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The Ocelots: “if there was a €15 flight to any city, we’d go there”

The Ocelots – Wexford brothers Ashley and Brandon Watson – are very much a product of their lifestyle. Having come into music the hard way, they beat down doors across Europe as they travelled on the cheap for several years before professionalising their subtle and witty folk-rock narratives.

“Things were as chaotic as we were,” they say. “We did a thing where we found an apartment in Wexford, then we looked at Ryanair flights, and if there was a flight for €15 to any city, we’d go there for two weeks with almost no preparation. All we’d do is email every single person and venue that played music in the entire city to tell them we were there. As we were 17 or 18, we were naive enough to think people would welcome us. And some people did.”

“Two or three people saying they’d give us a gig is all we ever needed. Sometimes there was a lot of emergency AirBnBs, and extra hours of busking for somewhere to stay. It was quite an adventurous time.” 

“I guess we missed it when touring got more professional, because you kind of lose the sense of adventure when you’ve got an itinerary and soundchecks. Especially in places like Germany, Austria, Switzerland, the hosts cover you with amazing hospitality.” 

“There was one place in Edinburgh, when we walked in, and they were like ‘who are you guys?’. They sat us down and investigated. About an hour later someone walked in and put us in the corner to play in front of about three people. Then there was an argument about whether we got a payment of a burrito and an orangina or not.”

Things got a good deal more professional afterwards, with The Ocelots exploiting their experiences to make music full of personality and road stories, a kind of mesmerising and upbeat form of harmonised folk.

 “The change happened quite slowly to something more serious,” they say. “We’d played these seemingly terrible gigs in different places, but we’d played shows in Barcelona, Edinburgh, Munich, and it was a bit smoke and mirrors, a bit misleading, as it looked like we were a lot more professional than we were. We had played everywhere, just by looking for the right cafe. It got big enough that we did a few support slots, with people like Jack Johnson, and working with proper agencies, and then things started to change.”

“We wrote the second album in Covid when we had all this time. We practised with a metronome, all this stuff we’d never done before. We learnt production, and it was really wonderful, such a blessing, actually. It’s a mature album. The first album had songs that we wrote when we were teenagers, and it was released years later. We had changed as people. We’ve always had a big backlog, as the recording element was always such a challenge.”

“‘Everything, When Said Slowly’ [the new album] was recorded in 2023, and is the product of writing a lot of songs quite quickly. We’re both songwriters. The recording was the challenge, and it was important to get better at that.”

“Live was always so natural to us, and not all that challenging, so we were moving in the direction of being recording artists and giving the performances the energy they have live. It was something we struggled with, and still struggle with. We’re really excited about this album, because we get quite nerdy about other bands’ production, and we’ve been working towards that.”

“We can’t meet our standard of expectations, and we’ve scrapped a lot of stuff, but we’re much nearer the mark with the new one, close to who we want to be.”

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Bagatelle: “There are births, marriages and deaths connected with the songs of Bagatelle”

From supporting Bob Marlay at Dalymount Park to iconic Irish hit ‘Summer In Dublin’, old-school rockers Bagatelle are on something of a slow road these days, but remain one of the most loved domestic acts, their songs a kind of story of their collective lives. The band lost vocalist Liam Reilly back in 2021, and their current shows are performed in memory of the frontman, as well as guitarist John O’Brien.

“We are celebrating the lives and the music of Liam Gerrard Reilly, and also our founding father, John Valentine O’Brien,” bassist Ken Doyle tells us. “After Covid, lockdowns, and the unexpected passing of Liam, I didn’t know which way was up or down, but thanks to many phone calls, emails, Facebook comments, messages of support and people stopping me in the street pleading with me not to give up, the songs are here as a soundtrack and a timeline to their lives.”

“There are births, marriages and deaths connected with the songs of Bagatelle, along with homesick Irish people, in far flung lands, who are transported back to Ireland through our music.”

Which is not to say the remaining members are standing still, new music simply isn’t being made public. “There were plenty of songs even before Liam’s passing,” Doyle says. “The problem is, because of 99 cent download, record companies are very scared of investing. It would take so long to recoup an investment. That means most music today is manufactured, which is killing the creativity of young musicians. It’s becoming sanitised.”

