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Vonda Shepard: “when I perform I get lost in the song”

At the time of her big breakthrough, Vonda Shepard was not quite an unknown: she was performing with Jackson Browne, and having been signed and dropped by Warner, doing small shows of her own. One day, along came David Kelley and his wife Michelle Pfeiffer. After seeing Shepard perform, they asked her to write the theme tune to their new project. That project was Ally McBeal. 

Years later, Shepard was a character on the show in her own right, and responsible, as music producer, for more than 500 tracks used on the cult drama series. She worked with Sting, Bon Jovi, Al Green and Tina Turner. She penned, and adapted, four albums worth of tracks herself, in amongst what would ultimately become nine of her own records. The lates is called ‘Red Light/ Green Light’.

“It felt cathartic to get the latest album out of my system, and when I perform I get lost in the song, she says. “I focus on the song, even playing live. It took my two years of the pandemic to write and record the album, and the discipline it takes to write is so intense. You have to push all the distractions out, and while I don’t want to do it again, the pandemic was very helpful in that way.”

“I work with MItchell, my husband, which is an incredible experience. He sits in his chair and nods his head and listens. He says play it again, and then he plays it back for me, exactly the same. He’s a brilliant guy. Then we work together to rearrange and add notes, change chords here and there. It goes through a lot of iterations that way.”

That slow and precise work contrasts strongly with the rapid pace of old. “I used a lot of energy doing Ally McBeal, often working until 3 in the morning, or filming at 5am,” Shepard recalls. “Then I’d tour in Europe for a few weeks then I’d do it again. It was very, very busy, but it was a great time.”

“The truth is that David Kelley chose all the music, but the lyrics and feel were so much a part of his vision for the scene. It’s a great feeling to have brought in people like Al Green, Gladys Knight… incredible artists.”

“When I look back on it, I was really ready for it and comfortable as the producer of the music. I felt like I belonged, which was great. I had been dropped from Warner Brothers, and it got me back into the vision of being a front person again. The strength and courage of that. I had an apprenticeship and learnt so much watching people like Jackson Browne relate to an audience.”

“With my new music, I start from scratch sometimes, which is the hardest thing I do. I throw out songs all the time, or pieces of songs. You can’t be lazy, you have to edit, that’s the most important part. I take out all the junk and just go with the good stuff. When I release an album [currently due in 2026], it’ll be the product of a lot of grind.”

As for touring, Shepard says “three or four weeks is my limit. But the life is so awakening. Your senses and inspiration are so awake. I sit in a cafe alone in work out clothes, see the architecture and the shops. It’s a lovely way to live. For four weeks, anyway.”

And the show? “It’s an all star band, we sound tight,” she says. “We’re going to do songs from the new album, a party bit at the end from Ally McBeal. It’ll be a ‘best of’ the albums, all of the albums.”

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Wunderhorse: “I think there’s a charm to sounding a bit scruffy”

When Wunderhorse first dropped in on Dublin, it was to immediate acclaim. With a cutting guitar vibe and tracks that see them explore love, loss and a sense of eerie distortion of reality, Jacob Slater’s band were the unheralded support act for Fontaines DC when they played the Iveagh Gardens a couple of summers back, at the time the band’s largest show. 

That show has proven a platform here: Wunderhorse now headline Vicar Street themselves, with sophomore album ‘Midas’ widely acclaimed as one of the best guitar albums of 2024 so far. On it, Wunderhorse became a band, as opposed to the previous ‘Slater and friends’ type set up.

“‘Cub’ [the debut album] seemed to steadily grow, so we’re hoping for the same thing with ‘Midas’. It does feel like it’s all heading in the right direction,” Slater says. “There’s a natural chemistry now to the way we play together, and Wunderhorse has become a lot bigger and better than me on my own. It makes sense that it’s a band. I’m still writing the bones of the songs, the chords and the lyrics, but Jamie on drums, Pete on bass and Harry on guitar all write their own parts, rather than my old place as a kind of musical director.”

“Most of the tunes on ‘Midas’ we recorded on the first couple of takes, which is how we wanted it. The things I like about guitar music, rock music, has been lost to this modern idea of chasing perfection. A lot of my favourite records sound a bit scruffy in places. I think there’s a charm to that.”

“I listen to tracks back and notice mistakes, and that’s part of it, but it is what it is. The band is forged out of playing live, and we wanted the record to be ‘warts and all’, a representation of that side of us. A lot of people got into us from coming to see the live gig, so we wanted to give a bit of that.”

