The three Makem brothers were born in Drogheda, County Louth, Ireland and grew up in Dover, New Hampshire, where the family moved to in the mid 1970s.
The Makem Brothers and Brian Sullivan were set to perform at the Tom Clancy Memorial Concert in New York City in November 1991; for the event, they wanted a bass player.
Brian Sullivan left the band in 1995 but stayed on to play backup on the Makem Brothers' second album, On the Rocks.
Though they had been informally performing together for several years, their first official concert as a five piece band took place at the Narrows Center for the Arts in Fall River, Massachusetts in February 2003.
[1] The police confiscated his American and Irish passports, which prevented him from participating in the band's annual musical tour of Ireland.
[2] Conor Makem was sentenced to a year incarceration at Strafford County House of Corrections in May 2014 after pleading guilty to 19 invasion of privacy charges.
In 2012, the Makem and Spain Brothers created their first Kickstarter campaign drive to help fund their next two albums, a two volume set titled Sessions Vol.
2 which would feature a multitude of guest musicians including but not limited to Tom Paxton, Schooner Fare, The Shaw Brothers, Gordon Bok and David Mallett.
According to their Facebook page, [1], the record was originally called For Ramblin' For Rovin', after lyrics taken from the song Bold Thady Quill, track number 10 on the album.
In the summer 2016, Rory and Donal joined forces at the Milwaukee Irish Festival, performing sporadically for the remainder of the year.
They featured as a duo on Joannie Madden's Folk and Irish Cruise that fall, billed as Makem and Clancy.
Makem & Spain performed less than half a dozen concerts during 2017, and on March 5, 2018, they announced on their Facebook page that they were breaking up: "Hello all.
Cheers, Mickey, Rory and Liam" Their final concert was at the 2nd Annual Folk Extravaganza in Manchester, NH at the Palace Theatre on October 6, 2017.