“The music scene that we started out in does not exist anymore,” Doyle continues. “There are great bands, great musicians, great singers, and not that many venues for them to make it work. I personally know of two very talented bands that had to throw in the towel, or starve. These creative people have no help or assistance to further their craft, and yet if they become successful, pats on the back will come out of the woodwork. Liam had a saying: ‘success has many fathers, and failure is an orphan.’”

Of course, there are a lot of memories that stand tall for Bagatelle. “There have been so many great moments,” Doyle says. “It’s hard to pick just one, but here goes. I’d have to split it between Bob Marlay at Dalymount Park, and Self Aid. That’s my compromised answer.”

“Sometimes I’m asked if I’m tired of ‘Summer In Dublin’, and I’m not. My answer will always be the same. I love that song, and always have since I first heard Liam play it on an out of tune upright piano in John O’Brien’s house in August 1978. There have been many emotional moments throughout the years on stages all over the world, witnessing the overwhelming reaction to that beautiful song, and hearing stories from our audience about how special it is for them for various reasons.”

As for playing live today, while half the band have passed, there’s a conscious effort to keep things the same. “We are continuing with the same format, but with male and female singers sharing the Bagatelle list of songs. The band is the same as it was with Liam and the singers were all friends with Liam,” Doyle says. “Liam was unique, irreplaceable. We continue by celebrating his amazing talent and legacy.”

“Our plans for Bagatelle and friends [the current guise of the band] is to continue to enjoy the music and friendship, the chemistry of the band, and also to continue to play and entertain the best audience in the world, ours. Thank you for all you’ve given us over the years, making hits out of our songs, and the undying support. Rock and roll never forgets.”

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Saibh Skelly: “busking will always be a big part of my identity as a musician”

From performing covers on the streets of Dublin as a 14 year old, to supporting Hozier and appearances at the likes of the Olympia Theatre, Saibh Skelly’s rise in recent years has made her a real Dublin music one to watch. In her latest adventure, Skelly will appear twice at Dublin Castle on New Year’s Eve, helping to bring in 2025.

Looking back, it was an early exposure to performing that set Skelly up, but her focus has changed. “The busking was just random songs I chose to play, now it’s all about getting the set ready, working on what people want to hear, and doing it over and over until it’s time to go,” Skelly says. “I like to throw in a cover or two still for a bit of fun, so people can sing along. But I play what I think people will like, really fresh stuff.”

“I’m getting used to playing in the studio and recording, though I always wrote my own music. It’s a lot more personal and a lot deeper, so it does make me more nervous. My covers are also about things I relate to. I try to do a cool version of things, but also to go a little bit ‘undercover’ and less obvious with my covers.”

“The first time I went busking I was 14, I think, and I didn’t find it nerve wracking. Perhaps I was a bit naive. My poor mother was the one with the nerves. I saw it as an opportunity to play my music outside. I was either out on Grafton Street or playing in my bedroom, so I went out in front of people. My mum is the kind of person who’ll let me make my own decisions, so I learnt through experience. I’m glad I wasn’t held back. Busking will always be a big part of my identity as a musician, so I think it was the right decision.”

Since then, Skelly’s releases have ranged from covers like beat-led, Pink-esque pop ‘The Mirror’s Favourite’ and a cover of James TW’s ‘When You Love Someone’, a soul-bearing track that’s flown past a million Spotify listens.

Of course, thoughts turn, sooner or later, to recording in longer form. “Things have changed a lot, with TikTok being a big platform for releasing singles,” Skelly says. “I’m working on an album behind the scenes and looking for the right time to release it. I’m almost ready, but you need to wait for the right moment to do it.”

“I think the right moment is about knowing you have an audience there that will appreciate it, and buy tickets to see you perform the whole album live. TikTok is strange, people don’t get the whole song, it’s really short clips. You put a load of work into a three or four minute song, and you have to choose a part based on hooking people in the first three seconds.”

“I think people are writing songs that they think will connect with that trend. But that doesn’t matter so much to me. I think if I write a good song, people might like it quickly. I’m not going to write for social media.”

