Ireland’s most outspoken folk group The Mary Wallopers: ‘Enough bands pretend not to be Irish – like U2’

The raucous traditional folk outfit are touring the UK, causing mayhem. They stopped off to unload to Louis Chilton about Bono, the royals, posh festival audiences and why folk music shouldn’t be ‘safe’

The Mary Wallopers: (From left to right) Róisín Barrett, Ken Mooney, Andrew Hendy, Sean McKenna, Charles Hendy, and Finnian O’Connor (Sorcha Frances Ryder)

On a grey day in central Manchester, the three founding members of The Mary Wallopers are chatting to me on the upper floor of the university’s concert hall. They play traditional Irish music, raucously, with the wildness of The Pogues and the heart of a young Christy Moore – with harmonies all their own. They’re not short of an opinion either. “We said something like, ‘F*** the Catholic Church’ in some article,” one of the trio, Charles Hendy, tells me, “and some f***ing p**** of a priest down the country read mass, saying, ‘There’s a band called The Mary Wallopers. They’re turning people away from the church.’” How did they feel? “F***ing delighted! That’s the biggest compliment you can get.”

The group – fronted by vocalists Charles, 30, his brother Andrew, 29, and Seán McKenna, 31 – seem to have a take on just about everything and everyone. Irish humour? “The English don’t get jokes.” Shane McGowan? “His poetry could move mountains.” Bono? “F*** Bono!” They have a way with words that’s both profane and rich in colour, brought to life in thick, charismatic brogues. Under our conversation is the long, mellifluous drone of pipes: the final stages of a sound check. A few hours later they’ll be onstage doing some preaching of their own – this time very much to the converted.

The Wallopers started out as a trio, playing for pints in their hometown of Dundalk, halfway between Dublin and Belfast. Over the past few years, they’ve blown up (“we’re like diarrhoea”, Charles interjects) – an expansion that began in lockdown, as they performed increasingly buzzy gigs to pandemic-trapped listeners over livestream. When they were loosed, they hit the live circuit with a vengeance. Gigs were manic, sweaty, jovial affairs. The aim: bedlam.

Within a short time, they’ve gone from total anonymity to selling out serious venues. Their number swelled to six with the additions of bassist Róisín Barrett, drummer Ken Mooney, and Finnian O’Connor on whistle and pipes. On New Year’s Eve, they stole the show on Jools Holland’s Hootenanny. “We have a tour bus now. Things are nice!” says Charles. “Well, now it f***ing smells and we’re all on top of each other.” As part of their ongoing UK tour, they’re playing this week at east London’s Troxy and The Roundhouse in Camden, to a combined audience of thousands. In a few months, the band are set to return to Glastonbury, this time on the long-coveted Park Stage.

What, exactly, is the secret of their appeal? “There’s something very genuine and accessible about us,” says McKenna. “Things are very plastic, I suppose. People say bubblegum music and pop music are so fake. We try to remove the pedestal between the audience and musicians.”

I first saw the Wallopers in 2022, when they were playing before a small crowd of middle-class revellers at Wilderness, a notoriously bourgeois music festival. Throughout their set, they seemed palpably mocking of their audience, cracking jokes about the IRA and telling them repeatedly, “this is our first ever gig”. At one point, they stared menacingly at the crowd, introducing “Rich Man and the Poor Man”: “This is a song about rich people going to hell.” They were, despite this brazen, unrecognised scorn – or perhaps because of it – absolutely brilliant.

“Oh yes! That’s the real Tory festival. They told us about David Cameron going, so we had a prejudice towards it,” Andrew says. “And then we arrived and our prejudice was correct!

Dundalk trad band The Mary Wallopers pose for a photo (Sorcha Frances Ryder )

“It was full of Tories in tutus, which is an unimaginable horror,” says Charles. “We had this f***ing group of English girls at the front, who kept going ‘Sing Galway Girl’. And we were like, ‘Shut the f*** up, you f***ing English bastards!’”

Mostly, though, festivals are a lark. “Except for the hippies,” he continues. “F*** them c***s. They were annoying bastards. We hate hippies. All types of hippies. If you don’t like wearing shoes, f*** off!”

