2 minute read
Ruth Mac
Hailing from the West of Ireland, Ruth Mac grew up amongst a lively community of traditional musicians. 40 minutes from Galway on the Clare border, the cute and colourful port village of Kinvara hosts the famous Cruinniú na mBád race of the Galway hookers every year, and is also home to the music and community arts festival, Fleadh na gCuach. With a population of no more than a thousand, Kinvara is a one street town with a school and nine pubs. Through the “serious sessions,” in these pubs, Ruth became interested in learning to play the guitar herself, the many traditional musicians that passed through the village becoming her teachers.
While Ruth’s inspiration came from the traditional music she was engulfed by as a kid, her influences are more ingrained in folk and soft-rock. Her parents’ very solid collection of records were consistently played around the house as she was growing up, and have been significant in determining her sound. There are definite notes of Joan Baez in Ruth’s vocals for her song Speed, and her preference for sparsity when it comes to guitar arrangements mirrors the compositions of one of her childhood favourites, Joni Mitchell. “I was very much a bedroom musician until about a year after I finished college,” Ruth tells me. She had moved to Dublin aged 18 to attend Trinity College, and spent her evenings writing in her room. It was in Dublin where she performed her own songs to an audience for the first time, and where she formed a stable band. Since moving to Berlin, Ruth has been playing solo at the likes of Madame Claude and Hosek Contemporary, but is excited to show the bassist and drummer she’s recently recruited the EP she’s written.
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“The fact that Berlin gives me the opportunity to afford to have a studio to write in is a huge game-changer,” she says, when I ask her if being in Berlin has changed the direction of her music. When it comes to writing from experience or coming up with fictional concepts, Ruth tells me she does both — although her writing from experience comes more from a place of observation. Her time spent in Berlin means that she observes her home differently to how she did when she was living there. Ruth expresses that she feels more influenced as a musician by Ireland now, and makes the point that the feeling of home is very strong when she goes back. She finds herself very inspired by the physical place, stating, “I forget until I’m there how beautiful the West of Ireland is.”