Kerry Kenny Band “Finbar”

Names can haunt. In “Finbar,” Kerry Kenny channels a woman driven half-mad by repeating one, until it spills into drums, wild dancing, and ink scrawled only to be set alight. The Scranton, Pennsylvania singer-songwriter cracks open her forthcoming album Brutal Best with a single that doesn’t confess so much as combust—its imagery of effigies in flames, co-directed with Tom Robenolt of Point Five Films, searing itself into memory. “She’s not well,” Kenny says with a laugh, but the vision sticks.

Kenny’s gift for intensity didn’t come from nowhere. Raised in hard scrabble Scranton in a family steeped in traditional Irish music, she was performing by the age of four, harmonizing with cousins in “The Kenny Kids” and singing at festivals and on local TV. Her family’s pub—celebrated as the region’s oldest Irish Public House—still erupts with fiddles and bagpipes every St. Patrick’s Day. But tradition was only the spark. Kenny devoured Beatles harmonies in headphones, pursued opera in college, and now folds rock, punk, folk, country, Celtic, blues, and hip-hop into songs that follow no rulebook but her own.

That drive to expand has carried her far beyond Scranton. Kenny studied Irish music in Limerick and computer music in Krakow, taught English in South Korea and Thailand, and speaks several languages, including fluent Polish. Each move sharpened her ear for rhythm and story, shaping the perspective she now brings to songwriting. On stage, she has toured clubs across Germany, Belgium, and Amsterdam, where crowded rooms echo her blend of tradition and rebellion—and where promoters keep inviting her back. Back home in Pennsylvania, she’s also “Miss Kerry,” leading an early childhood music program that brings nearly 90 children per session into song.

About “Finbar”