Born on the streets of Belfast, as a busking act that developed their sound during time spent mitching from school and writing songs for fun, Dea Matrona have become one of the hottest independent rock bands in Ireland in recent years.
The duo, made up of Mollie McGinn and Orlaith Forsythe, were originally famed for their covers, but have worked their way into more and more originals, and find themselves as one of the more touted acts on the rock circuit, touring internationally on the back of their increasingly viral videos.
“When you’re busking you really have to work on drawing people in,” McGinn says of the early days. “We had a lot of times where we’d be out, setting up, and the rain would blow up the amp, and we’d have to run and try and fix it in public toilets with hand dryers, stuff like that. We always got them back working, but maybe bringing loads of electrical equipment out wasn’t the smartest idea.”
“There wasn’t a particular moment moving off the street,” she continues. “We’d be busking every weekend and people would come up and ask us to play at a bar, or festival, or at their wedding, so we’d do it. But we’d keep busking, too. For a few years we just wanted to play everywhere, all the time. Some of the busking videos did really well, including in the States.”
“There were times when we’d be filmed by people walking past and we’d come home and the videos would be flying online. It was really weird. Towards the end we did decide to capture ourselves, but for the first few years we were just having fun and other people did it for us. It was really cool.”
“We decided to put on our own shows, sell tickets, and be more professional with the album and touring and online work and so on at a certain point. We have a very worldwide fanbase, so we want to get out and play for as many people as possible. We’ve been playing in Latvia, Estonia and Poland, and we’ll see Dea Matrona t-shirts in the audience, which is mad.”
“We usually only play two or three covers in a set now, just play for an hour or so,” McGinn continues. “We want to have the perfect debut at the right time, and I hope the debut album, which we’ve been working really hard on for a long time, is going to be that.”
“The album is really true to ourselves and contains a lot of new songs people won’t have heard. We take some risks with the songwriting, the production, and so on. And there are some songs that have already been released, too, some of the fan favourites.”
“We like to go in different directions with our writing. Sometimes we turn everything on its head and do something we don’t expect, and there’s one on the album where we have some fun with lyrics. There’s lot of different themes. We go from love to the apocalypse.”
“We had a record deal for the album offered, but being independent is really important to us. We are definitely happy with that, it feels right. If you’re looking at going more global, maybe the label becomes important.”
“I remember when we were mitching class in school and writing songs about what would happen in the day, just for fun. We never really planned to write or play guitar, but it just sort of became our thing, and we kept going.”
