Celebrating both a big year and the launch of his long-overdue debut EP ‘This Record Is A Nixer’, imaginative folk singer Tadhg Williams is wearing both his Waterford roots and his Dublin home on his sleeve, as he seeks to echo the styles of Mick Flannery and Damien Dempsey.
“I don’t think there’s any mistaking where I’m from – the music in itself would tell you that, but I’ve kind of cut my cloth in Dublin as a songwriter,” Williams said. “I once had an interesting conversation with Junior Brother about this – I find it quite hard to write in Dublin, so when I go home to Waterford it can often feel like a writing retreat, things pour out of me a bit. But the things that pour out of me are things I have brought home with me from Dublin.”
“‘Nixer’, for example, is about trying to pay my rent in Dublin. That was written in my childhood bedroom in Waterford. Sound wise as well, throughout college I played open mics and song cycles and sessions all over Dublin. I learnt a lot about the art of performance at those kinds of gigs. The only outlet growing up in Waterford was to busk.”
“So all of those things blend into one I suppose. I’m at a stage now where I love both places, and am happy to call both places home. You still won’t find me in the home end of Dalymount or Tolka though… It’ll always be the away end when the Blues are in town.”
Those tracks might blend their geographical origin, but they also take on a particular focus on lyrics. “I kind of started as a poet, “Williams says. “I used to write a lot of spoken word, so lyrics have always been important to me. The spoken word was great because there wasn’t any real structure to it, as long as it rolled off the tongue well.”
“Songs I personally find more of a challenge because you have to convey a message, a story, an emotion, in three and half minutes in a very structured way, and I enjoy that. I have lyrics floating around in note books, on the notes app on my phone, and a few chord progressions floating around as well – then they just kind of find each other. The melody appears somewhere during that process. I often wonder where melodies come from – I think they come from somewhere deeper, it’s kind of inexplicable.”
Williams’ on-stage performances, unlike the more delicate approach Williams often takes on record, will be lively. “The live show is nothing like the EP. It’s a much larger sound,” he says. “I’ll be playing with a full band – drums, bass, keys, electric guitar, the whole shebang.”
“I’m a big fan of taking the songs I’ve written and developing them further, even after release. I’m obsessed with that Waterboys ideology of ‘the big music’, so I suppose I’m trying to emulate that a little bit with the live sound. They’re still folk songs at their core, but when people come to a live show they want something a little bit more than just to listen to some nice music.”
“They want to come away from it feeling like they’ve actually experienced something. You need to give them something spiritual. That Damien Dempsey thing of ‘the singsong of the century’ every time he plays a show – people worship. I want people to come away from one of my shows feeling elevated! It has to be medicinal – people leave their worries at the door for the hour and a bit.”
