Gráinne Hunt has been called the Irish Joni Mitchell. The name came from public media -- specifically, Michael Londra, host of PBS’s Ireland with Michael.
“He's trying to educate Americans into understanding that Ireland is not all about leprechauns and pints of Guinness," Hunt says. "He also has music on the show, and for a long time it was mostly like traditional Irish music. And then he decided he wanted to start getting into bringing some original music on, and he asked us to play on it. And it was in the middle of his chat with me on camera where he said this to me, and I was like, whoa.”
Gráinne Hunt’s used to people making assumptions about Irish music -- drawn from some admittedly really good artists like the Pogues and the Dubliners. But as a songwriter, she follows her own unique voice and stories -- with some influence from artists like Joni.
“Sometimes when people read that you're Irish, they stop reading anything about you," she says. "So they don't necessarily continue reading and discover that you're a songwriter. They sort of make an assumption that you're going to get up and sing all of those Irish songs and ballads.”
Instead, she plays songs like “Magnets.”
“Part of the idea for this song came probably to me, like, 20-something years ago," she says. "I love the fact that when magnets are turned the wrong way around, they repel each other, you know, they push away. And I was like, oh, there's got to be a song in here. And that's before I was a songwriter. I filed it away in the back of my brain and kept coming back to it at different points in my life. You know, I'm gonna write a song about magnets.”
Then, during the COVID-19 pandemic, she found herself alone a lot more.
"And I sort of realized that while I love standing on stage and having this kind of public interactive persona with lots of people and meeting all those people and chatting to them and all of that sort of thing, I absolutely love to go home and close the door and be on my own. And I think you know, you can have those almost dueling aspects to your personality.”
Gráinne Hunt’s tour is funded by Culture Ireland, which supports Irish artists to help them travel worldwide.
“They just want Irish art to be on a global stage, and that's what they help do," she says. "So it's amazing for me to be able to get that funding, and that helps us to do what we want to do in the likes of the US.”
“I think a lot of people, when they think of Irish music, they have a pretty narrow definition of what they're familiar with in terms of Irish music," says Jules Stewart, Gráinne’s musical partner. "And it's lovely for her to be a part of expanding people's definition of what Irish music is. There's a lot of great original music coming out of Ireland right now, and there has been, but I think a lot of people have had too narrow of a view to appreciate or to ingest any of that. I'm American, and it's fun to be a part of Grainne bringing Irish music to a broader audience.”
"The last couple of years have been so we've been on the road so much," she says. "I have a song that I play called ‘Somewhere Called Home,’ and the background to it is basically that, I think you can feel at home in many places. As a musician, if you don't, then you're kind of in trouble, because, like, you'd be miserable on the road.”
Gráinne Hunt’s road takes her to Fairfield, Connecticut on Wednesday, April 8. She’s playing at the Center for Irish Studies at Sacred Heart University.