Paahto & The Bull - The 123 Paahto & The Bull

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 have remained long-term sparring partners and an integral cog in Dublin's traditional and folk music communities.

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 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 music of Paahto & The Bull is a very honest reflection of the unique sound that Cummins and Flynn have consistently created together over the past fifteen years and, although one might have expected their initial release to be a banjo/guitar project, the lateral thinking that went into choosing a guitar duet is also very much in line with the particular flavour of progressive that these lads strive for.

Their debut 10-track album, The 123, gets its name from the old Dublin bus route that connected the two musicians' areas, passing by Paddy's home on Errigal Road in Drimnagh at one end and terminating near St. Declan's Road, Marino, on the other, where John grew up.