the Premier League, and the next he’s singing ‘Mary’s Pub’. It was gas! There are loads of cool people who I grew up watching in there.”

We’ll return to matters sporting in a moment. First, though, who did they get to hang with at Misneach besides its organiser?

“After they’d watched us play, I met a couple of the Kneecap lads, who were really lovely and chilled out,” Oisín smiles. “Three hours later they had the boiler suits and balaclava on and were going nuts on stage.

“What I loved about Misneach is that it was such an array of Irish music on the one day. As different as we are, a lot of the same people were there belting out ‘Mary’s Pub’ and then moshing to Kneecap. It was, what, 10,000 miles away, but felt like a hometown gig.”

“I studied as a primary school teacher,” Robbie observes, “and my whole year seems to be living in Australia now. At the Sydney gig, I was looking down and going, ‘I was at school with you, I played football with you, I was in teacher training with you…’”

When I go to counties like Cavan, Laois and Offaly, it’s sometimes like they’ve rounded up all the young people and stuck them in an internment camp. There’s very few people under thirty to be seen.

“Yeah, we’re witnessing the decline of rural Ireland,” Oisín rues. “If not Australia, Canada or Abu Dubai, which is a big one at the moment, they’re moving to Dublin, Galway, Cork or Belfast. You drive through some places and, like you say, it’s a ghost town.”

“When you go to Sydney, you’re like, ‘Jayz, I fucking get it!’” Ross admits. “Vancouver’s the same. They’re stunning parts of the world.”

Another memorable Misneach moment was when Robbie met Glen Hansard in the backstage toilets.

“The two of us were doing our thing at the urinal and I said, ‘How are you, Glen?’” he recounts. “He was like, ‘Howaya, who are you here with?’ I told him and he went, ‘I don’t know you, but I heard you’re fucking class!’ I said, ‘You’re such an inspiration, you’re part of the reason we’re all doing what we do.’ There was then that awkward ‘Do we shake hands or not?’ moment you get when you’ve just had a pee. I think we settled for a ‘Hey, nice to meet you, have a great gig’ which was the more hygienic option. I’ve been having a fucking piss and had people ask me for a selfie. You’re like, ‘Just give me ten seconds!’”

THIS SPORTING LIFE

There were no such awkward moments when, back in Ireland, they met Hozier, who they’ll soon be accompanying on his latest North American ginormodome tour.

“We heard that Andrew was going to be in the Gaiety the same night we were there to support our friend Laurence Kinlan and his son Oran, who were both appearing in The Ferryman, which by the way was brilliant,” Robbie continues. “We brought in a bottle of whiskey for him, along with a couple of pairs of Amble socks and a card telling him that, ‘This is the coolest thing ever to happen to us.’ We met him and he was extremely humble and polite. He didn’t want the compliments we were paying him and just said, ‘We’ll have a couple of beers together on the road in America.’”

Kicking off on August 6 at the Govball in Flushing Meadows, the trek includes not one but two sell-out shows in Fenway Park. Asked whether the prospect of playing to 40,000 people a night in the home of the Boston Red Sox is a daunting one, Oisín shakes his head and says, “No, bring it on! This’ll come back to haunt me when we’re bottled off in Boston, but there’s this feeling now that we can win over any crowd.”

Amble. Photo: Abigail Ring

Ross McNerney’s gracing of major sports stadia started long before his involvement with Amble.

“I played at senior county level for Longford,” he explains. “Growing up, football was number one and music second, but then it flipped. Robbie’s the same.”

“Right up till two years ago when we met, I was playing football at home in Leitrim,” Mr. Cunningham nods. “No one in the team knew I sang or played guitar – but all of a sudden I was in this band called Amble and gigging in Whelan’s and the Róisín Dubh. Very quickly it’s gotten to the 3Arena in December, which is mental.”

Whilst in Melbourne, Ross and Robbie got to meet up with two old GAA pals, Matt Duffy and Robert Monahan, who are both now earning telephone number salaries playing for Aussie rules giants Carlton Blues.

“Matt’s Longford, so we went to the same primary school,” Ross says. “He’d be eight years younger than me but since hitting his teens about ten inches taller! We played senior football together for two years and then he got drafted, and is now at Carlton where the set-up’s akin to anything you’d find in the Premier League. Matt’s injured at the moment but Robert, who played senior for Kerry, is absolutely flying. I don’t know what the selection criteria are, but they could possibly play for either Ireland or Australia if the combined rules comes back.”

Finally on the GAA front, Robbie, who grew up in Meath, is able to confirm that before becoming a soccer legend, Xabi Alonso played GAA in Kells.