“I’ve seen artists take off from an unfinished clip of a song, which can make things a little more difficult for a musician, they have to connect with that five minutes. But there’s also a lot more opportunity to go from zero to a hundred in no time at all.”

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Zoid: “It’s an inherently contradictory way of making music”

Daniel Jacobson’s second ‘Zoid vs Musicians’ album, entitled ‘Zoid vs Musicians Vol 2’, has been a long, long process. That fits, we suppose, with the unusual elements of the album: it’s knowingly niche, a blend of jazz and techno styles that doesn’t, in theory, make a lot of sense. But that’s kind of the point.

“The album took 17 years because I kept on leaving it and coming back to it,” Jacobson says. “I always knew I’d eventually finish it, but I need to jump around different projects to keep myself interested. At one stage I did nothing for four years, then did a couple of tracks, then got sidetracked, and so on. You can’t force yourself, you work to your own strengths.”

“I generated something like a backing track in most cases, and sent it to a musician. I’d email the backing track and they’d record themselves improvising over it. A couple of tracks were recorded in studios. There’s some improvisation, it’s all very loose,” he explains.

So are the roots, something of a self-created scene. “There is a jazz electronica scene, but it’s a hard thing to do well,” Jacobson says. “There are a couple of projects that do things well, especially live, but not many. Jazz is all about responding to each other, and electronic music is all about the creation of the producer in the studio, without that response. I try to make the electronics respond to the improvisations. But it’s inherently contradictory as a way of making music. Sometimes I kick myself.”

“The productions take a long time, simply because it wouldn’t work if the beats were very static. Making the production of the music respond in detailed ways to what a person is doing is important, something I’m always playing around with.”

“I have a label too, which is somewhat of a necessity making music. In my world you could send things to labels all day long for years, and it’s very hard to get someone to spend money releasing a record for you. Very few can even break even, so the label idea is kind of self defeating. You end up doing it yourself. I’ve only released two artists apart from myself, so it’s primarily about my own music, but if I come across something incredible that other people aren’t aware of, I have to try and do something.”

“For me, success is measured in being able to collaborate with certain people, through my profile, and I have managed that. It’s going in the right direction. I have a 2025 project that will have a few really lifelong dream remixes, but those are in the early days.”

“In some ways my freestyling and improvising connect to hip-hop. The best live performance, for me, is one that’s very much improvised, one that comes with risk. The audience get very drawn into that. Electronic music is famously hard to perform live, as it’s boring to watch someone stand on stage live and press play on a laptop.”

“One idea I’d have is to tour with two shows, an instrumental, jazz-type venue early in the morning, and then a techno, club-like set later.”

“I’d like to do more performances with gigs that feature the musicians. The way I do it means that I can have an awful gig. It has to be like that, if you’re gigging all the time, like Frank Zappa, you have to do six months of rehearsal before a tour. You have to be ready to turn it on if everything goes wrong. It’s about giving the audience their money’s worth. I like the idea of that, a show that works even in the worst scenario.”

Zoid vs Musicians VOl 2 is out now.

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Tadhg Williams: “My live shows have to be medicinal”

Photo Abigail Ring

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.”

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Meryl Streek: “bands are afraid to have a voice”

Meryl Streek, the solo project of long-time touring musician Dave Mulvaney, are an atypical but notably modern act. With a distinctly boisterous, political bent to his spoken (/ shouting)-word lyrics, Mulvaney forcefully delivers his points over a backdrop of a laptop. Nonetheless, he’s more powerful in style than many more involved musicians, heavily echoing punk roots in the way his stage-front and audience-inhabiting performances punch pointedly through the static.

With second album ‘Songs For The Deceased’ out now, he’s still performing for a relative pittance (his upcoming Whelan’s shows are priced at just €15, and even his vinyl release is on the affordable end of the spectrum), a nod to Mulvaney’s ‘punching up’ identity, a ready-made man of the protesting people.

“I didn’t expect this reaction,” he tells us of the much-hyped record. “I came to this from 15 years playing drums touring, and I kind of lost faith in it. There’s no money in touring bands anymore. I was looking at Sleaford Mods on the stage dancing to a laptop, and I thought if these lads can get away with it… that’s where it comes from.”

