'More people win the lottery than achieve what's happened to us' — Kingfishr, the student band selling out the 3Arena

Irish Examiner

14 hours ago

When laid out on the page, the lyrics of Kingfishr have the look and feel of mid-century Irish poetry — subdued, conversational, and peppered with an energy that borders on despondency. However, when paired with the still, heavy baritone of lead singer Eddie Keogh, and the striking musicality of bass player Eoghan 'McGoo' McGrath, and banjo player Eoin 'Fitz' Fitzgibbon, the alchemy changes to reveal a stirring, emotional urgency, one not dissimilar to hope.
When Kingfishr play, they emote something that is both entirely unaffected and yet drenched with feeling. Like the writing of the band's stylistic forebears — The Dubliners, The Cranberries, The Frames — the music of Kingfishr is imbued with a yearning for a long-vanished, almost parochial way of life: one centred around the beauty, peace and danger of youth, and the long, hazy days of wondering where life will take you next.
Next month, Fitzgibbon (27), McGrath (26) and Keogh (27) will release their debut album, Halcyon, along with a smattering of tour dates across Europe and the US, many of which are already sold out.
As we sit in Dublin's The Gibson Hotel, and look across to the 3Arena, they can't quite believe that this venue is one of them.
'Ticket sales sometimes feel not real, social media isn't real, but walking into that space, knowing you're going to sell it out for two nights… That is real,' Keogh says.
'And crazy,' Fitzgibbon laughs.
'It never gets normal, and to be honest, I don't think I want it to,' McGrath smiles.
The trio met in the early twenty-twenties — some say 2021, others 2022 — while studying Hardware Engineering at the University of Limerick. Between long days in student accommodation during the hangover of the pandemic, they punctuated college work with PlayStation and songwriting, picking up where Keogh's teenage hobby left off.
Fitzgibbon, an East Cork hurler with thick eyebrows and a bashful smile, soon joined him in creating music, only to remember a classmate with a penchant for strings.
'McGoo comes from a musical dynasty,' Keogh says.
'There's a room dedicated to silverware in their house. But yeah, we asked him to get involved to see what a banjo would sound like with what we'd written — and it all kind of started from there.'
Kingfishr, named for the birds who reside near the river behind Keogh's house, began playing at house parties to hone their craft and spread their name. It was a natural extension of their previous lives, picking up guitars at sessions and singing until daylight broke. The first 50 gigs, mainly pubs around Limerick, were 'rubbish,' but they persisted.
As friends began to request their music at parties over celebrated covers, the three men began to consider the will-they-won't-they pull of the music industry. (Their track Shot In The Dark tracks this leap of faith from a much steadier path to a much more creative one.) That they've managed to break through the noise amidst an island of songwriters is not lost on them.
'I just knew that if we didn't do this now, we never would,' Keogh says, catching my eyes.
'I wanted to be able to go to bed every night and know that we'd tried. And like… More people win the lottery than achieve what's happened to us. This doesn't just happen.'
Kingfishr: 'I wanted to be able to go to bed every night and know that we'd tried. And like… More people win the lottery than achieve what's happened to us. This doesn't just happen.'
Indeed, since their debut on the Irish music scene less than three years ago, Kingfishr have racked up more than 70 million streams, sold 50,000+ tickets, played support slots for the likes of Dermot Kennedy and Bruce Springsteen, and are key players in the Irish revival alongside acts like The Mary Wallopers, Amble, KNEECAP, and John Francis Flynn. According to Cork and Limerick locals, their impromptu gigs have amassed what publicans have come to label as 'Beatlemania'.
In person, the band's members are boyish, smiling and unassuming. They regularly discuss how it's not in their nature to be self-promoting, something that brushes against the norms of today's music industry, and prefer to discuss the likes of nicknames ('McGoo' was deemed so by McGrath's physics teacher, and somehow persisted), advertisement soundtracks (the 2005 Sony Bravia TV one with José Gonzales' Heartbeats, Hyundai's 2018 one with James Vincent McMorrow's cover of Higher Love) and perfect movies (' Shrek 2 is a rare example of a sequel better than the original').
They do align on one serious topic, though: spirituality. 'I spent an awful lot of my teens feeling that there was no point to anything, that we were just bones and flesh, and you could just drink yourself off a cliff,' Keogh says.
'But I've had a couple of experiences now where I start to consider that there's something out there worth believing in. And I think that's partially what a lot of music is about.'
'I certainly believe in something,' Fitzgibbon shares.
'I grew up in a religious family,' McGrath says. 'And I can't help but feel today that something's lost. You can explain away an awful lot, and we are engineers, so we know that more than most, but sometimes…'
Keogh interjects. 'There's a bit of magic in the air. And maybe you can explain that away as just like molecules and DNA. But I think if people were really honest with themselves… they would say that it's something we know very little about.'
Certainly, Kingfishr have given young people something to believe in. As peers of theirs continue to emigrate, their music brings those who have left home in a way few anticipated.
There's perhaps their most famous track, Killeagh, an ode to Fitzgibbon's hurling team, penned before an East County Final. ('They'd go raring and tearing and fighting for love / For the land they call Killeagh and the Lord up above'). Written in just 15 minutes, the now four-times Platinum single speaks to everything the band is about: storytelling, community and an appreciation for home.
'We have this crowd of 8-year-olds who stand behind the goals whenever we play in Killeagh now,' Fitzgibbon smiles. 'And now they scream the song whenever we score. I think it makes them proud of their place, and that's everything, because we want to give people an Ireland to be proud of.'
In the end, the music of Kingfishr continues to soar because they tend to shine a light on a need few of us can put a name on. They, too, speak to a myriad; each listen allows one to find something slightly different from the time before. In that way, Fitzgibbon, McGrath and Keogh have become, unbeknownst to themselves, north stars for a generation, one that may have felt that Ireland wasn't for them, through no fault of their own.
Indeed, one central theme permeates through the band's debut album: that we all live in the shadow of one another, and we must listen to find our way out.
'Certainly, the reason I fell in love with music is from, like, house parties, running after girls you hadn't a hope with, and then some song comes on and everyone goes bananas,' Keogh says.
'And you're just like, will things ever be this good again? If we can give that to someone, and they can come away from a night listening to our music with a core memory, that to me is everything.'
'I want us to take America,' Keogh says, finally, as we discuss the band's big dreams. 'I've never said that aloud before, and I'm aware it might sound stupid. But we've finished a tour there, with another coming up now. So we might have the chance to sink our claws in, and God, we're going to try.'
* Kingfishr's debut album Halcyon will be released on August 22, 2025
* Tickets for their tour are available on kingfishr.ie