The mission statement of Bring Your Own Hammer is simple: to reinterpret historical material in the form of song. Simple, perhaps, but also infinitely broad in its scope. The telling phrase here is that innocent-looking infinitive ‘to reinterpret’: it allows for almost total creative freedom, and that is what makes this project so exciting. It involves a long and distinguished roll-call of musicians – Irish musicians, or ones with links to Ireland – and it asks them to retell stories from the darker recesses of history. This is not a band, or even a collective, though there are aspects of collaboration, not just between musicians but with historians and folklorists too. The musicians involved come from the disparate worlds of traditional folk, pop, alternative rock, and seemingly…

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