“I don’t necessarily understand or trust people who don’t have things to say in these modern times,” he says of his punchy lyrical content. “I think the album gets the attention it does because a lot of people are struggling across the board. I think a lot of bands are afraid to have a voice, as the music industry can forget you very quickly if you don’t say the right things. I don’t really care about this stuff. It’s not my intent to impress people like the BBC. I want to hit with a younger generation in a certain way.”

“Eight years ago Kneecap were banned on RTE,” he says by way of example. “It took them eight years to care. Now I’m going to see them on the fifth night of a Vicar Street sold out run. That support is needed at the start, though, not now. That’s Ireland in a nutshell for me. We could have been here 3 or 4 years ago.”

His own progress has been a learning curve. “I went from being that drummer to teaching myself to use all this electronic equipment and record online, at the start of lockdown. For the second album I was more comfortable getting other people involved. It just naturally happened that way. All these people have been so nice to me since the start, so I wanted to use that opportunity. Bands like Benefits who do their own thing, follow their own purpose. They have a similar stance to me.”

For all the pointed politics – and we’ll let you discover that yourself – it’s Mulvaney’s uncle Paddy who is perhaps the star of the record. “He was my ma’s brother, one of those people who I swear was so smart it was insane. He spent his whole life reading, loved his wine… he was one of those supersmart characters who did it on his own terms, but he was disconnected from society. He shouldn’t have been, he could have accomplished a lot. He was like those old society writers.”

“Paddy’s father, my grandad, brought me up. I’ve always had this love for movies, so I have this horror movie ambience now in my stage show. You’re going to get an experience, your money’s worth. Something a little bit different. I’m not 100% sure what it is yet, but it’s definitely an experience.”

“I’m not angry all the time, not at all,” he says of the moody angles. “I go out of my way to help people. It’s just one of those things, I strongly disagree with the rock n’ roll lifestyle of acting like a prick. But I have to be angry on stage, it’s what the music is.”

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YARD: “I knew very early that Ireland wasn’t going to be the starter market for YARD”

Scenes, I find, have their natural genres. In Ireland that currently means Fontaines DC style dingy rock, the ‘always there’ acoustic guitar stuff, and some nice inventive pop. It’s never really meant electro-rock.

That said, you can create scenes, or you can simply ride against them. When I first heard YARD, it was clear to me that they were going to have to do just that: they feel like an electro-guitar band destined to play raucous late-night clubs, and let’s face it, Ireland isn’t great at raucous late night clubs. Still, it’s really nice to hear something that’s genuinely different. It’s also inventive, well-produced, and in-your-face. Only right, then, to shine a little bit of a light on the Dublin lads as they release their self-titled debut EP. Oh, and those visualiser videos are beautiful.

Thankfully, in gutiarist Dan Malone, I found a man with plenty to say about what it’s all about…

First of all, can you tell me a bit about your backgrounds and where the band grew from?

The three of us have been friends for the better part of two decades. Myself and Emmet met through a mutual friend in secondary school when we were about 12. We then met George when we were about 15 I’d say. We were originally in a Dublin based band called The Dyatonics for a few years between 2012-2016. It was myself and George on guitar, Emmet on bass, Daniel Hoff (now of Gurriers) on vocals and Ethan Hegarthy on drums. We also had Bryan Gleeson and Brendan Bolger as drummers at different stages.

Emmet was in secondary school with Hoff and then later met Ethan in college. When Emmet moved to Australia for a year, that spelled the end for The Dyatonics. But myself and George wanted to continue writing music, so in 2017 we started a new project with Ben O’Neill (also now of Gurriers), who George met through college, as well as Daniel Hoff and, for a short period, George’s friend Steven Whearity on drums. When Emmet returned from Australia he also joined back in. Steven stopped coming to rehearsal at one stage or another and instead of finding a new drummer, we decided to play over programmed beats which gave birth to the electronic direction that the band would ultimately take.

Hoff was the one who originally came up with the band name ‘YARD’. We were very used to people getting our band name wrong in The Dyatonics (entirely our own fault) and so we wanted to have something that was very simple for this project. I believe the first meaning of the name YARD was in reference to one billion units of a currency i.e. a ‘yard’ of yen would be one billion yen. But we’ve since taken it to mean the unit of measurement and the space that it provides the listener.

