This week we devote a big hunk of our show to airing tracks from Declan O'Rourke's 2017 concept album about the Great Hunger (1845-1852). After reading John O'Connor's "The Work Houses Of Ireland" in 2002, O'Rourke spent 15 years slowly turning O'Connor's and other's harrowing accounts of personal adversity into a song cycle. And just this past week, O'Rourke published his first novel: "The Pawnbroker's Reward," the story of a poor family in County Cork struggling through The Great Hunger.
Also on today's show: new music from ISHILA, Fialla, The McDades, Josh O'Keefe, Chatham County Line, and more.