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The profile · researched 6 October 2026
Out of the Comeraghs: The Wran and The Stone Man
Four Dunford brothers from Kilbrien in west Waterford spent 2025 playing Glastonbury and Electric Picnic off the back of a handful of songs. Their debut album, The Stone Man, lands on 9 October 2026, with an Irish tour starting the same night.
Kilbrien, and the first bands in Dungarvan
The Wran are four brothers — Tommy, Danny, Seán and Stephen Dunford — from Kilbrien, under the Comeragh Mountains in west Waterford. The Comeraghs turn up in nearly every line written about them, and the place itself closes out their debut album in a tune called All Kilbrien Are On A Spree.
Danny has described their generation around Dungarvan as the first locally to start bands and play the pubs, which puts the group between two traditions rather than inside either. The reference points they give split the same way. Planxty, Andy Irvine and Paul Brady account for the fingerstyle guitar and the willingness to let a song run long. The Pogues and Lankum account for the willingness to let a ballad turn ugly. Moving Hearts accounts for the idea that trad can carry a rock rhythm section at all, and Stephen has named Tool when asked where the psychedelic end of the band comes from. Promoters file them as alt-trad or trad fusion; the brothers have called their own sound traditional Irish-adjacent.
The instrumentation shifts between rooms. Banjo, harmonium, accordion, acoustic and electric guitar, bouzouki, bass VI, fiddle and drums have all been part of it, and Stephen has said the current line-up feels like the most organic version of the band so far.
Three singles before an album
Everything the band put out before the album was a single, and all of it ended up on the record. The first was Some Say The Devil Is Dead, their reading of the old Irish song, stretched out to nearly eight minutes — long enough to function as a thesis about how this band treats inherited material.
Sullivan's John followed on 9 January 2026: a dark, hypnotic reworking of the Pecker Dunne ballad, with an arrangement that opens out into the slip jig Hardiman the Fiddler. It was their first release of the year and arrived alongside a first UK tour that January.
Fear Dearg came on 27 March 2026, recorded, mixed and mastered by Ben Wanders at Wanderland Studios. It is the first original tune they released, an instrumental that moves from a foreboding dirge into a full jig, and it was announced in the same breath as the album.
The Stone Man
The Stone Man is out on 9 October 2026 through Wipe Out Music, on vinyl, CD and digital. It runs eight tracks and 41 minutes 52 seconds: Sullivan's John, Dunford's March, The Limerick Rake, Aird Uí Chuain, Fear Dearg, Some Say The Devil Is Dead, The Waterford Boys and All Kilbrien Are On A Spree.
Two of the eight are the band's own compositions — Dunford's March and Fear Dearg — sitting among traditional songs they have rearranged rather than restored. The shape of the record is unusual for a trad debut: six of the eight tracks pass four minutes, Aird Uí Chuain runs to 7 minutes 44 and Some Say The Devil Is Dead to 7 minutes 52. Only the closer, at two and a half minutes, behaves like a conventional track.
The announcement in late March bundled the album with the Irish tour; tickets for those dates went on sale on 30 March 2026 through Ticketmaster.
A festival summer on very little material
The band's live debut was in 2025, and the summer that followed was out of proportion to their catalogue. They played Glastonbury, Green Man, All Together Now and Electric Picnic, recorded a 60-minute live feature for WLR, and filled smaller Irish rooms in between. A free show in Whelan's main room in Dublin on 17 August 2025, with Briars opening, sat in the middle of it.
On 18 September 2025 they played a sold-out Bakers Bar in Clonmel for Clonmel World Music. The reviewer there noted they had been playing multiple gigs a day across the summer, described them as one of the most talked-about acts on the Irish scene, and reckoned sold-out rooms would become routine.
Support slots with The Scratch and Kíla followed, along with Dublin's Notable New Year's Day festival, and their first Irish headline tour sold out.
Spring 2026, in front of someone else's crowd
The clearest reviews of the band come from April 2026, when they opened The Scratch's UK tour. Their own Dublin date at The Grand Social on 3 April sold out before the run started.
At SWG3's TV Studio in Glasgow on 23 April they had a 30-minute slot and, by one account, had the room inside the first five minutes — a crowd that started as still observers and ended as a moving mass, with chants of one more tune after they left the stage. The same review picked out drone-like low end, harmonies and an orchestration where each track built towards a withheld climax.
At Manchester Academy 2 in late April, a reviewer described the set as being dropped into an Irish pub, with fiddle and bouzouki carrying it: dread built instrumentally through Some Say The Devil Is Dead, then Fear Dearg running loose as the myth suggests, before an abrupt stop and a walk-off. Both reviews were written while the band still had only three singles to their name.
Where they are now
The album tour opens on release night, 9 October 2026, at the Workman's Club in Dublin, then Dolan's Upstairs in Limerick on the 10th, Róisín Dubh in Galway on the 11th, a second Workman's night on the 13th, Wavelength in Cork on the 15th, Cleere's in Kilkenny on the 16th and the Ulster Sports Club in Belfast on the 17th.
A British run follows in November: Stereo in Glasgow on the 6th, the Deaf Institute in Manchester on the 7th, The Attic in Leeds on the 8th, Rough Trade East in London on the 9th, the Bodega in Nottingham on the 10th, the Lower Third in London on the 12th, Thekla in Bristol on the 13th and Exeter Phoenix on the 14th. Beyond that, they are booked for Rockaway Beach at Bognor Regis over 8–11 January 2027.
It is a small-club itinerary built around an eight-track record, which is roughly where the band's own instincts sit — they have spent the year growing songs rather than accumulating them.
The show, now
A Wran show in autumn 2026 is a headline set in a small club — Workman's Club, Róisín Dubh, the Bodega, Thekla — rather than the 30-minute opening slot they played on The Scratch's tour in April, where they had the Glasgow room inside five minutes and left to shouts of one more tune. The material comes mostly from The Stone Man: eight tracks, six of them over four minutes, with Aird Uí Chuain and Some Say The Devil Is Dead both running close to eight. Reviewers of the spring shows described sets built on sustained low-end drone, close harmonies and long instrumental passages that hold back the release, with fiddle and bouzouki alongside banjo, harmonium, guitar and drums; the band has a habit of cutting a tune dead and walking off rather than winding down. The Irish dates opened on album release night, 9 October, with a second Dublin show added on the 13th.
Researched from rte.ie · hotpress.com · hotpress.com · qobuz.com · wlrfm.com · thewran.bandcamp.com · mcgigmusic.com · northernexposuremagazine.co.uk