Hoff was busy with another band called The Innocent Bystander which, at the time, was doing quite well and couldn’t commit enough time to YARD. So we ultimately parted ways, but YARD would later have their first show supporting The Innocent Bystander upstairs in Whelan’s. So the first iteration of YARD ended up being myself on guitar, Emmet on bass synth and vocals, Ben on guitar, synth and vocals and George on beats and synth. We spent the guts of 5 years, from 2018-2022, just writing music and figuring out what we wanted YARD to be. 

We landed on a fusion of post-punk and electronica fairly early on, but it took us a long time to refine it into what it is now. We did have one headline show in Yamamori Tengu back in February 2020, right before the world collapsed. That’s actually when we started working with Cian Finlay on lighting and visuals who remains our lighting operator to this day. After that, we went back into hibernation and writing mode. I consider the first ‘official’ YARD show to be the secret show that we did with PANIKATAX in The Meadow back in June 2022, which is when the project started to make most sense in our heads.

We then got the opportunity to support Shame in The Button Factory in 2023 which snowballed into a number of different shows for YARD, not least of which was Ireland Music Week 2023. That show resulted in us getting a booking agent which, in turn, led to 44 live shows across 11 countries in 2024! Ben ultimately ended up leaving YARD in April 2024 to focus more on Gurriers which he and Hoff had been in since 2021. So the current iteration of YARD is myself, Emmet and George.

Your style fits neatly in with acts like Pendulum, The Prodigy and Death Grips, but of course those are just my best guesses. Where do you draw your inspiration from?

Yea you’ve definitely picked out some notable ones there, specifically The Prodigy and Death Grips. At the beginning when we were trying to figure out what we wanted YARD to be, the first band that we all collectively agreed on as a point of reference was SUUNS. We were just totally enamoured with their fusion of synths, guitars, drums and vocals and how it created this exceptionally large and distinct sound. So that was definitely one. But we were listening to lots of different stuff at the time: Gilla Band, Metz, Shame, Nicolas Jaar, Mogwai, Death In Vegas, Daft Punk and Boy Harsher. Lots of electronic music too from Daniel Avery, Paula Temple, Kelly Lee Owns and Chris Leibing.

There isn’t really a great deal in your stylistic realm in Ireland. Do you think that’s a positive or a negative when getting your music out there?

It has its pros and cons for sure. Whenever you have an act that’s creating music outside the status quo they usually have to work that extra bit harder to get early buy-in from listeners. I’ve found that to be true, not only in Ireland, but in the UK as well. Post-punk is still very much the flavour of the month and so, as an electropunk act, you’re fighting a bit of an uphill battle at times to get punters, radio DJs or magazines to take a chance on you. But the upside of that is that you’re very much in your own lane in terms of what you’re creating. We’re just trying to carve out our own path.

For example, I knew very early on that Ireland was not going to be the starting market for YARD. So it became my goal to get us into mainland Europe as soon as possible. With the help of our phenomenal booking agent Jule Konrad, we’ve seen a big interest in what YARD are doing from festivals and venues across the Netherlands, France, Germany, Czech Republic, Spain, Switzerland, and Slovakia. We’re adding festival appearances in Portugal, Italy and Belgium to the list this year too. The United States is a big one for us too, ever since our KEXP session went live in February this year. Our Irish listeners are now starting to catch up as a result. So I suppose the message is that you don’t always have to rely on breaking your home market first in order to set yourself up on the right path.

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J Smith: “I’m often uncomfortable with things I’ve shared lyrically”

I’ve always had a bit of a thing for music that you could describe as “raw”. Obviously a lot of music is deeply personal, but less music feels like it’s written so firmly about an author’s life, and that it grabs at elements of their soul and bares them for all to see. Truthfully, I was unfamiliar with J Smith when his music landed amongst my PR emails, but it quickly became clear that his music sits exactly in that realm. So much so that what he asked for was help sharing his stories, not his music. They amount to the same thing in this case, of course, but it feels like a very different ask; and a very different lens.

