Guitar hero

Over the last 25 years Conor Brady has forged a reputation as one of the great Irish guitar players. When not plying his chops in legendary outfits such as Deaf Actor, The Blades, The Revenants and Jerry Fish & The Mudbug Club, among others, his fretwork has been much in demand by the likes of The Corrs, The Commitments and Terence Trent D’arby. Brady’s trademark sound could be described as a blend of post-punk angularity and classic blues, funk and country styles – though his flexibility as a player, capable of turning his hand to almost any genre, is arguably his main strength.

“For me, playing music that I’m not necessarily all that interested in has always been a challenge,” he says. “My own taste doesn’t really matter and there’s always something to be learned by doing something different. On the other hand there just aren’t a lot of options out there and sometimes you’ve got to earn a buck.”
Growing up on the Howth Peninsula in north County Dubin, he says he was always destined to pick up a guitar “It must’ve been something in the air,” he muses. “It’s remarkable how many people came out of that local scene. There was Rocky De Valera, Joey Cashman (Pogues), Gerry Leonard (Hinterland, Bowie) and Steve Wickham (Waterboys). St. Fintans High School was a hub of sorts there was always concerts – U2 played there as Feedback and Roddy Doyle went there too.”
He was given a guitar for his 13th birthday, at his own insistence, as he recalls. “I was adamant that I had to have a guitar,” he laughs.” I got this nylon-stringed model from McCullough Piggott’s. And there was this guy – Dominic Tobin – who was a renowned guitar player and teacher around the Howth/Sutton area. He had a vast repertoire and he gave me a good grounding. Suddenly, I was doing blues, country-picking and some quasi-classical things that, looking back on it, were quite complicated at the time. He tried to get me to sing but I had a major block about it. So all my energy went into guitar playing.”
Brady came of age as a musician around the time that punk changed the perception of what a guitar player’s role in a band should be. It suited his style perfectly, as he elaborates. “I wasn’t a big fan of rock as such and I didn’t really like Deep Purple or Led Zeppelin. I liked Rory Gallagher – he had a bit of a swing to him and I loved Dr Feelgood too. But I think I finally ‘got it’ when I heard a song called ‘I’m Bugged’ by XTC, on John Peel’s radio show. Then I got into that whole angular thing with bands like Gang of Four, Talking Heads and Television but I liked Stevie Wonder and funk music too.”
In the early 1980s he played with Howth outfit Deaf Actor, which featured future In Tua Nua members, Paul Byrne, Jack Dublin and Steve Wickham. He joined a later incarnation of The Blades and stayed for Paul Cleary’s subsequent outfit The Partisans – a period he says might just be the highlight of his career. “It was unrivalled in terms of my experience of playing gigs,” he says. “It was such a phenomenon in Ireland at the time and the audiences were so committed. The band and audience was almost at one with each other. I’ve never quite experienced that same feeling since.”
Brady would go on to play on The Commitments soundtrack as well as touring with the film’s star, Andrew Strong and with a live version of the fictional band. His playing reached even bigger live audiences when he was asked to deputise for Corrs guitarist Anto Drennan.
“That started when I got a call asking me if I’d like to go to Australia with The Corrs for two months,” he recalls. “It’s really what it’s all about for professional musicians. It’s a very unusual life – you’re staying in five-star hotels, you’re paid well, and your expenses are looked after.”
He spent a year on the road with The Corrs. However, he reveals that he found the life of a paid session player with a pop group creatively limiting.
“The Corrs were pop music at the time and obviously it was important that the record was replicated as much as possible on stage. To be honest, I found it a bit alienating and by the end of it all I thought, this is nothing to do with the reason why I started playing in the first place. And I say that with no disrespect to The Corrs, who did an extraordinary thing and I saw at first hand just how much of sacrifice they had to make to get to that level. They were a real eye-opener for me in that sense, in that they worked so hard and went out and did what their management thought was right for their success.”
Over the past few years he has toured and recorded with the hugely successful Jerry Fish and the Mudbug Club. But he has recently turned to production and now runs Phonic Studios located in the centre of Dublin sharing a premises with Optophonic – a video editing facility run by Paul Byrne, his old Deaf Actor bandmate. He is passionate about recording and feels strongly that too many bands are intimidated by the process.
“A lot of the time what happens is that the recording apparatus is imposed on bands/artist immediately. So you hear this click-track and the drummer is told right away that he’s not playing in time, There’s what I call the ‘tyranny of the grid’ (points to waveforms on a Pro-tools screen). These blue lines are the beats and it’s like a clock. It can be useful depending on the kind of music but to me there’s much more to it than that. I’m interested in getting people to play without click tracks. We make a noise together and that’s the aesthetic – it’s not about how close it is to this grid. It’s about setting a groove and a dynamic for the song. It’s not about staring at a screen. That’s my way of doing it.”
He is currently working on new material with former Revenant Stephen Ryan while another recent project involved helming the forthcoming debut album by Audiokiss – a band that includes yet another former Deaf Actor band-mate, Jack Dublin.
“That worked out really well,” he says. “Audiokiss are a kind of songwriting vehicle and Jack and Siobhan [Mahon, vocalist] and Rob [Campbell, drummer] know well the importance of the roll of the producer. I was able to take the songs and work with them, getting the best out of them. It’s a process – there’s no ego involved. It’s the job. It’s about making it better, It’s also great fun and everybody understands you’re trying to make a record.”

www.phonicstudios.com