“Recording in Minnesota came from Craig, our producer. We told him the kind of record we wanted to make, and he picked out the studio based on that. The place in Minnesota was near the top of his list. I thought it was a surreal thing that would never happen, but it did.”

“We feel quite blessed. Of course there are some hurdles, and some illusions are shattered. You do lose that naivety, and I realised that most people in the industry might have a different motive to what you think at the start. You get wise to it. Our position is very good, the label very supportive. It’s night and day from some of our situations in the past.”

“With my last band, Dead Pretties, we weren’t prepared for a big record contract. It all went wrong, which was nobody’s fault but ours. The wheels came off a lot quicker than I thought they would.”

“Now, we played Kentish Town Forum, selling it out, which was great, and we packed the Woodsies Stage at Glastonbury, which was a real shock. I wasn’t expecting many to come and see us. At the other end of it, you start to go a bit loopy when you tour the States. It’s like driving around in this tin box watching the world go by across a whole continent.”

Wunderhorse will see ever more of that world, with newly launched ‘Midas’ already taking off, and looking likely to propel them into the upper echelons of the growing dingy-rock scene. Their Vicar Street show on October 16th will feel, to Irish fans, like a euphoric return.

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The Kates: “it’s a little piece of our dreams, our emotions, our vulnerabilities”

By some measures, you might describe The Kates (Eve Clague, Liz Clark, Mary Beth O’Mahony, Míde Houlihan and Paula K) as a side project. Made up of five women who all have their own careers in music, the band, now around for the best part of a decade, are essentially a different outlet for the members. That said, they’re also loaded with meaning.

Slow moving in their releases (despite years of live shows, a new EP is only emerging now), they prefer to do things well than quickly, and with a single track penned by each member on the upcoming release ‘Pictures Here of Dreams’ (out September 20), have created what is a surprisingly coherent piece of work.

“We each wrote a song for this EP and it’s been a really interesting process,” they say. “We all have shared in each other’s life experiences anyway, so one person would bring a song to the table maybe about 80% finished and the rest of us would collaborate from that point. We decided to name the EP ‘Pictures Here Of Dreams’ because that is a line from Mide’s song. We really feel like each of our songs was putting out a little piece of our dreams and our emotions and our vulnerabilities. So we felt that it perfectly summed up collectively our little dream of making music together.”

“I think that we were surprised how coherent the album did sound, knowing there were five different authors, and it was a really delightful surprise,” they say. “As far as if this is something we will continue to do, I’m not sure, we just have to see! I think we’re getting more and more comfortable and more and more efficient with our creations and everybody has something to bring to the table. But I don’t think we can commit to some kind of formula because that’s not really how creating works. I do think that you’ll see a lot more songs written by all of us in the future.”

“We had a lot of years to just really get comfortable playing music, being in a band, spending time with each other. When we were playing women’s cover songs, the stakes weren’t as high, so we really only got together to just let everybody in that room have a good time and celebrate women’s music together. When we did decide that we were going to write our own music, that was way more of a vulnerable place. I think having that foundation helped us be more resilient to these new vulnerabilities”

Ultimately, The Kates are in it both to tackle and represent women in the music industry more broadly. “That’s the main aim really,” they say. “I  heard of a quote that says “you can’t be what you can’t see” and I think that it’s a really powerful message. To have five women up on one stage all collaborating, all supporting and encouraging each other. We want that to be what people see.”

“You can expect a little bit of a family dynamic on stage. We are all clearly having fun with each other, but also we’re all about connection and we definitely want to connect with all of our Kates Mates in the audience. We’re actually quite lighthearted and make lots of stupid jokes on stage and you’ll feel like you’re one of us.”

“I think our hopes are mostly just that we get to continue to play together.”

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Gemma Hayes: “I had a realisation that to me, music is like oxygen”

A few small gigs aside, it’s been a long time since Gemma Hayes has been a mainstay of the Irish music scene. Around ten years, in fact, which makes her return with ‘Blind Faith’ feel like an exciting new addition in the realm of quirky, downbeat pop.

“I came back because I had this desperate need to create,” Hayes says. “I stopped making music, thinking that it would be that easy, but I didn’t realise how important making art was for my mental health. After a few years, I realised I needed to make music the core of my life, along with my children etc. Creating has got me back in a good headspace.”

“Going without music was a game changer, I had a realisation that to me it’s like oxygen,” she continued. “Handing your music over to the public is the scariest park. You can create stuff, and it can be like an abstract diary. You can understand what you’re saying. I wouldn’t be a natural, Robbie Williams type entertainer, which I think is a massive talent in itself. So I’m always a bit slow to bring music to the public. That said, it’s a form of connection, so doing that is an important step, the final courageous step.”

