Damian McGinty knows nothing but music. Google the Derry native’s name, and one of the first things to pop up is a video of McGinty as a young-looking 14 year old, performing ‘Puppy Love’ to a televised audience on Dancing With The Stars. He would go on to form Celtic Thunder, a distinctly Irish-tinged act that have seen him relocate to the States and play to thousands across the continent as part of a theatrical four-piece.
In amongst it all, though, McGinty also squeezes in his solo offerings, most recently ‘Lean Into Love’, an EP that goes deeply personal as he grapples with a new baby, and a lifestyle that involves extended periods away from his wife and home.
“I was moving to California, married my wife, who’s from rural Tennessee, and soon found myself in Nashville, where her family are from,” he says. “The Nashville influence is definitely in the music. My style of music has always been sort of left of centre pop, family friendly. But there are slight Nashville, slight country elements in tracks like ‘Wind At My Back’.”
There are musicians and music… you name it… everywhere,” he says. “I’ve lived a life of mixing my solo stuff and the band, and I know what my schedule looks like a year in advance. For the solo stuff, it’s about finding a pocket of time to make music, record and create. I made this EP in the first half of this year and the last quarter of last year, and I knew I’d be on the road for three months, which is a good time to release music.”
“Unfortunately musicians have to be full time social media influencers, so I had to get the social media stuff together, but it doesn’t affect me going on stage with Celtic Thunder every day. Obviously my solo stuff is very different, but what’s similar is both are very real, very organic and very honest.”
“This is the only thing I know at this point, and I’ve been doing it since I was 14. On reflection, it’s pretty cool having stuff that is kind of pre who I am right now. Needless to say I’m not that 14 year old anymore, but it’s cool to reflect on. What any child star faces is the idea that getting older is a negative. I try to view it differently. In every other walk of life, experience is a positive thing. I have 17 years of experience in my early 30s.”
Those life experiences are starting to play into McGinty’s music. “This EP in particular is probably one of the more personal releases I’ve ever done, one of the more loaded ones,” he says. “A lot of it is about being inspired by my daughter. I started writing this when I found out we were going to have Daisy, who is now 7 months old. It’s essentially my diary.”
“That song becomes the memory, the moment. I always come out of the studio feeling better. It’s a very positive, very personal EP that I hope a lot of people will be able to relate to. The only way I can do this is by being honest, which makes it work for me.”
“It’s only in recent years that I’ve started realising that I’ve been writing for 7 or 8 years, and the stuff I released and wrote in 2018 means something very different to me. The whole thing is like capturing a time, and what those times looked like for me. That photograph of a typical period of time in my life.”
‘Lean Into Love’ by Damian McGinty is out now.
