There’s a look in Fiachna Ó Braonáin’s eye—gleam, glint, hint—the mark of a true believer. A teenager rewired by Bob Dylan in Paris, raised on traditional Irish music and the wild wail of the blues, he’s been jumping between jigs, reels, sean nós and paint-stripping guitar solos ever since. As the heart and six-string soul of Ireland’s greatest rock n’ soul merchants, Hothouse Flowers, he’s been dealing the real stuff for over forty years. His solo debut Bougainvillea was cut in a Paris apartment near Montmartre. He’s presented on TV, produced award-winning music documentaries, and commandeered a rightful seat on RTÉ Radio 1. When the 2020 shutdown stranded him off the road, he dug out unreleased songs, released Winter Sun, and woke up to find it at Number One on iTunes. Since then, the Flowers have bloomed again, the production work has piled up, and the song sparks are still being gathered. A new body of work is in the dreaming. That look in his eye? Still there. Always will be.
Fiachna O’Braonain
