Ruth Clinton of Landless: "Irish music has been getting international attention for a very long time. This particular batch of musicians aren’t the first – and won’t be the last, I’m sure.”

Taking to the stage at this year’s RTÉ Radio 1 Folk Awards as the country’s newly crowned Best Folk Group was, in many respects, an honour that was a long time coming for Landless.

For well over a decade, the members of the Dublin-formed four-piece (made up of Ruth Clinton, Lily Power, Meabh Meir, and Sinead Lynch) have been carving out their own essential spaces in traditional Irish music – playing crucial roles in establishing and participating in singing circles and sessions, before coming together as Landless in 2013.

As a group so indebted to and immersed in that thriving community, Ruth notes that, while it’s “lovely to have your work acknowledged”, such awards “always feel funny in the context of folk and traditional music."

“Because the scene itself, and the music, is so communal and collaborative, it always does feel a bit funny to have a competitive element,” she elaborates. “Our backgrounds would be singing sessions and singing circles, rather than competition backgrounds, like the Fleadh or whatever. So it is both lovely, and kind of strange.”

This time last year, Landless returned with Lúireach, their eagerly awaited follow-up to their 2018 full-length debut, Bleaching Bones. Although still centred around the raw power of their largely unaccompanied singing, the project saw the group and their collaborators – including renowned producer John ‘Spud’ Murphy, Lankum’s Cormac MacDiarmada, and Alex Borwick – introduce sparse yet potent instrumentation, as they explored both centuries-old ballads and recent compositions.

Lúireach went on to be named The Guardian’s No.1 folk album of the year, and scored strong reviews from across the board – with overseas outlets hailing the project as another worthy offering from an Irish folk scene that’s also spawned the likes of Lankum and John Francis Flynn.

“I guess it’s a testament to everyone’s hard work,” Ruth says of the international attention that  the relatively small community has garnered in recent years. “The quality of music in this country is just so high, and it came out of a really rich time, where you could afford to live in Dublin and be a musician – and maybe be on the dole sometimes – and have time to work on your art. It is funny when, internationally, people talk about this scene as though it just arrived – like, we have all been doing this for over 10 years…

“But obviously, Irish music has been getting international attention for a very long time,” she adds. “This particular batch of musicians aren’t the first – and won’t be the last, I’m sure.”

In addition to her work with Landless, Ruth – who’s now based in Sligo – makes up one-third of the group Poor Creature, alongside the aforementioned Cormac MacDiarmada of Lankum, and The Jimmy Cake’s John Dermody. The trio are set to release their debut album, All Smiles Tonight, via River Lea – the traditional music division of Rough Trade Records – in July.

Poor Creature

Ruth is also kept busy as a visual artist, and last year published the book This Fearless Maid 2 – a collection of traditional songs that ‘challenge patriarchal power dynamics and feature women in active roles’.

Although she no longer lives in Dublin, she’s encouraged to see that there’s “still sessions around town – and, of course, around the country – separate to, and in spite of, the international attention.”

“I know The Night Before Larry Got Stretched (first Sunday of every month at The Cobblestone) – which is the singing circle that a few of us helped to get going in 2012 – is still going strong,” she says. “Which is great. It shows the importance of these spaces for people to get together and have this sense of mutual support and encouragement.

“In Larry’s case, that’s thanks to The Cobblestone (77 King St N, Dublin 7),” she continues. “Maybe it could’ve taken place elsewhere – but The Cobblestone has supported it this whole time, allowing it to take place in that back room. Those physical spaces are necessary for this kind of thing to flourish.”

Also crucial to the formation of Landless was the Sacred Harp Singers of Dublin (facebook.com/groups/sacredharpdublin) – a community who gather to sing, a capella, in four-part harmony. The choral tradition is rooted in the American South, but is now practised in countries across the world.

“I set that up with my friend Shane McGrath in 2012, and I would’ve met Lily through it,” Ruth recalls. “That’s also still going, which is amazing.

“It definitely helped, even unconsciously, with our grasp of harmony singing for sure – getting to see the arrangements on the page,” she says of shape note singing. “Because we wouldn’t have formal music education backgrounds. There’s definitely something very powerful about singing in group settings like that as well – and the enjoyment of singing in harmonies with other people. Sacred Harp is a very egalitarian space. There’s no conductor, there’s no leader. It’s communal.”

Landless’s Lily Power also went on to set up Marrowbone Books (78 The Coombe, Dublin 8), alongside Brian Flanagan, in 2017 – which has played host to special events featuring the likes of Ye Vagabonds, Junior Brother, Loah, and VARO over the years.