That brave step comes with a form of acceptance around the public and their taste on Hayes’ part, she says. “Music isn’t for everybody, and that’s something I’ve learnt only recently. Not everybody is going to like the same stuff. You just need to find your own niche of people your music resonates with, that’s a great place to be.”

“With that in mind, my new album is very much a quirky album, but that’s how I intend it. It’s so cliche, but maybe for a reason… at some point it’s out of my control. I’ve done my bit, and after that, some people will like it, and others won’t. And that’s just normal.” 

“It’s been ten years since I released music, so I wasn’t sure if there’d be ground for me to stand on. The world has changed so much, and what I had produced felt very much in the past. So I did have an internal battle about whether anyone would listen to it. Is there still a place for me? But it’s been a real joy to carve out a patch again.”

More than that, though, it seems Hayes is comfortable with her niche. “I’ve never had a massive hit song,” she says, “but I’ve put out so many albums over the years, so I think a lot of music people recognise my name. I’m fine with not having that hit, because I’ve never gone into a studio looking to get played on 2FM. I’m not trying to appeal to the masses, so there’s no disappointment there.”

“I’ve been working on little shows with Paul Noonan and Lisa Hannigan recently. It went so well the first time that we decided to keep going, so it was really natural to include them on my album, too. Lisa is my next door neighbour, too, which helps. She’s just across the wall. There’s a song, ‘Feed the Flames’, where she came up with a killer melody for the verses. She gave it a pep when it was quite maudlin, so I owe her for that.”

“There’s a moment in the album where I needed to stretch, and the song ‘Hardwired’ is that, it’s about feeling unsettled in a world of technology, and this idea about living in our phones. All being hardwired, it’s a bit weird being in that space. And it sits in that space because it’ll wake people up from that ethereal, zoned out world.”

‘Hardwired’ represents Hayes’ sense of change and modernity. But the album as a whole, a statement on her comeback, represents a greater sense: one of self-confidence and belonging.

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Pa Sheehy: “I fall in love with a lot of different music”

Once part of Dingle pop band Walking On Cars, Pa Sheehy’s journey as a solo musician is very much rooted in his past. Covid hit Sheehy and his band hard, and ultimately he decided to step away, going solo and taking on a different, more folk-leaning style. Success came swiftly, not least in supporting Bruce Springsteen on his recent jaunt around Ireland.

“I think the biggest lesson from that experience [with Walking On Cars] is that when you put your mind to something, you can achieve anything,” he says. “We were tunnel visioned in what we wanted to achieve and we showed up every day working on tunes to the point that some of the songs were in a pop sense kind of undeniable.”

“I think the magic we had at the beginning was gone, and that is the main factor in the disbanding of the group. We struggled with album two and struggled to find the magic of the first record. After Covid hit, we had time to reflect on everything and when the work started up again we had a few band meetings but it became apparent we were on different pages and ultimately I decided to leave the group.” 

Latest release ‘Towards The Water’ is another step on that solo journey, and has a lost, nostalgic edge to it.

“I’m trying out a few different ideas before I release an album,” Sheehy explains of his series of EPs and singles. “I fall in love with a lot of different music so I’m always open to making a different sounding body of work than the last. This batch of songs have been written and sculpted continuously over the last three years. It’s my first time doing this as a solo artist, so It took awhile to get it into the right place. Working with a lot of different producers kept everything fresh and the record feels cohesive without feeling continuous. That was my main aim.”

“I’m finding my feet as a solo artist and I’ve got a great little team on board, so sky’s the limit.  The music industry is constantly changing so there’s always new stuff to figure out, but I never get as overwhelmed as I did when I first went out on my own. It all seems manageable and possible. I think I’ve got the music right so I believe no matter how much I mess up things, the music will take me where I’m destined for.”

“I was walking around London and I remember thinking of how free I was that I’d chosen music and how trapped I used to feel in school. I had a pep in my step and just wanted to take on the world and I think this song captures that youthful anything-is-possible energy. I’d been listening to a lot of kings of Leon when producing this tune so I think it’s obvious that influence was taken from Caleb and the guys on this track. “

“Sometimes it’s lyrics that will fall on my lap and other times it’s playing around. There is no one way to write. I find that magic can be caught at any time you just have to be tuned in. I’m a believer that if you don’t use an idea you’ve been gifted by the song gods they will give it to someone else. My favourite way to write, however, is to sit on my own in a cottage in the middle of nowhere and see what jumps out of me.”

