As something of a legend of the Irish music scene, Richie Egan – frontman of his own band Jape, and also a member of now Redneck Manifesto – is now resident in Malmo, Sweden, but remains intrinsically connected with what’s going on back home. So much so that the release of his latest record ‘Endless Thread’ will bring him straight back to Ireland to perform.
“I have been doing stuff on a small scale in recent years,” he says of his new life. “I continually work, and at some points people’s ears prick up and at others they don’t, but I’m a bit of a lifer. I’ve been making commercial music, too, to keep the wolf from the door.”
“A lot of work goes into stuff, and when you put it out into the world, it’s nice to get some kind of recognition. As a body of work, you want it to resonate. Music is like a chain, stuff is connected to what comes before, and by virtue of that, I’m in the chain of Irish music somewhere, even if it’s the weakest link,” he jokes. His latest effort doesn’t lack a few firm opinions.
“‘F*ck the Church’, the closing track on ‘Endless Thread’, feels a little like a tribute to Sinead O’Connor, though it actually predates her passing. “It’s timely, I suppose, but the church’s time is up,” Jape says. “We don’t need organised religion in our lives in my opinion. It’s pretty direct, but it just came to me really fast.”
Next to it is ‘Delete the Timeline’, about social media. “Kill everybody,” Jape jokes, before adding “I used to be very much involved with Twitter, but I came round to the idea you should use your energy wisely. Twitter took energy, rather than gave it. It used to be more sharing and courtesy but it seems very dark now. I find my life is a lot more fulfilling if I focus on creating, not destroying.”
“I’ve realised that I want to create music but without that public persona,” he continues. “I’ve been heavily into Buddhism in the last few years, and to me it seems like there are more answers in quietness and solitude than constantly talking.”
That said, the music will be heading out on the road, in a slightly different form, and Egan is not averse to returning to old times, either. “We’ll be re-releasing Redneck Manifesto records on vinyl soon, as they’re going for crazy prices online, so there’s a chance we’d come back as a band,” he says of his old outfit. “It’s not just up to me, but we all still get on well. I think it’d need to be with new music, not in a nostalgic kind of way. It’s not as simple as lashing together the greatest hits.”
Jape shows will be a different proposition, though. “The live gigs… I did a tour after Covid and found it really stressful, anxiety-inducing. I wasn’t feeling the idea of going up on stage, just playing some songs, people clap and you go away. It felt disjointed to me. From there came the idea of having a quiz. I wanted to learn about each other, and the idea for this round of gigs is that you can put your name into a hat and become a contestant on this quiz, which is going to be called ‘Jape-ardy’.”
“Other than that, we’ll play as much of the new album as we can but also some old stuff. People know certain songs, and it’s not a hard job to play those songs for people. I’d like to play as many songs as possible, the ones people want. The way my memory is, though, I’ll need a bit of preparation time, so give me a shout beforehand,” he concludes.
