Muireann Bradley

Muireann Bradley is a 17 year old finger picking guitarist & singer, who grew up in the hills overlooking the Finn Valley, just outside the town of Ballybofey, in County Donegal, Ireland.
Muireann performs primarily Country, Ragtime & Piedmont style blues from the 1920s & 1930s. Her influences include Rev Gary Davis, Blind Blake, Mississippi John Hurt, Blind Lemon Jefferson, Robert Johnson, Elizabeth Cotten, and Memphis Minnie to name just a few. She delights in interpreting & performing the music of these early blues masters, always putting her own unique stamp on the tunes.

Muireann grew up surrounded by guitars & old blues & began playing at the age of nine when she convinced her father to buy her first guitar and teach her. She worked hard and learned to finger pick in various old blues styles. However as she got older she began to invest more time in the sports of boxing and Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, which she trained and competed in successfully, from a young age.
This led to the guitar and music beginning to take something of a back seat. Then in March 2020 when the first COVID lock downs happened all contact sports were shut down. Muireann felt lost for a while but she soon rediscovered her love for the guitar and the old Blues that she had grown up with.
She was now listening and practicing, with a new intensity and focus. She decided to start posting videos on You Tube. The first of which, was her rendition of Blind Blake's "Police Dog Blues". It garnered much attention (and has now had over half a million views). She was contacted by Tompkins Square Records, in San Francisco, who suggested she record an album. The songs and instrumentals were all recorded in studio, in one, or two takes. Done so, in an attempt to make the process as similar as possible, to the original, classic country blues artists, of the 1920s and 30s.
These recordings would become the album “I Kept These Old Blues”, which was released in early December.
Muireann recently went down a storm performing on Jools Holland’s Hootenanny, on BBC. And she has also starred on RTÉ’s, The Late Late Show.
The great Arlen Roth has described her as “a natural!”. Jorma Kaukonen said, “That kid is really good and I don’t mean really good for a kid, I mean REALLY GOOD”. While Stefan Grossman said “ A wonderful player, I can now retire, the torch has been passed”.