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Mules & Men are an Irish four-piece string band. Critics have described their music as a ‘”shake-up of the more traditional and conservative Bluegrass with its almost compulsory themes of shack-living, girl-leaving blues”. (Hotpress) Mules & Men are modernizers – using the fast pace of banjo-driven tunes and combining that with a Rock ‘n Roll sensibility.

The quartet features a quintessential, acoustic line-up of bluegrass instrumentation: Luke Coffey (banjo), Lily Sheehan (guitar), “Paahto” Cummins (mandolin) and Niall Hughes (double bass). Despite the employment of traditional instruments and folk-based four-part harmony singing, Mules & Men write solely original material that utilises much electronic input such as effects pedals. The influence of EDM (electronic dance music) and first-wave punk is never far out of reach and, quite comfortably, determines them a suitable “party band”. Yet, equally, their background in bread-and-butter, traditional bluegrass means that these musicians know the intricacies of their craft extremely well and could easily hold their own in an acoustic folk environment