Jimmy Monaghan

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Jimmy Monaghan, also known by the Irish name Seamus Ó Muíneacháin, is an Irish musician from Belmullet. He was born James Monaghan on February 25, 1988, in Danbury, Connecticut, and moved to Ireland at age six. He has Irish and Italian roots and was a teenage amateur boxer, winning four Irish national titles and a silver medal at the 2004 Four Nations.

In 2007 he formed the band Music for Dead Birds with drummer Dónal Walsh in Galway. The band’s debut album, And then it rained for seven days, came out in 2009. They followed with The Pope’s Sister (2011), Vitamins (2014), and Pagan Blessings (2018). One of their early gigs was a live performance on Anocht FM from the Roisin Dubh in August 2007.

Monaghan also makes solo music under the name Seamus O’Muineachain. He began releasing ambient instrumental work around 2011. His debut solo album, Seamus O’Muineachain, was released in July 2012 by Psychonavigation Records and received positive attention from The Irish Times. He promoted it with performances at Electric Picnic and Whelan’s in Dublin. In 2013 his track Alone In Nature (Without Technology) appeared on an RTÉ compilation. His second solo album, Cloves, arrived in 2017, and City of Lakes was released in 2019 while he was living in Hanoi, Vietnam. In 2020, KEXP premiered a track from his fourth solo album, Blue Moon Set, which was also noted in Rockerilla magazine and on BBC Radio 6 Music’s Freakzone. Several videos were made for the album, including Slow Closing Day by filmmaker Maximilian Le Cain. In 2022 he released two more solo albums, Different Time Zones and Isthmus.

Beyond his own albums, Monaghan has worked on other projects. In 2012 he released an album with Aisling Walsh as Christian Bookshop. He also played drums for the Galway folk band Yawning Chasm. From 2013 to 2014 he issued a lo-fi punk trilogy called The Crytearions. His early influences include Irish traditional music and nu-metal.

In addition to music, Monaghan has pursued writing. His radio drama Thumb was shortlisted for the RTÉ PJ O’Connor Award in 2011. Writing under the pseudonym Jay Honeycomb, he contributed to PopMatters and, in 2022, self-published the novella Post-Bliss, which received positive reviews. He is also an amateur chess player and was awarded the title of Arena Candidate Master by FIDE in 2024. An image of him cycling on the Aran Islands was used on an Irish stamp promoting the Wild Atlantic Way in 2016.