On this week’s episode, we’re joined by Junior Brother, songwriter, musician, and one of the most distinctive voices in Irish music today. From a quiet upbringing in rural Kerry, where music wasn’t always front and centre, to carving out a singular path through Ireland’s alternative folk scene, Ronan Keeley’s journey is one shaped by curiosity, instinct, and a deep connection to place. What began with a “crappy little guitar” and a lot of imagination has grown into a body of work that’s both rooted in tradition and boldly experimental. His debut album earned a Choice Music Prize nomination and marked him out as an artist doing things very much on his own terms, uncompromising, expressive, and unafraid to follow his instincts. But it was in leaving home, and looking back from a distance, that his songwriting really began to take shape, drawing on rural landscapes, memory, and a sense of belonging. We talk about finding your own voice, literally and figuratively, the influence of artists like Damien Dempsey, and why singing in your own accent became such a defining part of his sound. There’s also plenty on his latest album The End, a record shaped by isolation, folklore, and the strange, beautiful idea of being led astray only to find your way home again. It’s a thoughtful, honest conversation about creativity, identity, and staying true to your path, even when it takes you somewhere unexpected.

Let Christy Take It are proud to bring you Junior Brother.

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On this week’s episode, we’re joined by Joe Philpott, songwriter, musician, author, and founder of both Rubyhorse and the White Horse Guitar Club, a Cork artist whose story spans ambition, burnout, reinvention, and rediscovery. From forming Rubyhorse as teenagers in Bishopstown, Co. Cork to chasing the dream across America, Joe’s journey took him from local gigs to major label deals, billboard success, and appearances on US late night television. Along the way life on the road brought its own challenges. After years of touring coast to coast, navigating the collapse of the music industry, and living what Joe describes as an “outlaw existence”, the cracks began to show and he eventually stepped away. What followed was not an exit from music, but a transformation. Joe immersed himself in music and healthcare across Europe, working in hospitals, rehabilitation centres, palliative care, and community programmes, rediscovering music not as business, but as a service. That philosophy now runs through everything he does, including the White Horse Guitar Club, a collective built less on ambition and more on connection, presence, and shared experience. We also talk about his memoir, All Roads Lead to Where You’re From: Bishopstown to the Beatles, written after a doctor’s warning forced him to slow down and reassess. Whether discussing the influence of John Prine, or reflecting on advice he’d give his younger self, Joe speaks with the hard earned clarity of someone who’s lived the highs and survived the troughs. Join us as we talk about American dreams, Cork roots, George Harrison’s generosity, walking away at the right time, falling back in love with music, and why sometimes the most extraordinary things grow from the most ordinary beginnings.

Let Christy Take It are proud to bring you Joe Philpott

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On this week’s episode, we’re joined by Ron Sexsmith, Canadian singer, songwriter, master melodist, and one of the most quietly revered writers of his generation. From discovering a dusty box of records under his family stereo as a child, from doo-wop, Johnny Cash, The Everly Brothers, and Buddy Holly’s It Doesn’t Matter Anymore. Ron’s lifelong relationship with song began early. That Buddy Holly record, in particular, ignited something profound: melody, mortality, and the magic of songwriting all colliding at once. From there came The Beatles, The Kinks, Elton John, country music, Leonard Cohen and, ultimately, Gordon Lightfoot, the songwriter who showed him that you didn’t have to be a rock star to move people.

You could just stand still and sing the truth. We talk about the moment everything changed at 21, when becoming a father sparked a songwriting frenzy that led to Speak with the Angel and set his career in motion. Ron reflects on finding his own voice over time, a voice fully realised by the time of Retriever, and the craft behind his songs: the structural worries, the demoing process, knowing when a lyric has said enough, and why he still believes in the album as a complete, living statement. We also dive into his fiercely independent “no co-writing” rule for his own records, his deep admiration for writers like Ray Davies and Gilbert O’Sullivan.

From touring relentlessly to curating deeply personal tribute shows to Gordon Lightfoot and Warren Zevon, Ron remains as devoted to the song as ever, whether it’s his own or one he carries entirely from memory, lyric for lyric, as part of what he jokingly calls his “savant” superpower.

Join us as we talk to Ron about melody, memory, songwriting discipline, album-making, missed label opportunities, and the thread that runs through a body of work spanning decades, a songwriter growing older, wiser, and still chasing the perfect song.

Let Christy Take It are proud to bring you Ron Sexsmith.

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Thanks to our sponsor Irish Woodcraft, please check them out at https://irishwoodcraft.ie

Photo Credit: Kerry Vergeer