The White Horse Guitar Club are off on a massive nationwide tour to celebrate the release of their latest album - Sos Beag, recorded in the very place they began playing music together.
The 11-man band formed after an open call by Joe Carey at The White Horse pub in Ballincollig. What began as a casual gathering around songs and stories grew into a celebrated musical force, with sold-out tours, millions of online views, and a performance for President Michael D. Higgins under their belt.
Now, the outfit have released their second album, Sos Beag, a quiet call to pause, reconnect, and lean into the power of shared song. The LP was recorded at their hometown venue in Ballincollig, the very place where their story began.
"The album title Sos Beag, came from those sessions," Joe Philpott told the Irish Mirror, "Our producer, we had like a studio, basically, it was us spread out across the floor, using the stage and using the venue as our recording space, effectively playing as we would play live, but in a much more overtaking the room setup.
"And after every take, we would go downstairs and have a pint, and Jackie (our producer) would say 'Another sos beag?', another small break, 'there's more sos beag's than takes'.
"The beauty of it, for us, it was a completely and utterly functional working environment with amazing, amazing microphones and a great engineer helping us put it together, capture the magic of it.
"But fellas could kind of walk across the road when they were finished and go home. So we were able to work without the pressure of being away from family, unnecessarily, because sometimes we have to be.
"But in this case it was easy for us, it was a bit of craic as well because we could go down and have a pint and go up and have our 'two pint take'. There was a difference between your nervous, red light take versus your two pint in take.
"And very often, it was the two pints in take that made the record. That definitely helped, just being in that environment for this particular project, for sure".
Joe says that for the White Horse Guitar Club, there is no "quest for perfection", that no one player is "doing anything extraordinary" but together, it creates something that "resonates".
"No one particular person is doing anything extraordinary. When you isolate our tracks on a mixing desk, nothing sounds amazing.
"Everything seems to have found its own kind of place. I think that that's the secret, I think the fact that it isn't kind of planned, it isn't curated. There's not a sort of a quest for perfection and a quest for being amazing all the time.
"The body of it is 11 kind of imperfect components that create something that resonates. And I think it's the resonance of it is what matters. Obviously, the voices have a lot to do with it.
"The trick for us with the guitars is to stay out of the way of the song... Stay out of the way of the voices.
"Effectively, it's a choir mentality with guitars really as enhancement... But the trick is, less is more."
While the release of their second album is a major milestone for the group, one of the White Horse Guitar Clubs's proudest moments to date has been performing for President Michael D. Higgins and his wife Sabina at Culture Night.
"The biggest moment really was being invited by President Higgins and Sabina to be the house band for culture night in Áras an Uachtaráin, and actually play a show inside there, and be hosted by them, and have our families and have an invited audience," Joe shared.
"The whole night was just so amazing, and just for us to be sitting there as friends who started out in our local, at the time 12 years previous, looking at all our families, and seeing Michael D and Sabina in the front, and just a sense of occasion and moment that it was like actually a big thing.
"Like we're not here to kind of fill up the airwaves, we're here because they want us to be here.
"We're here because they understand that there's something going on here that's a little bit more than maybe just a bunch of hairy heads and old songs.
"And I think, without us kind of taking ourselves too seriously or getting ahead of ourselves, I think the moment didn't escape us, put it that way!"
The White Horse Guitar Club's second studio album, Sos Beag, is out now. The 11-piece are headed on tour around Ireland over October and November, taking their show to De Barra's Folk Club in Clonakilty, Dolan's Warehouse in Limerick, the Pavillion Theatre in Dún Laoghaire and plenty more venues across the country. For a full list of gigs check out here.