Oisín Walsh-Peelo of The Fynches on West Cork and new music
Oisín Walsh-Peelo, on right, his brother Ferdia Walsh-Peelo (in white shirt), and the other members of The Fynches. Picture: Adrian O'Connell
For a number of reasons, Oisín Walsh-Peelo, the musician and founding member of The Fynches, was always going to end up in West Cork. As a child, his parents – Toni and Mick, an opera singer and a monk-turned-investigative reporter for RTÉ, respectively –would take him and his siblings, Ferdia, Tadhg and Síofradh from their home in Ashford to Ballylickey’s Eagle Point campsite for the summer holidays, away from the suburbs of Dublin and into the Atlantic Coast.
As a teenager, playing hurling for Wicklow, he would regularly come up against Cork players and marvel at their proficiency. So when an opportunity arose to spend months at a time engrossed in the weeds of Clonakilty, he knew he had to take it. “It was the end of 2020, and I was living in Cabra,” he says. “I loved it there; it felt so vibrant. But the place I was renting was being sold, and an opportunity came up for me to do something other than music.”
