The Mary Wallopers: Dundalk and disorderly

When asked if he and his brother are still blocked on Twitter by RTÉ, Charles Hendy explains that their hip-hop account, TPM, remains persona non grata, but their Irish folk expression, The Mary Wallopers, has been given the OK. “They don’t have a leg to stand on. Fuck RTÉ,” he smiles, inadvertently quoting the song title that got TPM blocked in the first place. “It’s funny because we’ve never not said ‘fuck RTÉ,’” then, with a faux haughtiness and a raised eyebrow, “but they can’t deny what a good thing we [The Mary Wallopers] are. That’s why they have to have us on.” This ironic sense of self is one of the many draws of The Wallopers. And remains as strong as ever on Irish Rock’n’Roll, their new album which was recorded in just two weeks in Black Mountain Studio, near their beloved hometown Dundalk. The recently-released video for one of the album’s raucous singles, ‘The Blarney Stone’, features brothers Charles and Andrew Hendy and Séan McKenna (the band’s three original members) standing glumly under a sign reading ‘Kiss The Mary Wallopers’ while they mumble the lyrics. This is between cuts of them drinking Guinness they can’t afford, waggling their bums in the air in their living room and nodding and clapping lamely along to their own rollocking chorus around a broken-down car.

But before this glamour were humble beginnings. The group, often compared to The Pogues and The Dubliners (“we’ll just say, ‘oh we’re a bit like The Pogues,’ to older people… cause it’s just, we’re smelly and we play ballads”), began gaining popularity during lockdown. In the live music crisis, they streamed rough-and-ready sessions (still available on YouTube) from their Dundalk home bar. The line-up usually saw Andrew on banjo and Charles and McKenna on guitar, with Charles picking up the bodhrán at times, too. They played a range of old Irish songs and originals, some rowdy, others poignant. The streams’ undubbed, authentic feel was reflected in 2019’s EP A Mouthful of The Mary Wallopers, 2022’s self-titled full-length and this newest release. It’s a rawness, free from the inhibitions of posture, that was instilled from early on, at least where Charles and Andrew are concerned.

“Our father was a machine driver in a dump and he found an accordion in the dump and put it in the cab of his bulldozer… and taught himself how to play. So that’s the way we were exposed to music… you just start playing,” remembers Charles. “It was very rough and tumble, but I suppose our whole upbringing was very DIY. Our father used to make windmills and stuff himself… I suppose that’s what we still do now, but we apply it to music. There were people singing in our house, our sister sang ballads and stuff… one of our brothers was into metal and the other brother had a pirate radio station… So we were exposed to so many different types of music and all of it was good as far as I’m concerned… I loved punk… There is a theme in all of that music that is DIY… that’s what always attracted me, more than even the sound.” He pauses before musing, “Definitely not a formal introduction to music. Thank God!”

The Wallopers’ start was pretty ‘rough and tumble’ too. “I met Séan in Dundalk,” Charles tells me, “on a bus… Then me and Andrew started inviting Séan to go to the pub with us and play ballads… Mainly because we had no money and we wanted to drink.” He looks at me, then emphasises, “When I say no money, we had enough money to buy Tesco baked beans and Tesco white bread. We would go into the pub… take turns singing… and ask the pub to give us drink… when they got fed up with us, we would just go to the next pub until we started getting paid.”

The Hendys’ first taste of renown, though, came through the aforementioned hip-hop group TPM, which they pursued alongside their balladeering. With hits like ‘All the Boys on the Dole’ and ‘Fuck RTÉ’, there was a stage at which TPM seemed the more probable success. “TPM was way more popular… It was kind of surprising when The Mary Wallopers started taking off. Looking back it makes total sense, the music [of The Wallopers] can travel, it’s a lot more…” he thinks for a second, “…listenable… but at the time, we were like ‘what the fuck?’ because when we started playing ballads it was not cool.” I ask Hendy what he thinks caused the Irish music boom generally. “I think it’s [the] housing crisis and all that shit. It’s kinda depressing… you can sing a song that’s 400 years old about landlords and you don’t even need to change the lyrics.”

