“YOU NEED TO INNOVATE TO KEEP THE CULTURE ALIVE”: CHASING ABBEY ON IRISH TRAD, KNEECAP AND RELEASING THEIR DEBUT ALBUM AFTER 10 YEARS

INTERVIEW | JONATHAN BYRNE – CHASING ABBEY by Isobel O’Mahony

As Irish trio Chasing Abbey‘s first decade comes to a close, band member Jonathan Byrne reflects on the journey the band has had both musically and personally, and how the road ahead looks as they find new sounds and head out on tour. 

‘Greedy Pigs’, the first single off of Chasing Abbey’s pending debut Cyber Celt, is a great point of view for the band’s message. Its musicality blends Celtic tradition with electronic modernism, underneath lyrics in the Irish language, and its socio-political perspective is undeniably clear. 

Based on member Ted Conway‘s time working in a butcher’s as a teenager, the song details the ugliness of greed. Jonathan said: “It’s just how something so simple like the pig eating his way to his own death can transpire into such major events and major jobs in the world we live in today.

“I don’t want to name names of people, but there could be so much good that people could do in the world with their wealth, but they choose to hold on to it and try to keep growing and progressing. But really they just end up, we think, eating their own soul type thing. 

“The album touches on a lot of social justice in the past and present. The colonisation of countries and how we can all relate to that, especially as Irish people. ‘Greedy Pigs’ is just another chapter of that kind of social justice topic that we’re exploring.

“Using some of the Irish language as well, it really helps us get that message across.”

Jonathan says the band has to pay a “huge homage” to Irish hip-hop stars Kneecap, saying: “We were primarily a dance act singing in English and we never felt fully at home there – we were always searching for something more. And I guess that’s why our style of music has probably changed so much over our career. 

“But then when Kneecap started kicking off, it was like a realisation for us that we have a duty as artists to keep our own culture and language alive through the music. We have a lot of Irish traditional tunes in our music, so we have a duty to continue that and grow. 

“It’s just the messages that our songs have. I think people are really resonating with that across the world, and especially cultures who have their own language as well. And that language is almost taken off them or was taken off them. So I think that’s why people across the world are so open to singing in Irish. It’s quite special.

“I think that the language transcends across cultures and generations, and a lot of people have Irish heritage way down in their lines, so it probably resonates with something inside of them as well.”

Despite 2026 celebrating ten years of Chasing Abbey, Cyber Celt is the band’s first album. Jonathan says the group has been through a multitude of phases since their beginning but finally feel like they’ve found their sonic homestead.

“We finally found a place where we feel at home. This is our first album and we’re ten years together, and I guess the reason for that was because we never found a place where we felt that we were really expressing ourselves and who we are. 

“We started off as Irish traditional players when we were kids playing in sessions and all that crack. When we became teenagers none of our friends were listening to Trads, and we kind of wanted to fit in with our friends, we started making electronic music and that kind of kicked off for us here in Ireland.”

In 2017 the band won RTE Irish Song of the Year with debut single ‘That Good Thing’ which, although a huge moment for any artist, did blur the line between commercial success and creative expression.

“That didn’t force us down the path of electronic and pop music, but it definitely pulled us down there for sure. After years of being there, we realized this wasn’t us. 

“Winning that kind of award, even if the music isn’t necessarily speaking to yourself, if you see it’s speaking to other people so much, it’s this validation that maybe you want to run after. I guess you get clouded by this success, as in, ‘oh, this is why you’re here, this is what you’re meant to make’. But then after a prolonged period of time, you really feel your soul is not in it. 

“So we went on a journey to try and find ourselves, and we got rid of the label, the management and had no boundaries. That all happened about a year and a half ago, and we found ourselves here now.”

No gigs during the Covid years took its toll on Chasing Abbey, but a birthday party of all places is what relit the fire underneath them: “It was Ted’s Granny’ one hundredth birthday, and Ted’s family all played trad, and we just kind of brought in our instruments just because everyone was. We found ourselves at that party playing and reconnecting with the Irish traditional. 

“There were some songs people were singing, and one of them was ‘The Banks of the Roses’, an old limerick, and that song just stuck with us. It lifted the pub and we went into the studio the next day and we were still making electronic music. We had this house beat that we happened to be working on, and then we’re like, what happens if we sing this over that? We threw it up on TikTok that night and it just blew up, and it was turned into ‘Oh My Johnny’. I guess that was the beginning of the sound. 

‘Oh My Johnny’ now has over ten million plays on Spotify, but despite the traditional tune it’s built on, its achievement wasn’t all roses. 

“We started to receive some sort of backlash, unfortunately online, a lot of people saying leave the old Irish songs the way they are, and we were kind of left in a very strange place.

“It affected us. We didn’t think it affected us, but it did, and we kind of lost confidence in that sound.”

But eighteen months ago Jonathan said “something inside” was telling the group to give in to that contrasting mix of traditional and electronic: “We gave ourselves a clean slate; it was just the three of us here in this room actually and we started exploring again.

“We came to the realisation that the tradition of it all will always be there forevermore, but we do think it needs to progress and you need to innovate to keep the culture alive.

“We love to innovate in terms of music. That’s why sometimes some of our songs sound completely weird [laughing], but now we’re heading into a period where we’ve never really had before, where we know what our sound is, but how do we progress that? Ultimately it’ll lead to a lot of experimentation.

“We’re going on the road for like four months, which I’m sure will be full of new experiences to build off.”

Looking to the future, how does Chasing Abbey see their sound and message expanding, and how does this translate to audiences on the road? Jonathan says: “We had a smaller tour in February and March across the UK and America, and we were blown away by how much people knew our songs and the message. 

“A lot of the songs are about oppression and political tunes and we weren’t sure how well it was going to be received. Just to find ourselves in these rooms with like minded people, and there’s such a sense of community, which is a feeling we never felt before with the more dance records. 

“What to expect when we’re heading off again: we’re growing our community and spreading our message of togetherness, and trying to make the world a bit of a better place from what we can do.”

“We want people to live with hope that the world can be a better place. If we all actively try and make it a better place, we can do something great together. 

Live music should always be a place to find community, but to see your own work bringing people together, like Chasing Abbey’s music, is a very special thing: “We love it because other people are finding like minded people at the gigs, and we can see online that people have struck up friendships over it. 

“There’s a mix of all cultures and people have found a place where you like electronic music, but you also like Celtic music. You’re finding all these like minded people in the one room, and it’s powerful.

“It is a responsibility; it’s a major balancing act to respect Celtic and Irish trad and then electronic, and to try and do both genres justice, and then also leave people feeling fulfilled after the shows,

“We’re trying to subtly bring people in and maybe make them see the light a bit. We touch on topics which might not be the prettiest, but our main message is unity is better.”

Chasing Abbey’s debut 13 track record Cyber Celt is set to release on the 18th September, with a UK and Ireland tour to follow in the autumn. 

Pre-order Cyber Celt HERE and buy tour tickets NOW!