Mumford & Sons' Marcus Mumford: "I'd love to be in CMAT’s band"

Mumford & Sons have a special relationship with Ireland, where their mix of folk instrumentation, bruised confession and communal release has always found an enthusiastic response.

In 2008, long before the band became a fixture of major festival fields and headline slots, they appeared on Balcony TV, the Dublin online music series filmed above Dame Street. Around the same time, they played Doyle’s in Dublin and Cypress Avenue in Cork.

When their debut album Sigh No More arrived in 2009, much of the indie landscape was still shaped by the after-effects of the previous decade – skinny jeans, city-nightclub cool, angular guitars and a lingering suspicion of open-heartedness. Mumford & Sons offered something older, rougher and more communal. Their sound – built from acoustic instruments, close harmonies, handclaps, biblical cadences, and a banjo – was unleashed at Oxegen that summer, and the following year at the Academy in Dublin and at Electric Picnic.

And the band kept coming here. In 2011 they toured across Cork, Galway, Limerick and an Olympia gig in Dublin. The band’s Irish story had one of its defining early chapters in Galway in 2012, when (along with The Vaccines and Willy Mason) they brought their Gentlemen Of The Road Stopover to Salthill Park.

Rather than simply playing major cities, Mumford & Sons wanted to create miniature festivals in places with their own civic texture and local life; Galway, with its traditional music inheritance, literary swagger and late-night wildness, seemed like a perfect setting – and it was.

By Christmas 2012, they were at the O2 in Dublin, and the following year, The Gentlemen Of The Road Stopover expanded into the massive surrounds of the Phoenix Park.

Wilder Mind, released in 2015, moved toward a broader electric rock sound, whilst 2018’s Delta was more atmospheric and expansive – the sound of a band refusing to remain trapped inside its own breakthrough.

The years that followed brought further rupture and redefinition. Winston Marshall left the group in 2021. Marcus Mumford released a self-titled solo album in 2022, a stark, personal record that moved him away from the communal architecture of the band and closer to the exposed source of some of the writing.

When Mumford & Sons released Rushmere in 2025, they did so as a changed unit. Their first album in nearly seven years, and their debut as a trio, it was not simply a matter of resuming business after a long pause. The title reached back to the band’s beginnings – Rushmere, the pond on Wimbledon Common where Marcus Mumford, Ben Lovett and Ted Dwane first got to know one another before the machinery of success, backlash and reinvention began to gather around them.

Latest album, Prizefighter, adds another Irish thread through the presence of Hozier, who appears among a wider cast of collaborators. That matters symbolically. Hozier’s own work has often moved through adjacent emotional territory – gospel undertow, moral intensity, folk memory and spiritual language. His appearance in the Mumford universe does not feel like a random streaming-era feature, more like a meeting of simpatico artists.

Mumford & Sons previously topped the bill at Longitude in Marlay Park in 2017, a different moment in the band’s life.

Their songs are communal tools, passed from stage to field and back again. Indeed, their audience has helped define them.

Which is why the Hot Press Mixed Grill seems like such a perfect forum. Readers send in the questions, and the artists are left to face whatever comes back – the heartfelt, the forensic, the funny and the faintly unhinged. The queries poured in from all over the world – this is just a selection!

What was your Plan B in life if your music career didn’t go as intended? What would you be doing for a living if you didn’t become musicians? Jill Fox, Dublin

Ted Dwane: I didn’t have a Plan B, mate. I think right at the beginning, I decided to very much lower my expectation of what success would look like. I made it very attainable. I thought playing in a pub would be perfectly adequate in order that I could do the thing that I loved. I fully released myself to it.

Marcus Mumford: When we started the band, we were all pretty young, we were 20. It was the era when all our mates were still at university, which is how we got our first gigs; we’d just go and play at our mates’ colleges. But we were also all session musicians, so we were playing in other people’s bands as paid musicians anyway. Music was pretty much it for all of us from the beginning.

You all seem more like brothers than just friends. Has it always been that way? - Kelly Meeks, Arizona, USA

Marcus: We slipped into a fraternal vibe fairly quickly. Yeah, first day I met Ted, I remember very vividly wanting to be his best friend. I sort of engineered the creation of a band in order to keep him in my life. It’s all just an elaborate attempt to work my way into his social circle.

Listening to your lyrics, I hear references to Auden, Eliot, Shakespeare, Kingsnorth etc. What are 3-4 of your favourite books? - Charissa Sylvia, Silver City, New Mexico

Marcus: The Wake by Paul Kingsnorth, it’s my favourite modern novel. He lives in Ireland, actually, he’s become a Cork man. The Old Man And The Sea is my favourite book of all time. And there’s got to be a Shakespeare play in there, just to live up to the expectations of being a twat, so let’s put King Lear in there.

