Appearing on the cover of Hot Press has meant a great deal to a huge number of talented, often iconic artists down through the years. But forget the prospect of bigger gigs, street recognition and something to tell the grandchildren, and let’s go one better. For 17-year-old Walkinstown resident Katie Laffan, who is in fifth year in school, it means missing her French orals – I think we have a result, in more ways than one.
The day after she received the welcome bombshell that she had prevailed in the Big Break competition, presented by Hot Press and supported by ALCATEL ONE TOUCH, Laffan is enjoying a day’s break from school in HP HQ. Well, I say “enjoying” in the loosest sense. In between being snapped by Graham Keogh and filming a Storeroom Session, she has to be interviewed by yours truly, which apparently can be just as daunting a prospect as having your French teacher stare you down when the two of you just know that you haven’t done your homework.
I start our conversation with questions that any guidance counsellor would be proud of. Does she know what she’s going to do when she finishes her Leaving Cert next year? Katie replies by telling me, like many a feisty 17-year-old,
that she really can’t wait to get out of the education system.
“School’s not something I excel at,” she grins. “Music is.”
You can say that again. The young multi-instrumentalist and songwriter has just fended off stiff competition from literally thousands of acts, including many superb, very well-known bands, to finish at the top of the “rising Irish act” mountain by winning The Big Break.
“My dad doesn’t believe me, still!” she smiles. ‘I honestly didn’t expect it at all. What was I doing in the top five? Then when I got it, I was like, ‘Oh God! Amazing!’”
What spurred her to enter in the first place?
“I’d buy Hot Press quite a bit of course,” she laughs, “but I remember I got that issue in particular because Bressie was on the cover. Anyway, my mam spotted the competition in it and told me to throw my song in there to see what happened. And what happened was... I won it!”
She grins again. You can tell how pleased and excited she is. but she is also remarkably unfazed, taking it all in her stride in a way that belies her youth. She gives her mother a lot of the credit for her emergence as a talent to be seriously reckoned with.
“My mam always wanted me to play an instrument,” she explins. “We all had to do something: we weren’t allowed to sit at home doing nothing. The first instrument I was into was the tin whistle, when I was 12, but I left that behind when I was going into First Year.”
The next move came as an act of rebellion!
“My mam was making me go to a completely different school for secondary and I absolutely hated her for it. So when she told me I had to pick up another instrument, I thought I’d pick the two most awful instruments. I told her: ‘It’s either the saxophone or the drums!’ I ended up with drums, and I’m still doing it six years on.”
Of the Soundcloud material Laffan has posted thus far under her alternative ‘SomeYoungOne’ moniker, there’s some confessional pop (with ‘boy-girl’ teenage concerns), an infectious slice of lover’s rock in the form of ‘Bubbly’ that has hit writtn all over it, and an impressive re-imagining of The Pussycat Dolls’ ‘Don’t Cha’.
“I sent that one to my grandad and he was just like ‘Okay... put it away!’” she roars laughing.
Interestingly, reggae is Katie’s true passion.
“I love Bob Marley,” she says. “I don’t know if you’ve heard ‘Bubbly’, but I love the loud bass on that, I love that in songs. Do you know Bobby McFerrin? The ‘Don’t Worry, Be Happy’ guy? Well, I saw him live recently and I’m just in love with his stuff. He does a lot of improvisation. He’s been an inspiration.”
Later, her mother will talk about being dragged to a Bobby McFerrin gig by Katie, and how she marveled at how “mesmerised” Katie was by this 63-year-old New Yorker in full unpredictable flight. Not what you’d expect from most teens. Katie is anything but conventional, citing Sting as another favourite.
“My drum teacher got me into him,” she explains. “What I like best Sting is that he’d go from ‘Roxanne’, a big rock song, to something like ‘Walking On The Moon’. That’s great. He’s
so versatile.”
He even recorded a full album on which he played the lute!
“That medieval stuff? Ha! I really wanted to go see Sting when he was in Cork. I couldn’t believe he was playing. But my dad wouldn’t let me go to Cork on my own.”
As for her own live shows, it’s early doors. There were prior attempts at forming a world-beating group, naturally.
“When I was about 12... Actually I might have been 14 – I can’t lie and say I was 12, can I? We had a band called 3point2 – there were three girls and two boys. We thought we were going to be famous! We were horrible. We got together for a talent show and played The Jonas Brothers, songs like that. We were really young.”
Set to play Dublin as part of her Big Break prize, Katie admits that this will be her first solo show.
“I’m one of those people that hides behind another person. I’d be in a band but I’d never sing. I’d play the drums. Still, no bother (laughs). If I have to do something, I do it. I’d probably be first up to do karaoke anyway!”
While she may be a neophyte in live terms, Katie’s recorded work is highly sophisticated: her ability to construct a polished tune at home is truly extraordinary for someone so young. She’s been producing her own stuff for a long time – and it shows.
“See in my house, we always had computers,” she explains. “We’re a really nerdy family, we all know computers inside out and always have the latest iMac. Then I found Garageband and decided, ‘That’s it. This is what I want to do’.”
Katie got a part-time job to fund her (music production) habit.
“I was working in a shop around the corner. Once I got the laptop and Logic Pro, I was like, ‘You can let me go now!’. I recorded ‘Soldier’ first when I was 13 or 14. The original of it was rotten but this year I started recording it again. I changed the melody around, added a little bit more into it. Then it took off on Soundcloud.”
‘Soldier’ has racked up an impressive 2,164 plays on Soundcloud. ‘Bubbly’, posted after winning The Big Break has already surpassed that, hitting 3,146 at the time of writing. Again, it was her mother who urged her to finish what she’d started. But it’s not all one-way traffic. Her mother later tells me that, before Christmas, their house was broken into and the money Katie had saved for the laptop was stolen. Three-months later she had pulled enought money together to buy it. Her family are quick to talk up her determination.
She has the dreaded Leaving Certificate looming next year. After that, her heart is set on pursuing a career in music. A sound recording course may be calling.
“Having said that,” she concludes, surveying her surroundings, “being an artist seems pretty cool as well!”
And she smiles that winning smile. The career behind the scenes looks like it’s going to have
to wait.