BIIRD: "We’re all looking inward at our culture and the very rich heritage of storytelling in music"

BIIRD, the 11-piece trad supergroup, have certainly broken new ground this past year. They played their first show in London’s buzzing city centre to 10,000 people, on Paddy’s Day 2024, no less. From there, they’ve sold-out headline shows and packed out festival tents. BIIRD’s very existence marks a seismic shift in a genre in whch innovation is the new watchword.

Seeds for BIIRD were sown over 10 years ago, when ringleader Lisa Canny began imagining how a troupe of virtuoso female musicians might come together.

“Trad was quite outdated and didn’t move with the times,” she observes. “It was kind of stuck in that 1994 capsule of Riverdance. It was just remaking the same thing over and over again without showing a newer Ireland – and definitely without representing the current musicians.

“Whereas, the actual scene was very underground, in that the best sessions were house parties after a gig, where you’d have 20 of the best musicians playing together in one room. That was the real heart and centre of the tradition, and the best music was coming out of that. People were dressed in their own style and had their own thing to say that wasn’t the regurgitated, kitsch thing that was being represented.”

Feeling that the narrative around traditional Irish music neeed to change, Lisa decided to start a five-piece group in the vein of Spice Girls, of which Lisa was a “massive” fan. Discovering just how much young talent is out there, she decided to put together something even more ambitious.

Lisa Canny

“It was a very slow process because I was doing so many other projects,” she recalls. “I took my time with it, and found all these girls that were perfect. They had their own style of playing, of dressing, of expressing themselves, their own talents and voice. Originally, there were fourteen members and we came up with the idea to go out to America and play some shows there. But Covid stopped all that, and over the course of three years, people’s situations changed and we ended up with eleven BIIRDs”.

Looking back, Lisa is grateful for the pause, as it forced her to reflect on what she truly wanted BIIRD to be.

“I realised that BIIRD had so much more to do and say, and had more opportunities in Ireland. It made more sense to launch here and get out of that show world altogether,” she says, reflecting on the desire to depart from the Riverdance formula. “Then that was the new set-up and it took a couple more years to get it up and running, because of life and loads of things in the way.”

Fast forward to the end of 2023: BIIRD were ready to take flight, but the practical hurdles had to be surmounted. Then, Lisa’s friend Annie Mac, the legendary DJ and broadcaster, gave them a space to perform.

“We became friends a couple of months before that. I told her about BIIRD and she was like, ‘This is amazing, we need to get this thing going’. She had a literary night in the London Irish Centre that September and booked BIIRD, or rather a version of BIIRD. Five or six of us got up and did a kind of soft launch. The energy in the room and the response was just magical. Right afterwards, the owners of the London Irish Centre told us they wanted us back. So we decided we could do it.”

They hard-launched a few months later, on Paddy’s Day 2024, playing in London’s Trafalgar Square to a crowd over 10,000 strong. Lisa remembers the moment as “incredible, nerve-wracking, fantastic and a disaster all at once”.

As with many first gigs – typically a time for bands to work out the kinks in front of smaller crowds – the members struggled with sound issues and technical difficulties. Averting the impending crisis, BIIRD managed to get on stage – and spread their wings – with only 20 minutes left in their slot.

“But those 20 minutes were enough to tell us that we were really onto something: the audience response was incredible,” Lisa admits. “As you can imagine, it was quite stressful, being our first show. The tech issues had gone drastically wrong, and we ended up doing a 45-minute line check in front of all those people. It’s pretty hilarious in hindsight.

“By the time we started playing, we really settled into it and the emotions changed from fear and anxiety to pure joy. It was the realisation that we had finally got BIIRD up and running. That feeling of being up onstage and playing with ten of my best mates, not to mention some of the best musicians in the country, was just a real wholesome moment. Then, to have the audience react the way they did, it felt very magical altogether.”

The fact that BIIRD are all women should not be overlooked, especially considering the fact that all-female supergroups are few and far between. So, emotions ran high on Paddy’s Day. It marked a new flagship moment in trad.

“There is something very special about eleven women getting up onstage to celebrate womanhood, while being dressed to the nines. Then playing music that we love, with people that we adore, to people that really want to see it. Together, all the ingredients meant for something truly remarkable.”

It’s fortuitous timing for BIIRD, too, considering the ongoing renaissance in Irish music.

“Sometimes in the past, our attempts at fusing trad with other things weren’t always tasteful. But now, we’re all looking inward at our culture and the very rich heritage of storytelling in music. You can see it happening in not just how many Irish artists are popping out of the woodwork, so to speak, but how many of them are based in Irish trad music, like Lankum or KNEECAP. They’ve absolutely nailed it and paved the way for something new.

“People are more passionate about trad. One thing I’ve really recognised this year is the increased energy towards trad in teenagers. I’ve been working for years in summer schools where you’d be teaching them from 9am to 8pm. But on their breaks, they’d take out their instruments and play tunes together. They absolutely live, eat and breathe it.

“This has always been the case, but I feel like there’s been a massive increase in numbers recently. Trad is having a real moment of being cool and trendy. This year has been monumental – and I think the next few years are going to be very, very interesting.”

The next few years will be fascinating, not just for Irish music, but also for BIIRD, who are carving their own niche. With their incomparable musicianship and stage presence, they’ve been booked and busy ever since that serendipitous Paddy’s Day. It looks like next year will see the supergroup continue to grow, with a slot at Dublin's TradFest with De Dannan in January, and a few headline shows lined up in the spring. While Lisa can’t disclose all the juicy details, she hints at a debut album currently in the works.

“After that, it’ll be international touring and onto the second album,” she continues. “If, in a few years, Beyoncé comes to Ireland and wants an Irish girl band to support her, we want it to be BIIRD. We eventually want to do a collaboration with Kate Bush, Enya and all of the absolute legends that paved the way. So we have very big plans, which we hope to realise in the next couple of years.”

I wouldn’t bet against it...

BIIRD are on tour this May, with shows in Cork, Limerick, Dublin, Mayo, Belfast and London. Tickets are available here.