“When he was twelve, they did this student exchange thing and he ended playing Gaelic football for a summer,” he tells me. “It sounds like urban myth but actually happened.”

TOTALLY IN THE MOMENT

Which, 2,085 words into our interview, brings us to the May 23 release of Reverie, Amble’s very eagerly-awaited debut album, which is adorned with a childhood photo of Robbie and his older brother taken by their mum.

“It’s a combination of songs we wrote before we met and songs that we’ve written together since,” Oisín says. “It’s the three of us in a room, playing all the instruments with no added bells or whistles. We wanted it to be as close as possible to the live shows, which are what have got us to this point.”

Amble in the Hot Press Chat Room at Electric Picnic

The moment I knew that Amble were going to be huge was last year when they brought themselves, two guitars and a mandolin to the Hot Press Chatroom at Electric Picnic. As they launched into ‘Mary’s Pub’, four women in the front-row spontaneously burst into tears – for the right reasons.

How does it feel making an emotional connection with people like that?

“It’s brilliant,” Oisín enthuses. “It’s not just the women in the audience. Playing in Amsterdam in March, there was a fella in his fifties or sixties up the front just bawling crying. I was looking at him thinking, ‘This is fucking crazy!’ I’ll never forget it.”

Can they instinctively tell when a song’s going to have that sort of impact?

“Honestly, I’ve no idea at all,” Oisín says with a shake of his head. “‘Mary’s Pub’, a six-minute slow, sad song, is often the best part of our gigs because the entire crowd’s singing every word. I don’t think any of us saw that coming.

“After ‘Mariner Boy’, ‘Judy’s Heels’ and ‘Into The Morning’, we put out ‘Lonely Island’ as our fourth-ever song. I was excited about it, yeah, but I didn’t think it was going to become our number song at gigs and on Spotify and translate to all the people who’ve left Ireland and gone abroad. It’s the audience who decides their relationship with a song, not you.”

“We’ve got some heartbreaking messages about how much our music has meant to people,” Robbie resumes. “They’ll be at a gig and ask us to dedicate a song to a person they’ve perhaps lost. It’s powerful to be able to help someone like that, but at the same time very emotional. I don’t think you can really prepare for that.”

Are there any songs that make Amble cry?

“Luke Kelly’s version of ‘The Unquiet Grave’ with the uillean pipes gets me every time, especially if it’s late at night and I’ve had a few drinks,” Robbie shoots back.

“It’s a cover but Willie Nelson singing ‘Always On My Mind’,” is Oisín’s choice. “The moment it comes on, I well up.”

“I’m cold as a stone,” Ross deadpans. “Songs, no, but there are moments at our gigs where the crowd will be singing back to us or something and the emotion of it – ‘What the hell is going on here?!’ – just hits you. It’s hard to explain but it happens.”

There’s stiff competition, but my current Reverie fave is ‘The Boy Who Flew Away’, an R. McNerney composition.

“I love that you’ve picked that song!” Oisín beams.

“I’m referencing the parable of the Prodigal Son,” Ross reveals. “I heard it, as I think everyone did, as a kid and it stayed with me.”

 

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Amble kicked their 2025 off in Brooklyn where they spent some quality studio time with producer Philip Weinrobe. Have any of the songs they conjured up together made it on to the album?

“At this stage Reverie had been done by us and Cian Sinnott in lots of different studios around Ireland, so the Brooklyn sessions are a different project,” Ross clarifies. “Maybe an album or an EP, we’re not sure yet. We’re going back next week to listen to the songs and decide.

“What attracted us to Philip was the Bright Future album he did with Adrianne Lenker. We’re obsessed with it. We recorded five tracks in two days. The way he operates is that you don’t hear a single note till he says they’re finished. We didn’t even have headphones on. Another part of the deal is that mobiles are left in a different room. He wants you to be totally in the moment.

“Nothing was overdubbed, it was all done in the room. If we needed a drum player, he’d ring someone and say, ‘Hey, we’ve got something cool going on in the studio, do you want to come over?’ Five minutes later they were there, so it felt really spontaneous.”

Mike Scott said in the last issue of Hot Press that he considers Donal Lunny to be the greatest Irish musician of all-time. Do Amble agree or are there other candidates?

“Andy Irvine has to be in there,” Oisín says. “Hozier, genuinely, would have to be in there too and Rory Gallagher. I was at home all week listening to one of Rory’s live albums and it’s ridiculous how good a guitarist he was.”

“Luke Kelly, especially if it was a performer as opposed to a musician,” Robbie chips in. “Watching old videos and TV clips of him, he was so charismatic.”

As he’s making the case for the Dubliners legend, I notice the silhouette of Dolores O’Riordan tattooed onto Robbie’s left arm. FYI: he’s got a guitar-wielding John Prine on his right one.

