Rua Rí

Rua Rí aka Seán Damery’s debut album Tell Your Mother I Saved Your Life is rooted in place, memory, and ordinary life, with nearly every song tying back to specific locations (Cobh, Cork City, nearby fields, local woods, familiar streets), and the emotions attached to them. These aren’t romanticised landscapes, they’re lived-in settings filled with drinking, boredom, friendship, and small moments that only feel meaningful in hindsight. It documents a very local, very personal world, where the emotional weight comes from familiarity rather than grandeur, capturing snapshots and impressions and the feeling of being somewhere, at a certain age, with certain people.

Damery repeatedly returns to Cobh and Cork City not only as settings, but as emotional anchors. The inspiration for previous single “Johnny Workman” traces back to a childhood game in his family home that resurfaced and became something of a mantra in a period of unemployment, while “Makeover” found its beginnings while he was busking on Shandon Bridge in Cork City, making very little money he improvised the song on the spot out of frustration.

Elsewhere on the album, “Fields Of Glass” shifts towards memories of Bucko’s Field in Cobh, where Rua Rí hung out as a teenager. Influenced in part by the everyday realism of bands like Arctic Monkeys, the song embraces ordinary experiences like drinking and the small dramas of youth. Closing track “There’ll be liners floating down The Holy Ground”, is a brief, intimate outro. Rather than an original composition, it draws from a song Damery’s grandmother used to sing in her youth in Cobh, its inclusion not only serves as a personal tribute but as a testament to an ever present sense of place.

Fully produced by Kean Kavanagh, Tell Your Mother I Saved Your Life is Rua Rí’s coming-of-age portrait favouring atmosphere and feeling with a mix of humor, warmth, and quiet introspection. It captures the tension between wanting to move on and being deeply tied to where you’re from. The result is something intimate and grounded, an album about youth, locality, and the small, fleeting moments that end up defining you, even if they didn’t seem important at the time

Growing up in a coastal town, the presence of the sea is ever felt and for Cobh-born singer-songwriter Rua Rí, aka Seán Damery, it is no different. It is rare that the sea does not bleed into the soft and serene folk music he has become known for, his work echoing tradition while forging a path that feels wholly his own. He has been featured alongside many other emerging Irish and folk talent having supported Amble, Joshua Burnside, Kean Kavanagh and Sam Amidon to name a few and is quickly carving out his place in Ireland’s vibrant contemporary scene.