Catch Tyra-Lee Spry fresh from Electric Picnic as she performs in Cork

Sun, 13 Sep, 2026 - 15:57

Don O’Mahony

It’s not often I get to talk to a brand new, up-and-coming local artist on the eve of their very first festival appearance at the country’s biggest one, but here we find an exuberant and ebullient Tyra-Lee Spry.

“It was very last minute because it was a new stage,” she explains to me from Electric Picnic when we chatted ahead of her turn on the Brewer’s Yard stage on the Saturday afternoon. “But I’m just so excited. It was on my bucket list this year to play at a festival. I literally couldn’t be happier.

“I mean it’s always been my dream to play a festival. But then, last minute, I got contacted by an agent asking me to play. I was like, yes! No problem!”

It seems like a stroke of extraordinary good fortune, and Spry puts it down to her active social media use on Tik-Tok and Instagram. As someone who is about to receive her degree from the Cork School of Music and begin her masters, this is indeed an auspicious time for her. Clearly, Spry is now living a long-held dream, and her arrival at CSM is integral to her realisation to that dream.

“I used to write songs and post them on YouTube of me playing ukulele, all these really very silly songs I used to write,” she recalls. “And I used to post them on YouTube when I was in secondary school. It just was a passion for me. I just loved writing songs. It put the pieces together for me, honestly.

“And I was so excited when I heard there was a course that did it,” she adds. “I think when you’re younger you don’t think anything could be taken seriously – you don’t think anyone is going to take you seriously. So, when I was doing my Leaving Cert and I found a college that really focused on music – I didn’t even know about it – I was just so excited. But now I’m taking my music so seriously and I really hope one day that I just make it.”

That determination can be seen in the gusto with which she is beginning her life as an artist. To date she has released four gritty pop tunes that are in the mould of her heroes, CMAT, Gwen Stefani, Lola Yong and Wet Leg. Like them, Spry doesn’t shy away from more knotty confessional territory in her lyrics.

“I like to describe myself as an honest musician,” she offers. “I just write my personal experiences.”

Bringing a compact, tight, hooky groove to her songs, CSM alumni, drummer Liam Berry, bassist, Conor McGoldrick, guitarist Harry Houlihan and keyboardist and producer Angelo Presta.

“They are the backbone of my music,” she declares of her band. Spry writes a lot of the songs on piano before bringing it to them, “and they make it amazing.”

Her natural warmth disguises a steeliness that may have been forged in her own story. Born in Johannesburg, South Africa, she and her mother moved to Waterford in 2016, when she was 13. Her sunny energy and determination saw her organise her first gig, at the Roundy in 2025, herself.

“It was such a great night,” she reports. “I organised the whole thing. I put it on and I got myself a little support act and I just said, ‘sure we hope for the best and hope people show up,’ and they did. I was delighted.”

She also organised her own mini festival at Cyprus Avenue in April to raise money for Sexual Violence Awareness Month. It’s called E.S.M.A. Fest, an acronym for Empowerment, Strength, Music and Awareness, and it featured, amongst others, Iona Lynch, Other Mother, The Kates and Bode Lash. She’s planning another one next April.