As for playing with Springsteen? “It was an unbelievable experience, to see how he does it was hugely inspiring and made me want to improve my own shows. I’ve only recently started listening to his music. The album ‘Nebraska’ has found a home in my catalogue, real stories without rushing on too quickly. I’ve taken a bit of this approach into my own record. It gives space to everything.”

‘Towards The Water’ by Pa Sheehy is out now.

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Meljoann: “Big tech has a monopoly on our social communication, politics, and arts”

From Dublin but based in Brighton, producer and vocalist Meljoann has been making noise around various music scenes since the late 00s, producing a kind of soulful, synth backed sound that firmly airs her views against a starkly engaging, meaty backdrop.

Upcoming new single ‘Bye’, for example, takes a running jab at the evils of the social media giants, and the way in which data is manipulated; an unusual topic for music, but that leftfield tendency to explore topics other prefer to leave in written form is amongst the things that make Meljoann a compelling listen.

“’Bye’ is a word I’d dearly love to say in this situation,” Meljoann says. “Big Tech has a monopoly on our social communication, politics and arts. Through this, billionaires like Zuckerberg, Bezos, Musk and Ek enact a kind of digital neo-colonialism. Throughout the song, I’m saying we do have a choice, and the time is coming when we can leave all of this behind.”

“It’s possible to ignore this stuff,” she continues, talking from the perspective of a musician trying to promote work, “but only if you’re able to have a day-job as well. Or maybe if you’re a big legacy artist, and everyone knows who you are already. Someone like me just has to engage with it. So, I do it in a way that hopefully exposes the hokey mechanisms behind influencer culture.”

“I hope not to do so for much longer. There are grassroots alternative software scenes, creating welcoming community-run spaces for people. Like the Fediverse. We shouldn’t have to look at a bunch of ads, and click “I Agree” on a bunch of dodgy corporate BS, when we just want to talk to our friends or listen to music online.”

“I have an ongoing frustration with the music industry. But the feelings in the song are all about power imbalance, where you just have to “play along” with a load of rubbish: flattering, fawning, and keeping all their dodgy secrets. The video documents a talk show that goes horribly wrong. It references 90s shows like Ricki Lake and Jerry Springer.”

“It’s not that I enjoy it, but I can only write authentically about my own experiences,” she says of a tendency to write social commentary into her music. “Then, when I zoom out, I see all my individual experiences are just one part of a much larger socio-political picture. It seems myopic to just focus on yourself.”

“I’m very focused on visual expression alongside the music. I’ve always had dreamy synesthesia-like experiences with music, and it’s really satisfying to be able to make these images. I feel it gives a more complete impression of my ideas. If it means I get to act the maggot in front of a camera, wearing ridiculous costumes, that’s a bonus.”

“I just want to keep writing, music-making, improvising, producing, filming… all the things! We’ll be releasing my new album soon.”

Brighton is a place that allows Meljoann freedom of expression, she says. “Brighton is an amazing, queer-friendly city. I feel I can be more myself here. There’s a great experimental music scene, full of friendly people.”

“I do miss Dublin as well, though,” she continues, “but the scenes I remember have been priced out. Hardly anyone I know can afford to live there anymore.”

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Callum Orr: “the album does have a fear to faith kind of arc”

Callum Orr’s road to his first album, which is a deeply personal exploration rendered in colourful folk style, has been a potted one. From a life changing time spent living in Canada to a yearning for home in Ireland and the fear of a family illness, the record tracks periods of emotional turmoil and self discovery, 

Entitled ‘The Trails Of Knowing’, Orr’s record is essentially built on the concept of life’s inevitable twists and turns, and coming out of the other side.

“I’m mostly self-taught, and like to dabble in a bit of everything,” he says of his roots. “The first instrument I picked up was the drums when I was 10, and I very quickly took to it and was hooked. This set a good basis for picking up a guitar later on. There was always a guitar in my house as my dad and brother are both great players.”

“I learned how to play ‘First Day of My Life’ by Bright Eyes all the way through when I was 14 and was chuffed with myself. I realised that at its core, songwriting is actually a simple process – it’s the inspiration that’s rare. I had no shortage of inspiration as a 14 year old though, so I hit the ground running.”

Orr’s record is in some ways a true exploration of self. “It does make me relate to the songs in a much closer way,” he says, “and it’s much easier to tap into the emotion when playing the thing live. That being said, I’ve been immersed in these songs for the last few years and have heard each one so many times and in so many states of undress, that I’m not a reliable judge on it I reckon.”