“She’s my hero, I love Dolores,” he says. “‘Linger’ being the first song she ever wrote is fucking ridiculous.”

APPETITE FOR AUTHENTICITY

Seeing as we’ve stumbled into a rich vein of fandom, what are the first gigs they went to. And no saying Nick Drake!

“Mine aged fifteen was Roger Waters in the Aviva when he played all the Pink Floyd songs,” Oisín recalls. “I’m from Sligo, you don’t go to gigs like that; it was astonishing.”

“I was ten when my parents brought me to Fleetwood Mac in what was then The Point,” Robbie says. “There was a guy behind us who kept screaming, ‘Yes, Steeeeeviiiiiiiieeeeee!’ I’m not sure who exactly was in the line-up that night but it was brilliant.”

Fleetwood Mac’s last Dublin gig was in the RDS with a pal of Amble’s, Neil Finn, replacing the not long departed Lindsey Buckingham on guitar.

“A few months ago we did five dates in America with Neil and Crowded House,” Ross says. “He still had ‘Fleetwood Mac’ painted on his flight-cases. The last night was on the West Coast in a venue called the Vina Robles Amphitheater. We had a nine hour drive to get to the town where we were playing our own gig next, so left straight after our set, not knowing that they were going to ask us to come out and do the final song with them. Neil, who’s a legend, was like, ‘Are Amble still here? Nope? They’re probably out the back drinking a few cans of Guinness and having a big fat joint.’ We found out the next day when someone sent us a video clip.”

Amble. Photo: Abigail Ring

As former teachers – they only quit their respective primary and secondary school jobs when Amble signed their record deal in Los Angeles – what do Ross and Oisín make of Adolescence?

“It was brilliant as anything starring Stephen Graham is,” Robbie shoots back. “There’s an initiative now to show it in every secondary school in Britain, which is a great idea. They made the point that it’s no one person’s fault; it takes a community to raise a child. There are so many different angles and things messing with this kid’s head.”

“I binged it,” Oisín adds, “and thought it was brilliant. Something which really resonated with me is that, in our little country here, there are 13 and 14-year olds speaking a language we can’t comprehend with emojis and stuff. I see this with my little cousins.”

“We’re only ten, fifteen years older, but it’s a whole different world – especially online,” Robbie resumes. “When I was teacher, I doubled down hard on who the good role models and influencers are for the kids because they’re at such an impressionable age. I had so many conversations with the twelve, thirteen-year olds in the all boys’ school where I taught. We talked about respect and our sisters and mothers. It’s important at that age to get the right image in their heads.

“If you’re a thirteen-year old boy, the way Andrew Tate speaks about women being a different race to you is terrifying,” Oisín says. “What was so, so powerful in Adolescence was the kid, who’s perfectly normal-looking, thinking that he’s the ugliest boy in school. The impact that’s going to have on his head…

“At the end, he’s screaming to the therapist, ‘Do you not like me even a little bit?’ which was shocking. In a hundred years we’ve gone from a kid who might not even have seen his face in the mirror until he was an adult, to people now obsessing over Instagram filters. It’s crazy.”

While many of Amble’s songs cut to the emotional bone, they’ve steered clear of the overt politicking of other new wave tradsters like Lankum, Lisa O’Neill and The Mary Wallopers. That might be about to change, though.

“It’s coming around the corner very soon,” Oisín suggests. “We’ll have to have the conversation, us three first but, at some point in time, by saying nothing at all it’s worse. You have to pick a side on certain things. But, genuinely, we haven’t had that chat yet.”

Did they foresee the massive resurgence in Irish trad and folk music, and the global success it’s currently having?

“It’s so cool, isn’t it?” Oisín says. “Having played in sessions for years, we knew the depth of talent here. If you’re any bit good, Irish people will back you, which only encourages you further. As for Lankum being up for the Mercury Music Prize and Kneecap winning at the Sundance, I think there’s a worldwide appetite now for authenticity and discovering different cultures.

“Talking of Lankum, I totally embarrassed myself last year at Latitude by going up to Radie Peat, who had no idea who I was, saying, ‘You’re great!’ and then just walking away.”

“I got wind that two of the Mumfords were backstage at Misneach and went pure fan boy,” Ross adds.

“I was like that with Hozier and David Keenan, who is the main reason I ever decided to write a song,” Robbie concludes. “I was obsessed with David for years and now I’m WhatsApp-ing him. I was teaching the primary kids at St. Pius in Terenure, when an email came through saying, ‘You’ve got a record deal with Warners in L.A.’ I ran into the school bathroom, took a video of myself jumping into the air and put it up! Everything Amble has done the past few years has blown our minds!”