Since the lockdown livestreams, new members have joined the group: Róisín Barrett on bass, Finnian O’Connor on pipes/whistles, Seamas Hyland on accordion and Ken Mooney on drums. And they have been touring internationally with huge success – they will tour the US in October followed by the UK and Ireland. This larger line-up has led to a new feel, audible in Irish Rock’n’Roll. “It was a lot easier [recording] this time because we were all really after playing with each other for ages,” Charles observes. The dynamic developed enough to warrant re-recording previously released tracks, such as ‘Rothsea-O’, a laughable tale of travelling misadventures. “[With] the way we expanded to the band, when we play [‘Rothsea-O’] live it sounds so different to what we recorded originally,” Charles explains. The growing confidence of the group comes across joyfully in the chaos of such re-records: where previously he was silent, the new ‘Rothsea-O’ has McKenna declaring, ‘I am!’ when accused of being a ‘dirty lout’. “He’s getting brave,” says Charles proudly.

While plenty of fun, The Wallopers’ music has an earnest anti-authoritarianism to it, too. This was also something the brothers were raised with. “There was a healthy disrespect for authority in our house, whether it be the police or be the government or anything,” Charles notes, “I think it’s fairly black and white, to us anyway, that the rich are in power and it doesn’t matter what name they go under they’re just there to stay rich and keep the poor poor.” These politics resonate with their audiences, especially as the economic gap grows, but I wonder if they win over more conservative listeners. “I think we can absolutely win people over,” Charles reckons, “music is so important in that way, because discussion is boring. If you have a job and you’re working all the time… when do you get a chance to sit around and discuss politics? You’re tired… We’re not telling people what to believe, we’re saying what we believe and if we can put that forward in an entertaining way and in not a condescending way, well, then I think we can definitely bring people around.”

The Mary Wallopers (photo: Sorcha Frances Ryder)

Many of the new record’s songs do put things forward in this way, expressing a sense of injustice through The Wallopers’ characteristic mix of keen anger and wry humour. In album closer, ‘Gates of Heaven’, Andrew sings to a marching beat. His rough-tinged voice lists historic injustices (often linked to organised religion), as he wonders if heaven isn’t holding more horrors than its counterpart. ‘Vultures of Christmas’ confronts the loneliness and loss borne of poverty (‘You can’t expect different from the same,’ sings Charles). ‘The Rich Man and the Poor Man’, also sung by Charles, with a bodhràn for sparse, powerful accompaniment is the humorous, rueful tale of a rich man’s downfall. “I heard that from a man called Gerry Cullen,” he says, “I asked him to teach me how to sing it and so I do my own version of it… There’s a line in it, ‘the rich are fuckin’ cunty-ums,’ Mick Dunne told me I should start singing that.” This seems to be the way they find most of their songs – barring the originals: through meeting people and playing together. “We’ve researched those old folk songs for ages. I say ‘research’, but that just means going around Ireland to different pubs.” He gives me a knowing look, “It’s the only way I can research things actually.”

In their dedication to their tiny town Dundalk (“what makes [anyone] think we’d be based in fuckin’ London like? We’re not moving anywhere.”), their DIY music and their intolerance for oppression or ego, The Wallopers are unconventional to say the least. “Throughout my history of enjoyment of music, I’ve liked stuff that was probably done wrong,” says Hendy, “but that invents subcultures you know, and movements.” In the context of an ever-growing, normalised gap between the rich and poor, the educated elite and the uneducated majority, the central and the marginalised, The Wallopers provide a panacea. It’s no surprise that their defiant non-conformity, perhaps its own movement, is exactly what people want to see and hear.

The Mary Wallopers are currently on tour in the UK before heading to Europe and North America. Full tour dates here

This article originally appeared in the November 2023 (#192) issue of Songlines. Never miss an issue – subscribe today

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