Snacks Appeal

“Are my eyes different colours?” laughs Ham Sandwich singer Niamh Farrell in a manner that suggests she’s heard this question several thousand times before. “Yeah, one’s green and the other’s brown. I’ve got a bit of a David Bowie thing going on!”

She does indeed. Sipping iced water in the Heuston Station bar where we meet, the black-haired, elfin 27-year-old is in good form. “It’s a real mixed bag,” she says of the Meath band’s just-released, and as it happens very fine, sophomore album, White Fox. “Podge (McNamee) and I did most of the lyrics together. It’s great because we almost understand where the other one is coming from.
“Like on the song ‘Ants’, Podge wrote that specifically about something that happened to him, and I wrote the words to the chorus (“Dealing in confined emotions/ I can’t breathe/ You hope to start over/ You hope to survive”). And almost immediately he said, ‘This fits perfectly with what I was trying to say’. We’ve known each other so long that we have that connection.”
The band began recording White Fox almost immediately after the untimely death of their manager Derek Nally last July. They heard the devastating news from their PR man Stevo Berube. “We were on the way to rehearsals when Stevo rang and said, ‘I’ve some really bad news’. It was the last thing we expected. We were all in complete shock. It was just so sudden. Before Derek passed away we had booked into this studio to start recording, and straight after his funeral we went into studio. It was really tough for the first few days. We were waiting for him to ring. He was unbelievable for us.”
Three months earlier, bassist John Moore had departed the fold. “He left to concentrate on other things. It was a bit of a shock – but after he left we released the single ‘The Naturist’ in early May, and we just thought, ‘We have to do this album, it’s now or never!’"
Although they currently have a temporary bassist for live shows, producer Karl Odlum played on the album. “He was producing and he’s an amazing bass player as well, so it made sense. He produced our first album (Carry The Meek) and knows us so well at this stage. He’s not afraid to come up with ideas and he knows when to take a step back. It was great having his input."
While Odlum undoubtedly deserves some of the credit, in the end the album is a triumph for Ham Sandwich. With Niamh and Podge sharing vocals, they have an unique balance, and a sensibility which is utterly their own.
“We did this album in record time," Niamh says. "Everything from writing and recording to getting the CD done up and mastered, in three months. The recording time was tough towards the end and everybody’s brain was melted. There were a lot of tears on my part.”
Speaking of tears, Farrell has hit the headlines a couple of times for non-music related activities. In June 2008, unaware even that she was pregnant, she gave birth to a baby boy. It was an extraordinary story, but one with a happy ending. “Oscar’s great," she tells me. "He’s really into music. He has all these little tiny guitars and stuff. When I’m going out the door to play a gig, he always goes, ‘Mama singing! Mama singing!’”
Somewhat less happily, later that same year she was arrested and ultimately tried on charges of stealing €14.000 over a period of time from her former employers at BT2. Fortunately, she came through it all relatively unscathed – and far wiser.
“I made a huge mistake,” she admits. “It’s something that I think about every day. And I’m very, very lucky to have the family and friends that I have around me. They helped me through it. All credit to them, especially the lads in the band. They were unbelievable – and they still are.
“Once it was out there, it was a real weight off my shoulders because I could finally talk to people about it. And people could help me. I’d been carrying it all myself and it was unbelievably stressful.
“Everybody makes mistakes," she adds, "whether it’s a small one or a bloody gigantic one. But at the end of the day, you’ve only got one life and you have to get on with it. I now know that if I ever need somebody to talk to or anything, that somebody’s gonna be there for me. That’s an amazing thing to have.”
All in the past. With that unpleasantness firmly behind her, Farrell is concentrating again on her musical career. Ignoring superstar advice, and conscious that in the long run band names have a way of shaping themselves to the perception of the music, she has no time for the notion that the band's moniker might work against them.
“Our drummer Ollie met Bono backstage somewhere and told him he was in a band called Ham Sandwich. Bono just laughed and said, ‘You should probably think of changing your name!’," she jokes. “We did go through a period of thinking of changing it, but then you have to go through the whole thing of ‘So and So, formerly known as Ham Sandwich’ until people then cop-on to your new name. But how long does that take? So we figured we might as well keep it.”
All things considered it was the right move. When you can make a record as good as White Fox, nothing else really matters. Ham Sandwich are back in business. And Niamh Farrell is keen as mustard to succeed. And you know what? She and her band mates deserve to...

White Fox is out now on The Route 109A Recording Company label. Catch them on November 30 in The Workman's Club, Dublin as part of the Jagermeister Freezer Sessions.