Deconstructing Gary Fitzpatrick was always going to be an interesting task. Just how does someone who once fronted one of the most uncompromising hardcore thrash punk bands ever to turn their amps to 11 suddenly turn to wearing a cowboy hat and singing Merle Haggard songs for his liquid supper?
"I don't consider what I'm doing now as being that different from what I was doing when I started off," he replies. "With Pincher Martin, it was bathed in loud music but there were still tunes there whereas with the Great Western Squares it's all stripped away. I've always used an acoustic guitar but just never had the balls to get up and play live with one until now. But the lyrics have always been sad, lovelorn type stuff - it's just that back then nobody could tell."
White punks on dope playing loud, pneumatic guitar music are, let's face it, ten-a-penny round these here parts, and the only scale on which most of them register is of the Richter variety, but with The Great Western Squares, Gary Fitzpatrick and fellow vocalist Oona White have hitched a ride down the road considerably less travelled - that of alternative "indie" country music.
Their debut album, Judas Steer, was recorded in a day and released last year to a receptive if somewhat bemused public. Consisting mostly of covers of classic country vignettes (give or take the odd Motörhead tribute), it saw Fitzpatrick pin his true musical colours to the mast. The new album, Almost Sober, is mainly his own work, though there are two songs by ex-Stars Of Heaven/Sewing Room tunesmith Stan Erraught (now the Squares' lead guitarist), one by Jubilee Allstar Barry McCormack and, lest we forget, the obligatory Gram Parsons cover ('Luxury Liner').
The band formed from the ashes of The Johnny Cash Appreciation Society, a clandestine gathering of musicians who used to meet in a small pub in Phibsboro and gratify their urges to finger-pick on acoustic guitars.
"It all came together in quite a loose manner," explains Gary. "I didn't even know Stan, really. I was just standing on Doyle's Corner in Phibsboro one day when he cycled by and I told him we were going into the studio to record an album and asked him if he wanted come in and play guitar."
Needless to say, the resulting metamorphosis came as something of a shock to Fitzpatrick's former punk-rock friends but he insists that no-one was quite as surprised as he himself was. "There's a whole generation of punk rockers who are saying, 'That fucking sold-out wanker', but I think what I'm doing is even more punk rock than anything I did before because I'm conforming less to people's expectations. Appearing on The Late Late Show and being played on daytime radio is far more subversive than anything they've ever done. But I'm still a sad bastard who drinks too much and loves music."
sad old git
Indeed, as is traditional for the genre, the Great Western Squares sing with some regularity about durrrink and Gary confesses to spending more time researching the subject than is strictly necessary: he admits that the pub has been his natural environment since he was old enough to be let into one.
Indeed, Judas Steer is lovingly dedicated to the now demolished White Horse and the sleeve of the new album contains a shot of the Squares outside another well-known Dublin watering hole, The Welcome Inn.
"They're city centre pubs that are still on the outskirts," explains Gary, a bred-and-buttered Dub. "They're places where regulars drink. When it comes down to it, I'm a lover of old-time Dublin. I'm only in my 20s and yet I feel like a sad old git.
"We actually played in The White Horse on its last night but we weren't told that it was. They brought all the barmen in especially, but I never copped. The next day I got a phone call from a friend who was walking by who told me they were stripping away the interior. I couldn't believe it. I hopped on the bus and was just standing there stunned. I did manage to pull myself the last pint. I went behind the bar and they were emptying all the kegs, so I decided to empty half of it into my stomach!"
We are, of course, sitting in a pub as we talk and as we get the next round in Gary reminisces about his pre-rock'n'roll days when he "did Europe" - although it was really Europe that nearly did for him. Despite having lived at one time in a cosy apartment in Paris, he had a rather uncomfortable existence outside it.
"I've no hair - I lost it when I was 15 - and so I was automatically considered a Nazi. The people who I was staying with told me I wasn't allowed leave the flats complex I was living in by myself or otherwise I'd be shot. And I was a veggie at the time, and it's impossible to live in France if you don't eat meat.
"Then I went to Munich and was living on the streets - in sleeping bags and blankets. I busked but when I'd lose the guitar I'd just beg. I lived behind a shopping centre. We had an agreement that as long as I was gone from there by 9am each morning, they wouldn't call the police."
After losing his passport, and with it, his residence permit, Gary was given 10 days to leave the country. He obeyed orders. Unsurprisingly, he soon lost his wanderlust and returned home.
"I just got sick of wondering whether or not I was going to be waking up alive the next morning. You appreciate the value of life so much more when you're in that situation."
It's enough to drive anyone to dri . . . n
* Almost Sober is out now on blunt/Independent Records.