“They put on really gorgeous, very intimate gigs occasionally,” Ruth nods. “That’s a really excellent bookshop, in a great part of town.”

Of course, not all the spots that were special to Ruth during her time in Dublin have survived the changing times.

“Hughes’s, down behind the Four Courts, was my favourite pub,” she tells me. “It’s closed, sadly, but it was my absolute favourite. My grandad would have drank there, and my dad, and then me. So I was sad to see that go.

“Change happens,” she adds. “I try not to wallow in the nostalgia of the Dublin that I lived in – there’s no point really!”

Cobblestone Pub. Copyright Miguel Ruiz.

She’s since found a new sense of community in Sligo.

“It’s a different kettle of fish,” she resumes. “Obviously, in that particular moment in Dublin, a lot of us were in our early 20s. Time has passed – we’re a bit older now here in Sligo!

“But Sligo’s a great town, and there’s a lovely bunch of incredibly talented musicians here,” she continues. “We have a great local, called McLynn’s (Old Market St, Sligo). Again, they’ve been incredibly supportive. We’ve had a session there for over seven years now, every Friday night.”

The area, Ruth says, has had an impact on various aspects of her work.

“I make music videos, and do visual art as well, and the landscape really often features, because it’s impossible to ignore,” she reflects. “It’s just so beautiful and accessible – it’s just right outside the town.

“Musically, I suppose we’re now more proximate to Country & Irish, for example,” she adds. “We’d have more of an awareness of that, so I’m sure some of that seeped into Poor Creature.”

Re-interpreting songs from both the distant and more recent past – including a bold reimagining of Ray Lynam and Philomena Begley’s ‘The Whole Town Knows’ with Poor Creature – remains central to

Ruth’s artistry. But her feelings about the terminology surrounding the music – especially ‘folk’ vs traditional’ – tend to “fluctuate”, she reflects.

“Depending on my mood, probably!” she continues. “Some days of the week I find ‘folk’ a bit of a wishy-washy, catch-all term for I don’t know what.

“And the term traditional is kind of elastic,” she adds. “People consider a traditional song as, quintessentially, a song that’s been transmitted orally through the centuries. But then there will be songs from a written source, like a ballad sheet or a book of poetry – and maybe a hundred years ago, that was absorbed into the oral tradition. And now it’s considered traditional, even though it wouldn’t have always been.

So it’s a very flexible sort of word – that should change, and does change, throughout time.”

Within the “loose folk-ish world”, there are plenty of acts inspiring Ruth at the moment.

“RÓIS is obviously amazing,” she enthuses. “She’s excellent, and she’s getting loads of well-deserved praise. And then, course, John Francis Flynn – old friend, great musician. I also love Myles Manley. He’s a pop star, I suppose – he’s from Sligo as well.

“And one of my favorite fiddle players on this island, for sure, is Cathal Caulfield. He puts things out every now and then. He’s a fiddle player and a singer, and he’s incredible.”

Looking ahead to their slot All Together Now (Curraghmore Estate, Co. Waterford; July 31–August 3), Ruth points out that Landless have always managed to reach a genre-transcending audience with their music too.

“Vincent Dermody, who puts on gigs as Enthusiastic Eunuch, would, from the start, get us to do support slots for bands that definitely wouldn’t be considered folk or trad or whatever,” she says. “So we’ve been very fortunate to get to perform in loads of different settings out of that immediate world. The scale has certainly changed – but it’s nice that the music can be taken on its own terms, and not just in its genre.

“That was also the nice thing about releasing the album on Glitterbeat,” she says of the Hamburg-based label. “They have such an amazing catalogue of artists from all over the world – so it’s lovely to have our songs listened to in that context, and not just in the Irish music pigeonhole.”

As for their next move, Ruth notes that, with “a lot of small children in the mix currently”, Landless have had to learn to use their time more strategically – but they continue to perform, both inside and outside of Ireland, in support of Lúireach.

“At some point, we’ll hopefully get time to work on a new one,” she says. “But it’s a slow-moving beast, and it always has been. And that’s fine – we’ll get there eventually!”

• Landless’s Lúireach is out now. They play All Together Now, Co. Waterford (July 31 - August 3); and Under The Drum, Co. Antrim (August 8 & 9).

• Poor Creature’s All Smiles Tonight is out July 11. They play The Duncairn, Belfast (September 12); and The Button Factory, Dublin (November 27).

• This Fearless Maid 2 is available to purchase now from marrowbone.ie

The new edition of Best Of Ireland is available to pre-order now – also featuring Vogue Williams, Evanne Kilgallon, Niall Quinn, Andrea Mara, Robert Grace, Demi Isaac and more...