“Most hippies are not too far away from Tories anyway,” Andrew adds, a little more sincerely. “They’re all far right,” his brother says. “F***ing hippies used to be like, ‘Peace and love, man’. Now they’re like, ‘Jews run the world, man.’ They’re f***ing wasters. Hippies are wasters, and they should all get jobs.” They all burst into laughter.

It can be tricky getting a completely straight answer out of the Hendy brothers – or even an answer that’s legally acceptable to publish. Charles, the elder Hendy, does the most talking, and has his face fixed in an infectious, rabble-rousing grin. Andrew, the younger and slighter of the two, looks almost sweet as punch – but then chips in with something sharp and outrageous, like a choirboy possessed by the spirit of a more vicious Bugs Bunny. The moustached, deceptively gruff-looking McKenna, meanwhile, is almost mild by comparison. All three seem completely without filter.

Charles Hendy performs as part of The Mary Wallopers at ‘Jools’ Annual Hootenanny’ (BBC Studios / Michael Leckie)

Before the Wallopers took off, the Hendys had brief viral success with a hip-hop single under the moniker TPM (Tax-Payers’ Money). On paper, this is quite the genre shift – imagine the horrors of a Bob Dylan grime album – but in practice, it speaks more to the Wallopers’ understanding of what folk actually is: something urgent and pugnacious.

“Folk music got this name for a while – that it was a lad in a f***ing tweed f***ing hat. Folk music is radical music,” he says. “There’s this perception that it’s safe, something to put on in art class. Whereas it should be, ‘Oh my God, there’s a folk artist playing. I wonder what they’re gonna say.’”

How much money would be in England if you got rid of the royal family? You could sell the big gaff by the park as well

This is the Wallopers’ whole musical ethos. In their covers, they sing about social issues: from poverty, immigration, the hypocrisy of the Catholic Church. It is original songs, though, that will be the true test of greatness. The three originals included on their 2022 sophomore album Irish Rock N Roll (“The Idler”, “Vultures of Christmas” and “Gates of Heaven”) suggest they have the goods, fitting in seamlessly with the established classics – some centuries old – not just in the musical style, but in the punch and flow of the lyrics. Their next record, still a “few months” away, will be mostly original material. (“You just have to f***ing do it, you know?”)

There seems to be little difference between their onstage personas and everyday convictions. The trio have predictably robust opinions on everything from the violence in Palestine – a recent fundraiser for medical aid saw the band hit with “fascist abuse” from “creepy bastards on the internet” – to the British royal family. “They’ve been ripping off the people of England for years,” says Charles. “That fella with the fingers [the King] – I saw people were talking about him and saying, ‘Well, Jesus, if he dies now, how are we going to be able to afford another coronation?’ Here’s an idea – don’t bother!”

“How much money would be in England if you got rid of the royal family? You could sell the big gaff by the park as well. Sell the f***ing s***hole!”

In the jacks: pubs and venues are usually turned upside down during Mary Wallopers shows (Sorcha Frances Ryder)

Go to the bar or the toilets at a Wallopers gig, and wherever in the world you are, you’ll likely be surrounded by Irish accents. I ask about their own relationship to Irishness – whether they ever feel wary of how they present their culture when, for instance, touring around England. “Irish people – a very small amount of Irish people – have complained more about it being paddywhackery. ‘They’re making Irish people out to be eejits’ and all that,” he says. “But they’re Irish people who denounce being Irish. They’re ashamed of their culture.

“We sing a lot of old songs that a lot of bands wouldn’t sing because they sound too Irish. Well… we are f***ing Irish. We are incredibly proud of that. There’s been enough bands that have pretended not to be Irish… like f***ing U2.”

Later that night, the gig is in full swing. The crowd is rapt; packed; yelling along to every song. But even this isn’t enough. “We want you to tear the f***ing roof off,” they tell the crowd. It feels almost lacking if a Mary Wallopers night doesn’t devolve into mayhem.

And when the encore arrives, surely enough – it does.

The Mary Wallopers will play The Troxy, London on 21 March; all tour dates can be found here.