Meanwhile, across the river in the Liberties, another pub, Dudley’s on Thomas Street, was born. Hynes’ pub on Prussia Street in Stoneybatter reopened after many years. Simultaneously, something else was happening in this pocket of Dublin. Mulligan asked Mac Aodhagháin to join the band, and the line-up was complete. Many others had the same idea, and, with no room in the pub, Mac Aodhagháin and Mac Amhlaigh began playing tunes out on the street. The first night the Cobblestone reopened, Mac Aodhagháin was “raring to go, waiting for this day forever”. Sitting at home, you couldn’t wait to get back to doing what you want.” For hours a day I played and played all the time.” Ceallaigh feels that time “gave everyone a chance to realise what made them happy in life. It was a case of, Jesus, I need to use my time on things that really matter to me. Even myself, not that I wasn’t playing a lot of music, but I took it for granted. Of that long stretch at home during the pandemic, Mac Aodhagháin says, “People honed in on what they’re interested in. “I always played it, but during Covid I just realised how important it is.” They recorded their debut album, The Hard Working Men, with studio time Holohan and others had gifted Mulligan for his 30th birthday at the end of 2019. “I had a totally renewed appreciation for trad music,” Mac Amhlaigh says of the pandemic era. That period away from live music disconnected and reconnected many musicians to their craft in different ways. “We had nothing to do but to practise at home,” Mulligan says.
“I was very drunk at the time,” Mac Amhlaigh qualifies. While rehearsing, they noted the prowess of Mac Amhlaigh, a cellist and fiddle player.
That gig wasn’t exactly a success, “because we were terrible, and locked,” Holohan explains, but they kept playing and, about a year and a half later, were selected for a Cobblestone Folk Orchestra trip to Lithuania. Ispíní na hÉireann made them laugh and it stuck. When they bagged a slot to perform in the back room of the Cobblestone for a group of American festival directors, they needed a name. Made up of Tomás Mulligan, of the Mulligan family who run the Cobblestone, Adam Holohan, Aongus Mac Amhlaigh, Pádraig Óg Mac Aodhagháin and Kinko Ceallaigh, the band formed in January of 2018, after Mulligan and Holohan had been playing together for a couple of months. On a hot midweek night in the Cobblestone pub in Smithfield in Dublin, Ispíní na hÉireann, a rising, raucous traditional music band, explain their origins.
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