Lorraine Nash spoke to David Hennessy ahead of her St Brigid’s Day show at The Irish Cultural Centre with Liam Ó Maonlaí.
Since she started releasing music in 2020, Lorraine Nash has established herself as one of Ireland’s most exciting young folk artists.
From Lyrecrompane in Kerry, she is a multi-instrumentalist and blends traditional Irish roots with modern folk, country, and Americana.
Her debut album All That I Can Be drew comparisons to Neil Young, Laura Marling, and Aoife O’Donovan and earned widespread critical acclaim.
2025 was a big year for Lorraine.
She performed on The Late Late Show for TradFest’s 20th anniversary celebration, opened for Hothouse Flowers on their UK tour and appeared at major festivals including Glastonbury, Cambridge Folk Festival, Electric Picnic and All Together Now.
She has also been touring with Dan Sealey, formerly of Ocean Colour Scene. Lorraine and Dan would combine on the single, Winter Sun.
Growing up, Lorraine was immersed in the world of Irish trad music from the age of just six.
Starting with the tin whistle, she would work her way through the list of instruments.
While her skills as a multi- instrumentalist were useful in the recording of her debut album, her follow up has been a different experience.
Lorraine has been working on her eagerly awaited second album in Nashville with the 14 time Grammy Award- winning banjo player Ron Block.
We chatted to Lorraine ahead of a special show in London this weekend.
You come to the Irish Cultural Centre this weekend and you’re going to be joined by Liam Ó Maonlaí..
“Yeah, that’s going to be great.
“It’s just myself and Liam and we’re going to do it in the round.
“Liam can just hop in on anything and a lot of what he does always ends up being improvised so I’m sure there’ll be some special moments in there because I don’t think any show that he’s done is like any other show that he’s done, there’s always something new in there so it’s going to be cool to be part of that.”
Is that what you found touring with him and Hothouse Flowers, that shows had a real spontaneous energy?
“Oh, 100% and that’s what’s great because I suppose if I was touring with a band that was doing a super structured ‘this is the same thing every night’, I think you’d probably go into autopilot.
“I think I enjoyed watching their show every single night because there was something different in there.
“Some night they might do something that’s super subdued and then the next night, it’s super high energy so I think the audience doesn’t really know what it’s going to get but it was always brilliant.
“It will be cool just to be part of that with Liam.”
What was it like touring with Hothouse Flowers? I bet that was fun..
“Yeah, it was. It was cool.
“It was interesting hearing the industry that they grew up in is very different to how it is now.
“It’s just like a totally different world, a different industry.
“They were in the days where it was all based on selling your records whereas we’re in the world of streaming now so it’s a bit different.
“It was kind of cool to hear their perspective on all of that as well.”
Would you ever join them for a number?
“I did, yeah.
“I did a couple of trad songs with them.
“Bríd Óg Ní Mháille was one that me and Liam did together.
“That was lovely.
“It’s nice we’ve already done a tiny bit of that, I’m sure it will help once it comes to the gig in the Irish Cultural Centre.
“We’re a little bit warmed up anyway.
“He’ll be at the conference in January as well so I’m sure we’ll get a chance to have a chat about some stuff that might be good to sing together.”
Will you mostly be doing stuff individually or will it be a gig that sees you doing a lot of combing together?
“I think we’ll just take turns and kind of feed off of each other.
“Like I said he can jump in on anything and he’ll have his piano and his whistles and I’ll bring the flute and guitar and we’ll just see what happens.
“He’s good for creating magic moments anyway.”
You have been out in Nashville recording with Ron Block, how did that collaboration come about?
“There’s a folk conference.
“It’s only started in the last three years but I’ve already gotten so much out of it.
“The first year that I went there, I met my Australian agent so then that’s when the Australia thing happened.
“I skipped it the second year and then the third year, I went again and I met Ron. We were on a songwriting panel.
“It was myself, Liam Ó Maonlaí, Ron and Seren Spain, another girl from Australia.
“We just kind of got chatting and realised we had a lot in common.