Ted: I just read mostly technical manuals about keeping bees. I find that quite inspiring. I have a whole library of bee books, if anyone needs a fascinating subject.

If there was a Mumford & Sons biopic down the line, who would you like to play you? - Chris White, London

Marcus: Alec Guinness.

Ted: I think Arnold Schwarzenegger is one of the few actors out there to match my physique.

As music fans yourselves, what was the last gig you went to? And if you could be the house band, or the opener for any artist, who would it be? - Caroline Berry, York

Marcus: The last gig I went to was a comedy gig, that’s my shit. So, Tim Key, who’s one of my favourite comedians of all time. And we actually just made this film about creating a house-band for some of our favourite artists. We went on a train for a week. There’s actually a premiere next week in Tribeca, so this is a very timely question. We made a film about this train tour where we took a bunch of musicians on a train across America and stopped off and played in a few different cities, and we got to be the backing band for Lainey Wilson, Noah Kahan, Darius Rucker, Maggie Rogers. That was pretty fun. We all love playing for other people, man. It’s pretty fun. I’d love to be in CMAT’s band.

@mumfordandsons got a new banjo @cmat ♬ original sound - Mumford & Sons

Greetings from a fellow Womble, Marcus! Who are the best players you’ve ever seen – preferably in a Wimbledon shirt? And will England win the World Cup? - Carl, Epsom

Marcus: Vinnie Jones. And will England win the World Cup? I think it all hinges on the midfield, that’s my view. I think if we can score more goals than we concede – we’ll win the World Cup! I’m not so worried about defence or attack, but the midfield’s where it’s at for me. If Bellingham clicks with Rice, I think we could win the World Cup, mate.

As a multi-award winning band, you have seen great success in a long career in the industry. What was your “We’ve made it” moment? – Dion O’Callaghan, Cork

Marcus: Getting our music on Match Of The Day for the first time, that was it for me.

Ted: I remember a gig we did at Glastonbury Festival; it was 2010, and we played the John Peel Stage, and we’d been in the States a lot, and things had just started to get going. Suddenly the John Peel Stage was overflowing outside, and I feel success is sweeter at home somehow. We didn’t really think it was happening and then everyone showed up. It was amazing. It was a very special moment for us.

If your entire discography disappeared tomorrow and you could only save one song to start over again with, what would you choose? - Rachel Gallacher, South Ayrshire

Marcus: For me, right now, that’s a song called ‘Conversation With My Son (Gangsters And Angels)’, which was actually quite inspired by some of the people mentioned earlier, like Auden and Kingsnorth, and that song for me right now matters the most.

Ted: I’m loving ‘Prizefighter’, the title track of the new record, it’s just a vibe. I think last night was the best we played it.

Was there a song that really surprised you because it changed so much from start to finish? - Robin Cohen, Cherry Hill

Marcus: ‘The Cave’ and ‘Guiding Light’ changed quite a lot in the writing and recording process.

Ted: ‘The Weight’ changed a lot as well. I mean, they all change so much. That’s the fun part of being in a band. Often, I think I’ve written one of the best choruses of all time, and it will end up being a verse or a middle eight in someone else’s song.

All the songs take a journey; they all have to go through the mill of the band, and then it becomes a Mumford & Sons song rather than a Ben song or a Marcus song. So, they all travel a long way and it’s always in collaboration with a producer, never more so than just now with Aaron Dessner making Prizefighter – he felt like a sorcerer, he really helped us channel the creativity in a beautiful way.

Are there any songs that have changed significantly in meaning for you over the years? - Victoria Martins, Jacareí, Brazil

Marcus: I had this experience last night at the show, where I had friends in the audience who I knew had struggled to get pregnant. They became parents recently, and while we were singing ‘I Will Wait’, I could see them in the crowd. It was like, ‘Look, I didn’t write this song about you, but fuck, can it apply to you?’ And I love how songs can do that.

Even internally on stage, in my head, I find new meanings all the time, so I never like being too over the top in the descriptions of what songs are about. I don’t want to narrow the space for interpretation for people, because music means whatever it makes you feel. That’s the important thing, and trying to be too prescriptive about the meaning of a song can take away from its power.

Even songs I wrote the lyrics for, they can change – and that’s cool, because it means there’s a timeless quality to them, and honestly that’s what we’re searching for. I don’t think we’re trying to write a viral hit every time we sit down to write a record. If we did, we’d be singing about AI and those little teddy bears that you can get in gold on TikTok.

We’re not doing that, but that’s also fine. I mean, I love music that does chase an immediate modern feel, and there’s some ancient music that has done that well. But for us, we’ve been always looking for songs that can apply across different times, and we’re now seeing that reflected in our audiences.

