VARIOUS ARTISTS – Bring Your Own Hammer presents… My Grief On The Sea – LP – Vinyl

LP – Black Vinyl (2025 Reissue)

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 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.

In 2025, we release our first album, My Grief on the Sea, on vinyl. It is brimming with superb contributions from leading Irish and international composers, musicians and singers including Agu, Linda Buckley, Cathal Coughlan, Adrian Crowley, Neil Farrell, Eileen Gogan, Tony Higgins, Carol Keogh, Michelle ORourke, Wally Nkikita, Brigid Mae Power, Michael J Sheehy, Mike Smalle and Jah Wobble.

Bring Your Own Hammer is a musical project launched by two leading academics at Limerick and Strathclyde universities in association with Dimple Discs, which brings historians and composers together to create new and original song cycles based on historical sources and to re-interpret song material rooted in the history of nineteenth-century Ireland and of the Irish Diaspora.

Following a string of acclaimed digital single releases, this is the first album the series. My Grief on the Sea brims with superb contributions from leading Irish and international composers, musicians and singers including Agu, Linda Buckley, Cathal Coughlan, Adrian Crowley, Neil Farrell, Eileen Gogan, Tony Higgins, Carol Keogh, Michelle ORourke, Wally Nkikita, Brigid Mae Power, Michael J Sheehy, Mike Smalle and Jah Wobble. The album offers a collection of songs about the sea and various maritime journeys and migration to and from Ireland in the nineteenth century. You are invited to journey with us as we criss-cross the Atlantic following the remaining threads of lives shaped, in one way or another, by the sea. Of particular interest, the album features unreleased music from Irish musical legend Cathal Coughlan (Microdisney, Fatima Mansions) and is dedicated to his memory.

Tracklist:

01. My Grief on the Sea Michelle ORourke
02. Golden Streets, Bitter Tears – Adrian Crowley with Brigid Mae Power
03. A Pair of Packed Valises (before the Dunbrody), 1849 – Carol Keogh
04. Old Oak Road Mike Smalle with Cathal Coughlan and Jah Wobble
05. The Man with Open Arms Cathal Coughlan with Linda Buckley
06. The Female Cabin Boy Eileen Gogan with Neil Farrell
07. Embarkation (Float Away) Tony Higgins and Agu
08. Over the Ghosts Mike Smalle with Wally Nkikita
09. The Oscillating Sea – Mike Smalle
10. The Weight of Water Michael J Sheehy