So I asked about the personal things, and I uncovered a man writing about life and family, writing through heart and emotion, somewhat against the odds. His albums are, he says, representations of life before and after his daughter. Life experience tells me parenthood is hard, especially the early years. There’s beauty in hearing the lightness his daughter clearly instills in him. ‘I Stood Their Naked’ is a telling title, and the album as a whole that bears that title is not yet for public consumption, but the singles, ‘Bassinet’, ‘Corner Shop’, and ‘Laburnum’ give light to Smith’s stories. Here’s what he told me about it all.

Your new song, Bassinet, is about impending fatherhood. Was it difficult to translate into music?

When I sit down to write a song, it tends to bring everything up. It exposes every facet of a situation, so I usually know exactly how I want it to feel. With Bassinet, I wanted to express optimism and a sense of elation, and I think that comes through in the music. Having great players around me helped a lot.

You describe your songs as meditations. What do you mean by that, and how does it work in practice?

I mean that I try to allow every thought in—dark and light—and aim to be as true to a situation as I can. One thing that’s changed since having my child is that my thoughts now tend to lean more toward the light. I’m not as anxious as I used to be, despite life being far more complicated.

You’re pointedly personal in your music. Does that ever get hard? Does it come with any consequences?

It absolutely gets hard. I’m often uncomfortable with things I’ve shared lyrically—and with things I will share. But I can’t seem to write any other way. Some of it feels like a protest against the ultra-composed nature of persona on social media.

The consequences are mostly positive. People reach out, ask questions, empathize, share. They come away feeling like they know a big part of me, and that makes conversations so much richer.

How does ‘I Stood There Naked’ compare to your earlier work?

It’s a sister album to my first. I never doubted that I would meet my daughter—it felt like destiny. So the two albums sit beside each other: life before Connie, and life after.

This new album is lighter. It’s full of moments of joy and whimsy, reflecting the time I’ve spent watching my daughter grow—and myself change.

Is the title a metaphor for all that personal stuff? To what extent is this whole thing a kind of therapy for you?

I can’t afford therapy. I could just about afford to make this record. My creative practice gives me that outlet. It creates a dialogue between me and my wife, sparks conversations, and allows me to connect with something bigger than myself.

It also helps me be more present and balanced with my family. I’m forever grateful for it.

How have you found the Irish music scene? What are its strengths and issues?

There’s a beautiful network of people here—some of the greatest players, deeply committed songwriters, and a level of inclusiveness that rivals any scene.

The issues don’t lie within the community itself but with everything around it. People can’t afford to go to gigs or buy merch because so much of their income is going toward essentials. Musician fees haven’t increased, support slots often don’t pay, and ticket prices are kept low just to get people in the door.
It’s hard to say this without sounding bitter, but if we want to keep music alive, we need solutions—maybe universal pay for artists, or getting people to invest directly rather than rely on streaming.

How do you measure the success of a release?

It’s hard. I try to limit my idea of success to the experience of making the work. I thoroughly enjoyed the process of this album—recording at Hellfire Studios with incredible players (Dylan Lynch, Neil Dorrington, Aidan Gray, Conor Wallace, Hannah Miller, Paul Kiernan, Krists Liepa, Ora Quartet).

Learning how to score for strings and brass, implementing those parts, mixing it, and creating the artwork myself—I learned so much. I see real success in that.

Do you find it easy to convert a track from recording to live performance?

A big step is letting go of the idea that it has to sound like the record. I don’t want to go to a gig and feel like I could’ve just stayed home and listened.

As a solo musician, I have to hire players. They change every gig, which means each performance has its own limitations and advantages. That’s exciting to me. Live music is where I feel most connected. It’s where I think AI can’t go—it’s human and real. That’s what people want again.

What’s been your favourite experience through music so far?

I’ve played big shows—close to 3,000 people—shared stages with amazing musicians, played intimate rooms… but I just love having my daughter in the audience. Seeing her mouth along to songs and dance with my wife—that fills my soul.

What are your hopes for the future?

I hope I can keep making music. I hope I can make a living from it. And I hope I can pass on a reverence and awe for live music to my daughter, so she can experience it the way I do.

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