“I ended up showing him some of my new songs and he was like, ‘Sure come to my studio in Nashville and we’ll record it’.
“And I was like, ‘Yeah, right’.
“And then I did the Kickstarter so then it actually made the whole thing possible because I mean it’s one thing to get your flights and go over there but it’s another thing to afford the session musicians that we worked with.
“It is amazing.
“It’s people that played with Dolly Parton and Emmylou Harris so to have them on my record is crazy but just because the Kickstarter worked out, it just meant that I could do it with a bit of freedom this time whereas before I would have been a bit restricted with how I would be recording.”
Will this forthcoming album have a different sound to your previous music with those collaborators and obviously Ron himself featuring?
“Yeah, It definitely does.
“Before I would have done a lot of the instrumentation literally just by myself.
“Aside from saving money, I just liked the idea of arranging the whole thing but with this one, I wanted to come to the studio with just the bare bones of the song and then anyone that we brought in to do drums or bass or whatever had a lot more freedom and especially when it’s people on that scale, you want to allow them to do their thing.
“It is much more country in a way especially with the instrumentation but I did also keep some of that trad in there.
“I played whistles and then I have fiddle playing and all that on it.”
How did you enjoy the Nashville experience? It’s so music orientated..
“We actually mainly were in the studio.
“We saw The Time Jumpers and that was incredible.
“And then Ron asked me to join them for the Christmas show at the Ryman so that was cool.
“I just came up and I played a tune on the whistle.
“That was a bucket list moment.
“We didn’t see the Opry or anything like that but I think the next time I go back, we’ll make more of an effort.
“This time there was so much pressure knowing that I was flying back in four weeks so we absolutely had to try and get as much of the album done as we could.
“I couldn’t stay later because I was heading to England with Hothouse Flowers just straight after so we were like work, work, work.”
What was it like to perform somewhere as iconic as the Ryman Auditorium? Was it surreal to be standing up there?
“It was pretty nuts alright even in the dressing rooms looking at the pictures of people on the wall who had played there.
“I was like, ‘This is crazy’.
“It wasn’t until I was actually there that I was like, ‘Oh right, yeah, this is a huge deal’.
“Yeah, it was incredible.”
Does it seem like a life time ago since you came out with your first album?
“It kind of does.
“Time passes so fast when you’re doing things like this.
“It’s like going to Nashville. That’s a whole month of my life but it absolutely flew.
“And then when I was in the UK..
“This year absolutely flew by because of all the things that happened.”
You have had a number of moments like that over the last year with appearances such as Glastonbury leaping out..
“Yeah Glastonbury definitely was one.
“I never could have imagined that I would have played a solo set at Glastonbury.
“That definitely was a highlight but the whole recording process that was and they’re all so different as well.
“Performance is one thing but like getting stuck in and making an album is equally as enjoyable in a different way.”
There is always a real Irish contingent at Glastonbury, do you get to hang out?
“The stage that I was on, the acoustic stage, has a super Irish-y vibe to it.
“You kind of wouldn’t really get to spend time around the stage apart from the day that you’re actually playing because there’s so many people playing each day that if everyone was constantly hanging around then it would be absolutely madness.
“Who was playing the day that I was there? There was The Riptide Movement, The Hothouse Flowers were there that day as well so it was with them again.
“But then there was other people that are playing that stage like Billie Marten and Gabrielle Aplin who wouldn’t be Irish but they’d be female songwriters that I was crazy about and still am so to be on that same platform as them, that was super surreal.
“But the whole thing was just nuts.
“Lingering around backstage in that lace was just crazy.”
How do you like some of the comparisons you get to other singer- songwriters?
“What I did like when I was working with different people on this next album that I just finished recording, a lot of the session musicians that hadn’t heard any of the material were drawing like Joni Mitchell and Bonnie Raitt and Joan Baez comparisons.
“That’s great because it’s nice to be compared to your contemporaries but I think it’s even nicer to be compared to those people that you’d aspire to be like, those kind of inspirational songwriters.”
