Brògeal Tickets

Brògeal can hit you with a chorus that is single-tear sentimental and yet perfect for a stout-spilling, arm-in-arm chant-along – a combo that will leave your voice happy and hoarse. 

When it comes to Brògeal’s rocked-up mandolins, accordions and wee tales of their Falkirk home, the time between scepticism and wholehearted embrace is minimal. The band have said they can see it happen when playing live, how people’s raised eyebrows release into beaming smiles during the first song – much less time than, say, between 2025 and the yonder years when wayfaring mercenaries would descend on Scottish villages to trade their songs for lodging, lunch, and something to wet the whistle. That’s how Daniel Harkins (guitar, vocals) and Aidan Callaghan’s (banjo, vocals) grandparents used to recount these tales anyway – of musicians who called themselves the Brògeal. 

The 21st century’s Brògeal – centred around the songwriting/singing duo of Harkins and Callaghan – met under different circumstances than their song-bartering spiritual ancestors: on the bus to watch their beloved Scottish Premiership team, Celtic F.C., whose shirts they’re often jigging in onstage. But before these new friends were Brògeal, they were Shiva – a “trash punk garbage rock” band, their rage outlet through the high school years. When Shiva crumbled its course, it left one particularly bereft fan in Sam MacMillan. Soon enough, he’d be squeezing the accordion in Harkins and Callaghan’s new project, Brògeal, which released its first single, ‘You’ll Be Mine’, in 2022. 

The M.O. was a little different this time around. With bassist Euan Mundie and drummer Luke Mortimer holding things down, the lads adopted traditional sounds and instruments alongside their American college rock and British punk influences – partially thanks to their parents’ penchant for sandwiching records by The Dubliners between ones by The Replacements or The Clash.

Rambunctious, melodic and surprisingly earnest, ‘Girl From NYC’ is the quintessence of this USP, and of the band’s range. It’s fun, it’s high-energy, but it also has elements that flirt with melancholy – notable when you realise the tune’s backstory concerns the shuttering of their favourite pub. Brògeal don’t let themselves (or us) linger in this reflective space for too long, though, careening into a jaunty shoe-stomp section again and again, going ham on the mandolin, to remind us why we’re here: to party. 

Released in April of this year, the clan’s latest single is ‘Friday On My Mind’, recorded on a windswept Isle of Lewis, practically halfway to Iceland. Still, they call it “the sound of the summer,” and they aren’t wrong, as the inadvertent send-up of The Cure is just as meet-the-parents friendly and instantly catchy – an anthem for nine-to-fivers outrunning drudgery and into the sweaty arms of Falkirk’s finest. 

In their three short years, Brògeal have crashed their honky-tonk merriment into countless festivals, and onto tours supporting Flogging Molly, The View and The Mary Wallopers. And as they embark on this massive springtime run around the UK, there’s no denying that they’re just getting started.