Andrew Kennedy Irvine (born 14 June 1942) is an Irish folk musician, singer-songwriter, and a founding member of Sweeney's Men, Planxty, Patrick Street, Mozaik, LAPD and Usher's Island. He also featured in duos, with Dónal Lunny, Paul Brady, Mick Hanly, Dick Gaughan, Rens van der Zalm, and Luke Plumb. Irvine plays the mandolin, mandola, bouzouki, harmonica, and hurdy-gurdy.

He has been influential in folk music for over six decades, during which he recorded a large repertoire of songs and tunes he assembled from books, old recordings and rooted in the Irish, English, Scottish, Eastern European, Australian and American old-time and folk traditions.

As a child actor, Irvine honed his performing talent from an early age and learned the classical guitar. He switched to folk music after discovering Woody Guthrie, also adopting the latter's other instruments: harmonica and mandolin. While extending Guthrie's guitar picking technique to the mandolin, he further developed his playing of this instrument—and, later, of the mandola and the bouzouki—into a decorative, harmonic style, and embraced the modes and rhythms of Bulgarian folk music.

Along with Johnny Moynihan and Dónal Lunny, Irvine is one of the pioneers who adapted the Greek bouzouki—with a new tuning—into the Irish bouzouki. He contributed to advancing the design of his instruments in co-operation with English luthier Stefan Sobell, and he sometimes plays a hurdy-gurdy made for him in 1972 by Peter Abnett, another English luthier.

Although touring mainly as a soloist, Irvine has also enjoyed great success in pursuing collaborations through many projects that have influenced contemporary folk music. He continues to tour and has performed extensively in Ireland, Great Britain, Europe, North and South America, Japan, Australia and New Zealand. In October 2018, he received the first Lifetime Achievement Award bestowed at RTÉ Radio 1's inaugural Folk Music Awards.

Early life and acting career

Andy Irvine was born in St John's Wood, northwest London on 14 June 1942. His mother, Felicia Madge Lessels, was from Wallasey, Merseyside,

This lasting fascination with Bulgarian folk music would inform several of his later projects—first with Planxty, then in the recording of his first solo album (1980) and of the album East Wind (1992), and also with the creation of two multicultural, similarly named bands: Mosaic (1984–85) and Mozaik (2002–present day). In turn, Irvine's integration of characteristic elements of Bulgarian folk music into his playing, such as asymmetric rhythms, would also have a profound influence on the sound of contemporary Irish music, including—via Bill Whelan—the original Riverdance score.

He also went to Thessaloniki, a Greek-Macedonian town near the Bulgarian border, to buy a bouzouki:

The singer from Muzsikás, Márta Sebestyén, would soon thereafter be joining Irvine's next multicultural folk group: Mosaic. who would go on to participate in several of Irvine's projects, the first being the album East Wind (1992), which featured Sebestyén. Irvine would later write a song about this period of his life in Budapest: "The Wind Blows Over The Danube", released on the album Changing Trains.

Their first public gig was in Budapest on 12 July 1985, followed by a further two gigs in Hungary and an appearance at the Dranouter festival in Belgium in early August, prior to their English tour.

Their set included: Stan Rogers's "Northwest Passage", an unspecified Macedonian dance tune ("one of Andy's 90 mph specials" Irvine stated that he would have liked to try the experiment again by concentrating on the Irish and East European sound without bringing in the blues influence.

Patrick Street

Also in 1985, Irvine joined up with fiddler Kevin Burke and guitarist Mícheál Ó Domhnaill (who had been gigging together around America for some time) and toured as a trio in the USA; when Ó Domhnaill wasn't available for some of the dates, guitarist/vocalist Gerry O'Beirne stepped in. "This tour was such fun and so successful that we decided to expand the outfit into a four-piece by adding Jackie Daly", Irvine wrote.

Initially billed on a 1986 American tour as "The Legends of Irish Music", they soon chose to call themselves Patrick Street.

  • from McGlynn to Ged Foley – after the band recorded their fourth album, All in Good Time, released in 1993;
  • back to McGlynn – when they resumed touring after the completion of their ninth album, On the Fly, released in 2007.

After Jackie Daly retired from Patrick Street, John Carty joined on fiddle, flute and tenor banjo in time to record On The Fly.

Originally agreed to as a part-time band, they have nevertheless recorded eight studio albums together, plus one live album (Live from Patrick Street) and two compilations (The Best of Patrick Street and Compendium: The Best of Patrick Street).

On their first album, Patrick Street, released in 1986, Irvine sings four songs: "Patrick Street", "The Holy Ground", "The Dream/Indiana", and "The Man with the Cap". again features four songs sung by Irvine: "Tom Joad"; "Facing the Chair"; "Braes of Moneymore", to which Irvine changed the tune and added a verse; and "William Taylor"

Their third album, Irish Times, released in 1990, includes three songs by Irvine: "Brackagh Hill"; "Forgotten Hero", his composition about Michael Davitt; and "The Humours of the King of Ballyhooley".

Playing style – The Irish Bouzouki

In 1989, Irvine's style of playing the bouzouki was summarised thus in The Irish Bouzouki, an instructional guide: