Live Music: Mikey Kenney

Mikey Kenney is an original.  A passionate and well-respected advocate for traditional music.  A brilliant Liverpool-style fiddler, drawing primarily on his native North West English and Irish heritage, but grounded in a present-day, urban reality.

He is a musician with wide-open horizons and insatiable curiosity for new possibilities.  As evidenced on his latest album, The Reverie Road (Penny Fiddle Records), Kenney's songwriting is both adventurous and earth-bound, with his high lonesome voice exploring sun-drenched Italian vistas, dream worlds and sounds of the city.

With a reputation for both making quality music and producing wondrous flourishes of creativity, Kenney is also a multi-talented and in-demand collaborator, including with band Of Burns, and now, with his electric trio World Turned Upside Down, as well as playing with BBC 6 Music favourite, Alabaster DePlume and Italian singer-songwriter, Vinicio Capossela.

Mikey is also musical director of the Lancashire Youth Folk Ensemble. 'Mikey Kenney is an artist for whom music is a calling, not a career choice…a singular and inspiring talent… unfettered by expectations of geography or genre, and a wanderer of worlds both seen and invisible, Kenney is an authentic free spirit.' – 5/5 fRoots.  'Superbly charismatic fiddle playing / once heard, never forgotten singing', FRUK.  'This is magical, medicinal music that defies labels and borders', Liverpool Echo.