Learn Irish Banjo from Enda Scahill — Billboard #1 artist, Steve Martin Banjo Award winner, and founding member of We Banjo 3
Learn Irish Banjo from Enda Scahill — Billboard #1 artist, Steve Martin Banjo Award winner, and founding member of We Banjo 3
Enda is the founding member of Billboard #1 mega band We Banjo 3. He has performed live with The Chieftains, Bela Fleck, Sam Bush, Carlos Nunez, and Eileen Ivers, has recorded with Grammy winners Ricky Skaggs, Bryan Sutton and Aubrey Haynie, toured with Frankie Gavin and Stockton’s Wing, and was an original member of Instrumental Band of the Decade The Brock McGuire Band.
Galway born banjo player Enda Scahill is one of the most critically acclaimed banjoists in Ireland today. Enda has long established himself as one of the finest exponents of traditional Irish banjo playing and is widely recognised for his technical prowess and banjo teaching abilities.
In 2008 Enda published his first Irish Tenor Banjo Tutorial book. This was the first ever pedagogical approach to banjo teaching and it laid out in simple terms the essential foundation techniques for good banjo playing. Professor Mick Moloney wrote:
“Enda’s tutor is masterfully conceived, the product of years of playing and thoughtful reflection.”
The tutor is now the top selling Irish banjo tutorial on the market. Enda then released Volume II of his banjo tutorial series, which takes an in-depth look at creating a unique playing style and musicianship using techniques such as ornamentation, variation, harmony and rhythmical ideas.
In his foreword to the tutorial books, the late Professor Mick Moloney of NYU said:
“Enda Scahill is a gifted banjo player blessed with extraordinary technique.”
Enda’s solo album Pick It Up was released in 2000 and is widely acclaimed as one of the essential Irish banjo albums of all time. Enda has been described as “just about the strongest banjo I’ve ever heard” (Art Ketchin, Celtic Beat) and Irish American News in Chicago said “Enda does things on the banjo which should be impossible.” Irish Music Magazine has described his playing as “simply divine.”
In 2006 Enda released the album Humdinger with Paul Brock and Ryan Molloy, which was awarded Album of the Year in the Irish Times and Instrumental Album of the Year in Irish American News. Paddy Moloney of The Chieftains hailed the album’s “incredible virtuosic playing.”
In 2011 the Brock McGuire Band released Green Grass Blue Grass, a collaboration between the band and some of the greatest legends of American Bluegrass: Ricky Skaggs, Bryan Sutton, Aubrey Haynie, Mark Fain and Jeff Taylor. The album, which was recorded in Ireland and at Skaggs Family Studios in Nashville, has been critically acclaimed and was described by PJ Curtis as:
“An electrifying rendering of tunes from different, though related, traditions as they flow from the hearts and fingers of these virtuoso musicians at the very top of their game. A ground-breaking, milestone recording.”
Since 2024, Enda has been performing with Gadan, an Italian-American band blending Irish traditional music, bluegrass and Appalachian old-time influences. Together they have performed at major Irish festivals across the US, including the Milwaukee Irish Fest and the Dublin Irish Festival.
There can’t be many rhapsodic superlatives left in the box for Irish quartet We Banjo 3, whose virtuosic Irish/bluegrass/old-time mix attained freshly dizzying heights on their stupendous second album Gather the Good, which went on to garner 4 Album of the Year awards in the US and Ireland.
One of the best live acts to come out of Ireland in recent years, the multi-award winning We Banjo 3 combine supergroup credentials with a breath-taking command of the emotive power of fiddle, guitar, mandolin and banjo. Any single member of this group could electrify a venue with a solo performance, but together, in the joyous musical alchemy of We Banjo 3, their passionate lead vocalist like a young Springsteen adopted by The Chieftains, the result is truly unforgettable. Simply put, the gold standard of Irish and American roots music.
“These four lads just keep taking their musical genius to new levels, and whatever about the magic of their studio albums, there’s nothing like the raw emotion and fusion of the live experience.”
Since 2024 Enda has been touring with Irish American string band GADAN, whose collision of Irish traditional music, bluegrass and Appalachian old time found its fullest voice on the 2025 album May the Divil Tune Your Banjos, recorded with Enda on tenor banjo and reviewed in Irish Music Magazine as the work of a band pushing Celtgrass somewhere new.
Built around three banjos, fiddle, mandolin and guitar, with no drums and no shortage of drive, GADAN were founded by Italian multi-instrumentalists Lorenzo Testa and Jacopo Ventura, joined by fiddle player Joan Gatti and Appalachian clawhammer banjoist Eric Long. In his first summer with the band Enda played every major Irish festival in the United States, from Milwaukee Irish Fest to the Dublin Irish Festival, and the collaboration has only deepened since. Live, the sound builds and builds until the room goes with it, deeply rooted in the tradition and entirely its own.
“It’s string band music on steroids.”
Seán Laffey, Irish Music Magazine