Were you delighted to hear those things?
“Yeah delighted because especially at that stage when the songs are really at their bare bones, you’re still unsure because you haven’t had a lot of input from other people or you don’t even know how you feel about the songs yourself and they’re not really fully formed so to get comments like that at that stage is really nice.”
You released your first Irish language song Carraig Aonair not so long ago, what inspired you to do that?
“I went to a Gaelscoil so it (Irish)’s not as good as it was.
“My Irish is in there somewhere and I enjoy learning new songs, so then I kind of said, ‘F**k it, why not just record one?’
“It’s about the Fastnet rock in Cork.
“The story is that a man’s sons have gone out fishing and they don’t come back.
“He goes down to look for them on the beach and he sees that the boat has come ashore.
“It’s in absolute pieces.
“What had happened was when they crashed into the rock and they were drowning in the rising tide, one of them took the buckle off their shoe and scratched into the boat to say goodbye to their father and let him know what happened to them.”
Could you see yourself doing more things in the Irish language or perhaps more sean-nós?
“Yeah, I would like to.
“I thought about it for this album and it didn’t feel right because it was Nashville and it was going to be a different sound but I think I’m happy to remain flexible with this sort of stuff.
“I don’t feel compelled to stick within a particular genre.”
You were young when you started playing music, was it always music for you?
“It kind of was.
“There was a while that I wanted to be a vet and then I was like, ‘Oh God, I don’t know about that’.
“I went on work experience and there was too much blood.
“I went and I did a course in Stiofain Naofa in Cork which was music management and sound.
“That was great because they taught me how to collect my own royalties and stuff like that that you should be aware of and then also how to use recording software so then I was able to make my own demos and a bit of live sound.
“I hadn’t done a single gig and it just was like a crash course in everything that I needed to know just to get started.”
As you mentioned you have been as far away as Australia to play some gigs, how did you like that?
“It was brilliant.
“There’s so many Irish, there was kind of a built in audience there.
“I was playing these huge festivals and these huge tents and to really, really, really receptive audiences and everyone wants to come and have a chat afterwards and everyone’s super engaged.
“They have this wonderful network of folk festivals.
“I suppose we have one or two here but this is something on the scale of what they’d have in Cambridge so they’re super into their folk music and their Irish stuff.
“It was fantastic.
“It was really full on tour that I did so it wasn’t a bad place to do it.”
You released your collaboration track with Dan Sealey, Winter Sun before you both embarked on that tour of the same name. How did you two come together?
“He would be on the same UK booking agency that I am so my agent and his agent were just looking to organise a tour and they put the two of us together.
“We would have met at one of the Hothouse Flowers gigs.
“He came along and we just met and said hello and then we were like, ‘Grand, this will be fine’.
“We got on well so then we were like, ‘Let’s go for it’, and booked the tour.
“It was good craic and we both got a lot out of it, I think
He has played with Ocean Colour Scene so he probably has incredible stories to tell as well.
“Oh definitely lots of stories, none of them I can repeat but he was great.
“That’s another thing.
“You learn as much as you do from watching other people perform than you do from performing yourself sometimes so just to tour with another solo songwriter like that was nice because I could just take in how he interacts with the crowd or his stage presence.
“There’s a lot that can be taken from that too.”
You were also on The Late Late to mark TradFest..
“Ah, that was class.
“I mean the people that I was playing with would have been people that I was looking up growing up playing trad so to be on stage with them and to be on TV with them, it was even more surreal.
“It was incredible.”
What has been your highlight of the stuff you have got to do in the last year?
“I think just the whole recording process and getting to do it in that way.
“That month of recording I could have just done that for the rest of my life. It was brilliant.
“And obviously Glastonbury but they’re very different things.
“Highlight performance would definitely be Glastonbury and then if it was something creative, then it would be the album recording.”
Lorraine Nash and Liam Ó Maonlaí play The Irish Cultural Centre on Friday 30 January.
For tickets and information, click here.
