“He sings in a voice that makes no concession to the conventional approach of knocking off corners to gain acceptance, and he is all the better for it.”
Pat Carty, Hot Press Magazine
“Irreverent is too small a word to describe Kerry singer Junior Brother. Armed with a battered acoustic guitar and a tambourine, his gaunt and guttural tunes sing with a gallows humour that will chime with anyone who’s been dragged up in Ireland between the triangulation/strangulation points of church, school and da drink.” Alan Corr, RTÉ
“When I was listening to him – you know when you’re having that thing where you’re ‘I can’t decide if this guy is a genius or if I don’t like it’. And then I settled on ‘No, this guy’s a genius'”
Eoghan McDermott, 2fm
“If Nick Drake was born in the Kingdom, and received a lifetime full of Healy Rae harrassment and sanctimonious sour looks, it might sound like this.”
Jinx Lennon
An idiosyncratic, challenging and richly lyrical singer/ songwriter, Junior Brother is the pseudonym of 24 year-old Co. Kerry, Ireland native Ronan Kealy.
Fusing elements of Irish and English folk with a deeply unique sensibility, Kealy has steadily built a dedicated fanbase in his current residence of Dublin, broadening his listenership further with each release.
Born outside Killarney, Co. Kerry, Kealy developed a strong love of music from an early age, writing his first song at 9 years old after having taught himself guitar on a banged-up nylon acoustic.
A short spell studying English in University College Cork helped Kealy to foster his unique and striking poetic voice, taking his Junior Brother moniker from a character in Jacobean play “The Revenger’s Tragedy”, a work Kealy studied there.
With the crucial addition of foot tambourine to his musical set-up, Kealy eventually moved to Dublin to briefly study music, before releasing his highly acclaimed second EP “Fuck Off I Love You” in 2016, earning plays and plaudits on 2fm, Radio Nova, Dublin’s 98fm among others. He is currently in the middle of recording his debut album, engineered and recorded by Chris Barry (Myles Manley, Ye Vagabonds, Cat Palace).