The band
About
Mosspit are an Irish band. They make music. They tour. They rehearse. They argue. They disappear for a while and come back with another song. That much is straightforward. The rest gets less so.
How long has Mosspit existed?
Nobody knows. There are posters that suggest decades. Photographs that suggest longer. Names from old line-ups that nobody remembers anymore. And then there are the things that should probably not exist at all.
Mosspit have been around for as long as people on this island have told stories. Not always with the same members. Not always with the same instruments. Not always in a form anyone today would immediately recognise as a band.
But always travelling. Always performing. Always moving on.
The current line-up
This is only the latest version
The names change. The faces change. The instruments change. Some members stay longer than others. Some disappear gradually. Nobody appears to keep a reliable list. Mosspit continues anyway.
Finn
Vocals / Harmonica
Sings. Owns the microphone without making a performance of owning it. The one most likely to ask for another take.
Gráinne
Lead Guitar
Plays like nobody is watching, which is roughly the reason everybody does. The guitar has her full attention and very little else does.
Bricriu
Bass
Cleverest person in the room and rarely lets it go to waste. Holds the low end down and starts most of the arguments above it.
Balor
Drums / Bodhrán / Percussion
The engine. Enormous, quiet, dependable. Ends arguments mainly by deciding they are over.
Morrigan
Fiddle
The most accomplished player in the band and the least interested in saying so. Her fiddle can vanish under a verse and cut straight through the guitars when the song opens up.
Peig
Tambourine / Percussion
Four feet of shawl, pipe and opinion. Plays little and never wastes it. Usually gone before the gear is loaded.
Puck
Tin Whistle / Flute
Darts in and out of an arrangement and changes its colour on the way past. Rarely still, frequently late, apparently somewhere else first.
And somewhere nearby
Forty Coats
Management, logistics, explanations
Says everything is under control. Nobody has asked him for paperwork. When a real problem turns up, he generally knows someone.
Where the members come from
The current members carry old names. Some come from mythology. Some from folklore. Some from literature. Some from the strange afterlife of schoolbooks, television, street memory, jokes and songs — things people recognise before they remember why.
The distinction does not seem especially important to the band. They are not interested in explaining themselves. They have a soundcheck.
A story survives because somebody tells it again. A name survives because it is repeated. Sometimes what survives is only a fragment: a phrase, a joke, a school memory, a song, a face on a banknote, something carried abroad and repeated by people who have never seen the place the story came from. Mosspit seem to collect these fragments. Or the fragments collect Mosspit. Nobody has settled the question.
Ireland
Mosspit belong to Ireland, but not to one version of it. Not postcard Ireland. Pubs, college digs, motorways, wakes, rehearsals, chippers, old meeting places, family stories, football, bad weather, good jokes, old television and songs people know without remembering where they learned them.
The mythology is there. So is the M50. Both are allowed to exist at the same time.
Irish stories travel, and so do habits, songs, jokes and names. A story can stay alive in London, Boston, Birmingham, Sydney or anywhere else people carry part of Ireland with them. Mosspit tour accordingly. They have always toured. The routes are simply better documented now.
The band now
Contemporary, and busy with it
They record in studios. They use phones. They release music. They play real venues. They travel. They rehearse.
The difference is that the current line-up appears to include people who have no reasonable business still being here. Nobody inside the room seems particularly concerned about it.
Fans talk about songs. Journalists talk about performances. Promoters talk about load-in. Balor needs space for the drums. Gráinne needs another take. Bricriu has started something. Peig has disappeared. Forty Coats says it is handled. That is generally how things proceed.
The old line-ups
Archive material occasionally surfaces. A handbill. A photograph. A cassette sleeve. A newspaper clipping. A poster.
Sometimes a familiar face appears where it should not. Sometimes an unfamiliar one appears beside them. Sometimes there is a name nobody can place. No complete historical record exists. That is probably for the best.
The simple version
Mosspit have existed for as long as people on this island have told stories. The members change. The instruments change. The stories change.
The band keeps moving. And, for now, this is the line-up.