An idiosyncratic, challenging and richly lyrical singer/ songwriter, Junior Brother is the pseudonym of Co. Kerry, Ireland singer Ronan Kealy. Chosen as The Irish Times’ Best Irish Act of 2019 and nominated for the 2019 Choice Music Prize for Album of the Year, Junior Brother has built a rabid following thanks to unmissable live shows, and music both excitingly forward-looking and anciently evocative. His strange stories unfold with reckless abandon upon a distinctive guitar and foot tambourine accompaniment, influenced as much by the avant-garde as music from the Middle Ages and his home place in rural Ireland.

In addition to earning a Choice Music Prize nomination, Junior Brother's trailblazing debut album “Pull The Right Rope”, also saw Kealy garner two nominations at the 2019 RTÉ Radio 1 Folk Awards, for Best Folk Album and Best Emerging Folk Act. Similarly, vigorous approval from modern-day Irish figureheads such as the Rubberbandits and Cillian Murphy has furthered Junior Brother's stock, the latter playing Junior Brother several times on his BBC Radio 6 Music Show. Along-side further airplay, his television performances include appearances on RTÉ’s the Tommy Tiernan show, Other Voices and the Choice Music Prize Awards night in Vicar Street.

Following a landmark debut album, Irish Alt-Folk act Junior Brother's "The Great Irish Famine" leaps boldly forward into an exciting new chapter, and into a shaken new world - staggeringly profound, brutally beautiful and "Truly unforgettable" (MOJO Magazine).

"I was very conscious to bring each element of the debut into this follow-up, but dramatically dig ten times deeper and stretch ten times further down into each avenue" explains Junior Brother, a.k.a. Ronan Kealy. The towering, bruised catharsis of lead single "No Snitch" soars amidst darkly comic self-reflection ("This Is My Body"), anxious reflexes on modern living ("No Country For Young Men"), and the painful role the past plays in a nation's present ("King Jessup's Nine Trials").

Both startlingly dynamic and profoundly accomplished, "The Great Irish Famine" mounts its "Wry songs of anxiety and frustration" (The Guardian) to the fall-out of trauma both national and international, minor and mountainous, historic and contemporary - all uncompromisingly conveyed through the magnetic, stunningly potent vision of a one-of-a-kind artist at the top of his game.

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

"[An] unfiltered acoustic mix of neuroses, loss of innocence and religious oppression...Truly unforgettable" 

MOJO Magazine

"An album that sounds like no other, challenging and dripping with authenticity."

Folk Radio 

"Possesses humour, empathy and a masterful way with words in abundance"

Irish Examiner

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

"Magnificent...A strange but wonderful trip"

Hot Press

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

"Junior Brother’s 'The Great Irish Famine' captures the range of feelings we face when learning our place in an increasingly shaky world built on a foundation of tragedy." 

PopMatters

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

"The songs of 'The Great Irish Famine' are from a shaken world, songs that can be both cathartic and comic, personal and universal" 

Songlines

PRAISE FOR PULL THE RIGHT ROPE

"Kealy's trademark Munster brogue and keen turns-of-phrase feel equal parts familiar and bracingly unique. If you get a chance to catch Junior Brother live, do not pass it up."
- Brian Coney, Dazed Magazine

"Kealy is not only marching to a different drumbeat, but creating one that we all want to march to."
- Louise Bruton, The Irish Times

"One of the brightest, funniest talents in the country"
- Eoghan O'Sullivan, The Irish Independent

★★★★
"Part of the new folk revolution that's making household names of Lisa O'Neill and Ye Vagabonds, Killarney's Junior Brother, aka Ronan Kealy, is a strange and wonderful talent."
- John Walshe, Sunday Business Post

★★★★★★★★
"Overall, Junior Brother's debut is very much like rural Ireland: raw and stark - but very beautiful."
- Stephen Porzio, Hot Press Magazine

★★★★
"The tales told here are full of wide-eyed wonders and keen observations. Between the clatter of one and clarity of the other, Junior Brother’s songs are the real deal."
- Tony Clayton-Lea, The Irish Times