I was blown away last night at how many kids were at the show. Normally I try and keep guitar picks in my pocket, and if I’m running out in the crowd and I see a kid, I like to give them one. Because I like the idea of a kid starting to learn the guitar after a Mumford & Sons show – that’s sick, right? And last night, I ran out of picks.

I had to keep stuffing my pockets full of them, because there were so many children there, and it was totally amazing. I like that about our music. Of course, it’s not for everyone, and some people don’t like it and that’s fine. But I like the idea you can come with your grandparents or your kids, or your much younger boyfriend, or whatever.

Who were your main sources of inspiration in the early stages of being a band? How did your influences change over time? - Millie Morrison, Lucan

Ted: We got excited when we met each other, because there was a nice overlap in the Venn diagram of our musical interests. We were playing with so many other people as session players, and that was great. There was lots of shared interest, but no one had the overlap in quite the same way that we did when we started the band.

It was really eclectic. It was old music, it was new music, it was everything from jazz, folk, rock and roll, heavy metal, hip hop – there’s so much in there.

We wear pretty much all of those influences proudly on our sleeve. I know we get pigeonholed a bit, probably owing to the instruments we play. But it’s a lot more nuanced than that, and we’re very proudly the sum of our parts, and all the things we loved growing up. There’s actually no way you can avoid expressing that. That’s literally why you make music, because you’re inspired, you get excited about stuff.

And it continues: the other lads are a lot more up-to-date with what’s happening in music today than I am. But that’s helpful, because I keep them up to date with what’s happening in the past.

Marcus: You walk into a room in London playing acoustic guitar in 2007, and obviously you’re walking in with all your influences behind your back, right? You’re carrying in all the things that got you to that moment. But at the beginning of the band, I was more inspired by our contemporaries than our predecessors.

Because every night of the week I’d be going to a Noah And The Whale gig, or a Laura Marling gig, or Alan Pownall, or Florence + the Machine, or Adele, or The xx, or Beirut – those were the bands that were exciting me at that time, and they honestly inspired me. Like, I watched what Laura did every night and I was like, ‘Cool, I want to do that’.

Or how Noah And The Whale made me feel as a band on stage, or how Johnny Flynn & The Sussex Wit made me feel as an audience member. I was like, ‘I want to be able to make people feel what I’m feeling right now in the audience.’ So, I was significantly more inspired by contemporaries at that time.

And it continues. We’re out here with Sierra Ferrell at the moment. She jumped up onstage with us last night for ‘Here’, which is the first track on Prizefighter, and it was so good. I just wanted to bottle it. As she was walking offstage, I said to her, “Is there any way you would sing another one with us in the encore?” And she was like, “Fuck yeah, dude, I will.”

Then we went out to the B stage, and we did an acoustic version of a song we love, called ‘If I Needed You’. Emmylou Harris and Don Williams did a great version of it, and we sang that together, acoustic and then a cappella. It was honestly one of my favourite moments we’ve ever had on stage. I thought, ‘What a fucking privilege to sing with this woman, who is a generational talent’.

She’s extraordinary, and hers is my favourite live voice on the planet right now. To get to sing with her in front of all these people makes me want to go and play another show. So, for me, it’s a constant cycle of inspiration that you get from just being in community and playing music.

You’ve collaborated a lot on Prizefighter. Is there one person you are still reaching for that you’d love to work with? - Dominic Whelehan, Dublin

Marcus: No, we don’t have a running list of who’s next, nor do we keep a body count. We just take what’s in front of us and run with it, and we get excited about it. We don’t think too far behind or too far ahead. Honestly, we’re pretty present in that way, but there’s no masterlist of people we must check off before either we die or they die.

For Prizefighter, we’d start writing the song then we’d think, ‘Wait, who would fit this creatively? Oh, it’s Gracie [Abrams].’ It’s more like that. It’s what suits the song, rather than, ‘We’ve got to try and shoehorn this person because of this reason’. There’s no A&R involved. We didn’t call the record label saying we’re looking for ideas for collaborations, which is just not our style; people do that, but we didn’t do that.

I called Chris Stapleton, I got his number. I’m just a massive, massive fan. My pipe dream was to get him to sing a verse on ‘Here’, because it has this kind of cowboy swagger to it. I called him, explained the pitch. We were in a fucking dungeon of a venue in Bristol promoting Rushmere, and we set up a little B-rig recording set-up. I had to redo a bunch of my vocals, because Chris Stapleton had just knocked it out of the park.

You have spoken in the past about the influence Irish artists. If you had to curate a music festival featuring Irish artists only from any era, who would be your three headline acts? - David Hughes-Carr, Derry

Marcus: Sinéad O’Connor, U2, Hozier.

Ted: Cormac Begley, three times.

• Mumford & Sons play Marlay Park, Dublin on Sunday, July 5.