Bring Your Own Hammer

Bring Your Own Hammer is not a band, a group, an ensemble or even a collective. If anything, it is a faction but unlike nineteenth-century factions, who met, armed with sticks and two-handed wattles in fairs and markets, it is armed with voices and instruments and dedicated, as no faction before, to the re-interpretation of historical material in song form. Our album, From the Tombs, is released in November 2026. It is a barnstorming album that takes the listener on a journey through the history of crime, law and order in Ireland and among the Irish Diaspora in the 19th century. It has a range of styles with pop songs, folk ballads, cinematic instrumentals, sean nós, an extended spoken word piece and more. The listener is invited to travel with amazing artists across time, from the early 1800s to the 1920s, and to different parts of the world. With new material from Cian Nugent, Sean O’Hagan (Microdisney, High Llamas), Mike Smalle , Audrey Riley, Adrian Crowley, SJ McArdle, Lisa Lambe, Fergal Lawler (the cranberries), June Miles-Kingston (the Mo-dettes; Fun Boy Three; the Communards), Marcus Holdaway, Bernard Butler (Suede; Butler, Blake and Grant), Terry Edwards, Luke Haines (The Auteurs, Black Box Recorder), John Carter Wood, Miriam Ingram, Tony Higgins, Hugh Bunker (Fatima Mansions), Michael Walsh, Damian O'Neill (The Undertones), Brigid Mae Power, Linda Buckley, Lavinia Blackwall, Neil Farrell, Michael J. Sheehy, Kelsey Michael, Anne Gilpin Inni-K and NQL.