New Irish Music: Bring Your Own Hammer – Adrian Crowley – Quinn The Adventurer
by Killian Laher

Bring Your Own Hammer has an album in the works telling the tale of Quinn The Adventurer, an Irishman who travelled to the US for a career in acting but ended up in prison!  The album will feature Bernard Butler, Sean O’Hagan, Cian Nugent, Luke Haines, Brigid Mae Power, and now Adrian Crowley on the title track from the album, which has just been released.

The song itself is Crowley in bossanova mode, a slinky, smoky groove that could have fitted in on his last album, last year’s Measure of Joy.

The album, From The Tombs, will come out later this year.  More details are available here: https://bringyourownhammerpresents.bandcamp.com/track/quinn-the-adventurer-by-adrian-crowley

“A musical portrait of one of the most remarkable true stories to emerge from the Irish diaspora, “Quinn the Adventurer” tells the extraordinary tale of James Quinn (a.k.a. Tim O’Brien), a young Irish Catholic who left Belfast in 1920 to embark on an astonishing journey across North and South America. By 1924, Quinn had arrived in Hollywood, where he worked as an extra in silent films alongside Charlie Chaplin.

Quinn’s adventure took an unexpected turn when L.A. newspapers reported his arrest upon exhibiting a collection of Amazonian shrunken heads at the Long Beach Pike amusement park. Charged with the theft of the collection (valued at $25,000), Quinn was convicted of first-degree burglary and sentenced to San Quentin State Prison. Yet, thanks to the extraordinary twists of his life, he never served his sentence, instead skipping bail before resurfacing in Panama, on his way to Havana, Cuba.“