The diagnosis of Orr’s mother with cancer, which thankfully she ultimately came through, is a big part of the inspiration behind many of the songs. “especially the song ‘Hello Marianne’,” he says “It’s very much not present in the first few tunes, but I think the album does have a fear to faith kind of arc. The first half is very pessimistic, the second half is very optimistic.”

Part of the record is also an exploration of Ireland from afar: both from life in Canada, and an eventual return home. “There were lots of hard things about repatriating after Vancouver,” he says. “The friend group to whom I had been so close was now fractured and had a different aspect. I left a really vibrant community behind in Vancouver. I had no job, I was living with my sister on her good graces. I was kind of floating and at a low ebb and one song was an attempt to put a frame on that.”

“The feedback I get on the live show is usually a lot more positive than my inner critic,” he continues, “and I’m getting better at listening to that and just enjoying playing. I like to do big productions for launches – there will be nine people, including a string quartet, on the stage with me at the album launch in the Cellar on July 20.”

“My hopes for the record are simply that people enjoy the melodies and the textures of the songs; that they come back to it and look forward to listening to it. I want to make long bus journeys a bit nicer. I have album number two half written and am very excited about the songs, so will get cracking on that early next year.”

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James: “We were financially suicidal in many of our choices”

Madchester’s quirky outcasts. A male band in dresses in the 90s, singing about childbirth, with a tee-total frontman as an entire scene notorious for drugs unfolded before them. Cult icons whose fans, by many accounts, prefer not to hear their hit singles. Manchester band James, fronted by the enigmatic Tim Booth, are not what the casual observer might think.

Best known for their massive hit singles ‘Laid’ and ‘Sit Down’, the band nonetheless scored their first UK number one album only earlier this year, a continuation of the success of their reformation. ‘Yummy’ sparkles with thoughtful and well-constructed music, inventive and accomplished, and Tim Booth, long one of the British indie scene’s most memorable characters, is loving every minute of it.

“We adapt our sets because we want to be understood,” Booth says of James in their modern incarnation. “There’s no good or bad audience, but we have to adapt to what they need at a particular time.”

“A problem can be that anyone that comes to a James gig is going to be disappointed. They’ll generally have favourite songs that don’t get played, as we have about 400. Our hardcore fans don’t really want to hear ‘Sit Down’, they want to hear a song they haven’t heard from six albums ago, like ‘Bubbles’, or ‘Zero’.”

“We were financially suicidal in many of our choices,” he recalls. “We did things that we felt were artistic, or we made dumb young choices. We were breastfed on NME and the idea that success is bad for you, that you shouldn’t be too successful, an equation that was very prevalent at the time.”

“I try not to be too rose-tinted about it, to give all the different sides. The positive one was that it gave us this longevity, and people have trusted us to make musical choices over business choices.” 

“We refused to put ‘Sit Down’ on the album ‘Gold Mother’ even though the record label said we’d sell another 250,000 copies. We said we’d fight them over it. Eventually they agreed that anyone who bought the original could take it back to the record store and swap it over. It made us respect them. That was something no one ever got. Though no one ever took the record back. People wanted the songs that had been taken off to make way for ‘Sit Down’.”

“We used to speak about shoot to kill in Northern Ireland. The guy who uncovered it, he came across as this really honest guy, and they discredited him. That drove us mad. Injustice is injustice. I’m not a political lyricist, but over the years there have been a few times I’ve had to say something.”

“I ended up writing songs about mother courage, and women reaching the edge of death in search of a child. More recently we’ve had two women join the band, and they called it a feminist anthem, which made me really proud.”

“We were considered idiosyncratic,” he laughs, “and I was considered lyrically weird. It doesn’t seem as strange anymore, but 34 years ago it was seen as very weird. It was the same with the dresses. We stirred things up. We were clearly straight boys, but we found ourselves playing Lollapalooza with Korn, Tool, Snoop Dogg and so on. The crowd would scream abuse at us.”

“After a couple of shows we went out in sequined dresses, and I’d sing in the faces of these people screaming abuse at us, in a sparkly top, and nobody would touch me. I’d go out with no anger, and sing to them from an honest place. It was incredible. I was offered drinks and drugs, anything to get rid of me.”

“Of course, I wasn’t into those things at the time,” Booth says. In fact, it was the extracurriculars that ultimately led to James splitting and reforming. “Then I got into psychedelic therapy a few years back. Go figure.”

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