I saw The Mary Wallopers at the Barrowland Ballroom - here's why you should too

The Mary Wallopers played the second of three nights at the Barrowland Ballroom, putting new life into old songs and solidifying a relationship with Glasgow that is set to endure. A band at the forefront of a folk revival, they continue a tradition with songs from The Clancy Brothers, Christy Moore and Hamish Imlach injected with a renewed sense of purpose.

It’s a sight to behold, the band and audience making a tangible connection. If you are ever going to see this band, you should do it here. The Mary Wallopers are already building a formidable reputation for their live shows. The songs seem to fit here in a way that’s important, ballads and trad anthems played with sincerity and verve in a venue imbued with the spirit of generations of musicians.

Before they took to the stage, Brogeal made their debut at the storied Gallowgate venue. A Pogues influenced trad punk outfit from Falkirk, they are an increasingly prominent and compelling part of the Glasgow music scene. It was clear by the reaction that the band had brought their own crowd for the energetic support slot. The Barrowlands suits them, I’m sure they will return for their own headline slot one day.

A December gig here seems to have an added energy. It was at Barrowlands that Fairytale of New York was played live for the first time and there have been all kinds of different artists who have found a personal connection with the venue, returning annually around Christmas time. The Mary Wallopers seem destined to be a fixture in the musical calendar in the East End.

Frontman Charles Hendy told us last year during their previous run of December shows: “Barrowlands is a legendary place. Hearing Christy Moore talking about it and then when you go in the backstage and see all the posters like The Cramps playing here, and the fact that it’s pretty much unchanged is pretty amazing. That’s what makes it an institution I suppose. It’s in a great part of Glasgow as well, we love Glasgow.

The band sing Cod Liver Oil and the Orange Juice, an old Glasgow song that has found a new audience through their live show: “Ron Clark and Carl MacDougall wrote it. I believe someone from Belfast also put a few lines in it and it was made popular by Hamish Imlach and it’s a song pretty much just about this area so we were singing it earlier in the markets which was good.”

Seán McKenna said: “There’s a lot of traditional songs, that’s always the way it’s been, some are hundreds of years old. A lot of them came from other songs and they just changed over time, where they were never written down but passed by word of mouth or other musicians learning them from live performances, they kind of evolve over time anyway. Folk music is just how people can play these songs, the way they’re able too.”

The folk tradition in Glasgow was previously rooted in places like The Scotia bar but you can expect to hear punky echoes of old songs from new artists playing bigger stages next year.