Paahto & The Bull is the guitar-duo project of Patrick “Paahto” Cummins and John Francis Flynn. Having met and played together since 2011 and having cut their teeth at The Maple Hotel on Dublin’s Gardiner Street, Paahto and John helped form the Irish traditional group Skipper’s Alley in 2013 and would remain long-term sparring partners and an integral cog in Dublin’s traditional and folk music communities. Once There Was A King was another of their musical endeavours which reached into a progressive musical space in its short-lived timespan. However, as with any collaboration between these two players, Paahto & The Bull is beyond a meeting of two musical minds and encompasses a very personal element.

During the covid-19 pandemic, the pair experimented with music on two guitars inspired by Paahto’s interest in bluegrass flat-picking and John’s very original approach to accompaniment. Beginning with just an Instagram page to post some amateur material, Paahto & The Bull decided to take the project more seriously and gradually worked towards recording an album with the help of Brendan Jenkinson and Ben Rawlins. The ethos for the duo has always been to focus on simplicity and only features the musicians playing their guitars despite them both being multi- instrumentalists and singers.

The music of Paahto & The Bull is a very honest reflection of the unique kind of sound that Cummins and Flynn have consistently created with each other over the past fifteen years and, although one might have expected their initial release to be a banjo/guitar product, the lateral thinking that went into choosing a guitar duet is also very in line with the particular flavour of progressive that these lads strive for. The statement is firm: “This is what we play. This is how we play. And this is what we are going to play.” Having signed with Claddagh Records in late 2025, Paahto & The Bull will be releasing their debut album during 2026.

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