BEOGA announced as Ed Sheeran’s support on Summer Irish tour and announce single release.
CONFIRMED AS SUPPORT ON ED SHEERAN’S SUMMER IRISH TOUR
NEW SINGLE ‘WE DON’T HAVE TO RUN’ FEATURES RYAN MCMULLAN
AND WILL BE RELEASED ON MAY 4TH
Irish trad band Beoga are kicking off the summer with a bang. They’re set to release their new single ‘We Don’t Have To Run’ featuring Ryan McMullan on May 4th, and will then join Ed Sheeran as support on his huge outdoor summer Irish tour. Beoga love working with Ed and are thrilled to continue their relationship by becoming a part of his upcoming live shows.
2017 was something of a banner year for Beoga as they co-wrote the massive international hit ‘Galway Girl’ with Ed Sheeran, and were featured on another track on his album ‘÷’, ‘Nancy Mulligan’. The two tracks have accumulated 683 million streams at Spotify alone. They also performed with Ed in front of 150,000 people at Glastonbury, taking them to a fresh audience and elevating them to a new level in their career.
That connection also continued with Beoga’s appearance in the Ed Sheeran documentary ‘Songwriter’. The band have been at New York’s Tribeca Film Festival this week where the film has been showing.
Beoga signed to Spirit B-Unique Records last year, and they’ve been holed up in the studio working on new material with Johnny McDaid and Foy Vance. ‘We Don’t Have To Run’, a collaboration which features Ryan McMullan on lead vocals, is the first single from these sessions, and will appear on the band’s new album that will be released in the near future. 2018 is shaping up for be an even bigger year for the band.
Beoga’s bodhrán player Eamon Murray commented, “We know how lucky we are to be working inside such a collective of super musicians, producers and co-writers. Everyone brings something different to the table and it’s been a different process this time round.”
Beoga (Irish for ‘lively’) originally hail from Antrim and have been in existence for fifteen years. In that time, they’ve produced five critically acclaimed albums, been shortlisted for a Grammy and performed with the Ulster Orchestra at the BBC Proms.
Although Beoga’s sound is firmly rooted in the Irish traditional genre, they often incorporate other elements, and their current evolution sees them finding the precise intersection between trad music and contemporary pop.
“We were making music like we’d never done before,” says accordionist Damian McKee. “It was like starting again from scratch.”
“It’s less pressure as well,” agrees Sean Og Graham (accordion / guitar). “You only have to come up with eight bars of something or find a really good hook. But it’s challenging to find something that’s vibey enough to last through an entire song.”
Completed by Niamh Dunne (vocals / fiddles) and Liam Bradley (piano / keys), Beoga have been described as “the most exciting new traditional band to emerge from Ireland this century” by The Wall Street Journal.
The band’s forthcoming live shows are:
MAY
3rd – Cork, Cyprus Avenue (headline show)
4th / 5th / 6th – Cork, Páirc Ui Chaoimh (supporting Ed Sheeran)
9th – Belfast, Boucher Playing Fields (supporting Ed Sheeran)
12th / 13th – Galway, Pearse Stadium (supporting Ed Sheeran)
16th / 18th / 19th – Dublin, Phoenix Park (supporting Ed Sheeran)