Today we’d like to introduce you to Hope Irish.
Hi Hope Irish, so excited to have you on the platform. So before we get into questions about your work-life, maybe you can bring our readers up to speed on your story and how you got to where you are today?
Hope Irish was born and raised with two sisters in small town Salado Texas to a Northern Irish immigrant and a Sweet Southern Californian. HI’s European Father brought soccer and tiny running shorts to the small community. HI’s Mother worked for the postal service for over thirty years and introduced joy in music through harmonic singing. HI also got terribly and wonderfully involved in storytelling through theatrical performance in the formative days of the Salado drama program.
HI left the hometown for St. Edward’s University in Austin on a theatre scholarship. She fell quite in Love with a punk named Seth Gibbs at a coffee shop open mic and joined his band using her liminal knowledge of keyboards from old leftover childhood piano lessons (bless Donna Brown for teaching scales that scored true romance!) She recorded for the first time in his home studio, later to become Superpop Records and performed his music. They Started playing Open mics at Trophy’s and Ruta Maya and busked on Barton Springs. Soon after their band, Brother Machine, started gigging on dirty and west sixth and random COOP parties. Hope Irish studied abroad in London, dropped most classes while there and started writing her own music. HI started her first solo project, HopeIsh, as well as joining more bands back in Austin: Til we’re Blue or Destroy, Radar Radar, and A Sky Jet Black, Maxxx Cherry, The Shame &The Waste… Hope Irish adventured and toured nationally and internationally and all independently. Peckinpah with Jason Waller, Magnetar with Johnny Pfirman on the great North Carolina/El Paso Odyssey…It was a hell of a lot of legwork and every bit of it straight sopped up with biscuits.
Hi broke up about thirty five times with the brilliant OG band boyfriend but always returned to collaborate with him, recording and writing new songs and storylines—sometimes as lovers, sometimes as friends—over their close to 18 years of camaraderie, until Seth died tragically from cancerous complications at the age of 36 in the fall of 2018.
Grief became unavoidable. A couple of years just…disappeared. HI wrote and performed through the dark.
The loss is still unfathomable and informs most reaches of her current work.
To stick to a timeline though, the pandemic in 2020 stopped the rest of the world, and light slowed and warmed the edges of vision in small glimmers.
Hope Irish became a mother in the early days of 2021, and the world shifted again in an entirely different direction.
Music insisted existence, but completion and planning any recording was elusive in early motherhood. Lack of sleep can really tangle a brain:)
The last five years have been a practice in balancing development and growth both at home and in the studio. Often the studio is I35 and a iPhone in construction traffic car sessions.
She has recently returned to her St. Ed’s roots and taken up a few acting roles in local productions like YOUNG GREG ABBOTT (a political satire) that sold out the State side Theatre at The Paramount in Austin, Texas. HI has also recently joined The Zahir as a company member, and looks forward to treading boards again soon.
HI has most recently been awarded grants from the City of Austin Live Music Fund 2026 and Wavemakers Women in Music 2025, which help to continue both the in and out of car experiences.
2025’ saw the spring release of HI’s first release since motherhood,
HAND TO MOUTH, recorded at Odilon and King Electric Studios, mixed/mastered at Sweetheart Studio.
In August of 2025, DO NO HARM was released after being recorded by Jon Clover Brown at Studios at Fischer, then later mixed and mastered by Sweetheart Studios.
HI will be touring late summer 2026 to record a brand new single, followed by a fall release. The next full HOPE IRISH album will be produced with funds provided in part by the AUSTIN live Music Fund AACME due spring 2027.
To be continued…..!
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
Being a woman in the world!
Funding!
Loss of music partner!
Funding!
Death and grief!
Motherhood!
Single parenthood!
Make art and also provide for family!
ADHD!
Yuppy new Neighbors!
Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
I write and play slop pop music, as well as collaborate with other austin musicians and artists. I love sparkle on grunge.
My 25 day jobs include being a mother and earth worker for Lacewing sustainable gardening, as well as the occasional art program teacher and childcare provider at the YMCA. I also collaborate to create Organic perfume blends as Fluri United.
So… a lot of sparkle and grunge.
Every flower needs a little dirt to survive.
Last year I released two singles independently, HAND TO MOUTH, in March 2025 and DO NO HARM in August 2025.
Right now I’m preparing to travel to Nashville to record with a friend for fall release.
We are going to buckle down and create a full length album in October to be released spring 2027!
Who else deserves credit in your story?
I’d love to thank my EMDR therapist Jeneke Lesak.
Ha, but as an artist, Seth Gibbs is the human who gave me the confidence to sing out.. and made me understand that we all have truth to speak. Some truth is very loud and that’s ok. He informs the body of my work in one way or another. Check out his contributions in the community as Brother Machine, The Reputations, The Shame &The Waste, Willy Vanilla and a million more recording artists through Superpop Records and Sweetheart Studios.
Jimmy Wildcat, Seth’s brother, who I first met when he was 14 and playing in my favorite Huntsville band, The Influence. Jimmy has always been down to make shit happen, from back in the Denton garage recording days to the current Elgin pro rig. There’s something wild and free about him. He has really built Sweetheart Studios into a creative safe haven.
My Buddy, Jason Waller has always had inspired vision and the brains to bring it all together. He is an amazing writer, musician and filmmaker. He also got me my first 23 jobs in the Austin bar scene and taught me how to fill my first pothole. Artists gotta survive! He’s about to shoot a video for our next single release.
Cody Coppin’s collaboration since college and liberated demo work out at Odilon and kindness through the years… man, he doesn’t even know the things he knows, who knows?
Mike McCarthy and Zach Muhn are solely responsible for my musical education by force feeding me the bone broth concentrate of all the artists I never grew up with, plus enough of the tangential dessert sounds I need to make music worth living.—-And Amber West (bestie) for the perfectly life curated playlists of needed understanding and influence. Her ultimate love and acceptance and wicked sense of humor shine stronger than pirate’s gold. There’s only one of her in the world.
Josie Fluri has the dedication and skill I wish I had. She has been my friend and collaborator on many a musical project as well as business partner and confidant. She has played bass on the last decade of my life and her impenetrable sense of forward motion is inspiring on the darkest day.
Also, Bless Kristina Jones for hauling my ass out of the shadows of some man’s disdain for the last decade as well. She has done everything from managing my schedule to feeding me the best tuna sandwich of my life (thanks for that Nola trip) to convincing me of the purity of the spirit while at the same time taking absolutely ZERO shit from any person.
Paul Soliz has been on the kit and in my mind for a decade and someday I will understand how to arrive early or at the very least, on time, through his example. Please let it be someday.
Ben Ballinger handed me back my sense of awe when I needed it the most. And more than once. He is somehow both a muse and a powerful Artist.
What gifts and friendships I have been given…
There are a million other kindred and collaborators and inspiring souls from across the years, but my thumbs are so very tired….
Pricing:
- Pay what you will on Bandcamp Fridays
- In person one of a kind merchandise at public performances!
Contact Info:
- Website: https://HopeIrish.bandcamp.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/hopeirish/?hl=en
- Facebook: https://m.facebook.com/hopeirishmusic/
- Youtube: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PL713jslxGuBAARgGrmbFSnddIZivZrWVA&si=dO2h8PfSjTJYdEv5
- Other: https://music.apple.com/us/artist/hope-irish/251813358
