The 4 of us playing Derry this weekend

Brothers Brendan and Declan Murphy, from Newry, are delighted to be returning to Derry as part of their current tour.

Brendan caught up with the ‘Journal’ ahead of the weekend concerts. “We’re shocked at how well the tour is going so far,” he said. “We knew that coming out of the pandemic things would start to kick off but for us, the whole tour is basically sold out. It’s been amazing but I’m not too sure why that is!

“We kept in touch with our audience throughout the pandemic by doing a weekly Facebook Live gig every Thursday at 8pm for an hour. It’s just basically us chatting and playing our own songs and we’ve done 75 shows so far. When we started doing the live shows, we would mention things that happened on Facebook and we were shocked at how many people at the gigs had been watching us online.

“We’re in the middle of making a new record now and what we’ve decided to do is imagine that the people on Facebook are part of the band. So, we’re going to take them in and ask what they think. We brought a single out last year about the pandemic called Waiting Game. We made that song up in front of the Facebook Live audience and then we developed it in the studio. The video was edited pieces of the facebook Lives from that first year. It was so much fun that we’re going to do it on the new record.

“We’re so excited to come to Derry because we have a lot of friends there. One of the most exciting things we did, we did a show John McCandless, who plays bass with us when we have a full band, and is from Derry. We played a show in Ebrington Square in August 2019, I think, and it was magical. Because we had a Derry man on the stage, I was making the most of it and I would introduce everyone on the stage but I introduced John two or three times because he got the biggest cheer! Now, on the acoustic show we’re doing on Friday and Saturday, the support act is John’s son, who’s in a band called Tessio. I’m looking forward to seeing that.

“Our first manager was from Derry, a man called Thomas Black, so we were doing things in Derry very early. We did gigs in the Venue in 1989 and the ticket price was £5. We did a gig after that in the Guildhall that December, which was amazing, but it would be great to get back to do another band gig in the Guildhall after all these years. But we’ll see what happens.

“There will be plenty of talking on this gig at the weekend so we’ll be telling the stories behind the songs as well as the songs themselves. We’ll be playing the songs people want to hear. It’s quite a small gig and on these shows. The 4 of us is myself, Declan and two acoustic guitars! It’s a lot of fun and that’s what we’ve been finding so far.

“We really just cant wait to play Derry, I’m looking forward to getting back and I get to stay over in Derry for a whole weekend - there’s nothing can beat that!”

The Friday night gig is completely sold out but limited tickets still remain for Saturday. For more information on the gigs or to book a ticket, click here.