Normally, the Hot Press Xmas Summit is the epitome of festive frivolority, but with Trump in the White House, Brexit looming, the rest of the world furiously lurching to the right, and nary a week passing without another rock star death, it was an uncharacteristically somber bunch of leading Irish musical lights who’ve gathered in D2’s very fine Chelsea Drugstore for our annual chinwag.
Well, that was until a large tray of spirit-lifting, tongue-loosening drinks arrived. Prepared to cast a steely eye over the musical year that is 2016 were…
Mal Tuohy: The sharply attired and immaculately barbered lead singer and guitarist with The Riptide Movement who decamped to Texas for the recording of their Ghosts album, which subsequently earned them another Irish mega-hit.
Róisín O: When not flitting off to Iceland to shoot glacially cool videos, Danny Corona’s little sis spent the year wowing JJ Abrams and his A-List mates in LA, picking up Woman of the Year awards and playing some of the biggest gigs of her life.
Áine Cahill: The Cavan conveyor-belt of prodigiously gifted teenagers doesn’t end with The Strypes. Championed at Glastonbury by the BBC, her extremely good 2016 ended with Ms. C appearing at 3Arena as part of the 2fm Xmas Ball, which raised in excess of €440,000 for the ISPCC.
Andy Kavanagh: Past winners of a Hot Press ‘Most Promising’ gong, Keywest proved that they’ve now most definitely arrived with September’s chart-topping Joyland album. Their singer learned his rabble-rousing trade busking à la the Riptide boys on the streets of Dublin.
Vinny Casey: Part of the Workman’s Club management team and guitarist with Overhead, The Albatross who stunned at the Electric Picnic and then preceded to sell-out Vicar St. on the back of their Learning To Growl album.
Steven King & Kevin Keane: Two-thirds of the rock ‘n’ roll powerhouse that is north county Dublin’s Fangclub. Signed last year to Universal Ireland, they’ve clocked up serious mileage opening for the likes of Twin Atlantic and have their debut album primed and ready to go in 2017.
Stuart Clark: Winner of the 2016 Magazines Ireland Best Hack Award – as in America, widespread voter fraud is suspected – Hot Press’ resident Nigel Farage-hating Remoaner will once again be marshaling today’s deliberations.
Stuart: Okay, an easy one to get you warmed up; your albums and gigs – both played and attended – of the year?
Áine: After doing my own Electric Picnic set, I waited in the rain to see Lana Del Rey. I managed to elbow my way down to the front of the stage and held her hand; that was the cherry on top of the weekend for me! Record-wise, Gaga’s just put Joanne out and she’s my queen. I was a bit worried about her ‘going country’ but it’s really good. I also loved her standing up very vocally to Trump.
Stuart: Which is a subject we’ll return to in a moment. How did your big Glastonbury break come about?
Áine: We were about to leave Body & Soul when somebody we knew from the BBC emailed us saying, “We’re going to come and see you at Glastonbury”, which we were going over to for the full week. So they did and we got asked to perform ‘Black Dahlia’ as part of their live TV coverage. What they didn’t tell me was that there was also a little interview; I nearly died when they asked me a question!
Stuart: I thought you looked very composed…
Áine: Outwardly maybe, but inwardly I was shitting myself! It must have gone okay because all the way back from Glastonbury to Wales I was getting telephone calls from radio stations. I also got a new manager out of it, Neil Ferris, who’s worked with massive names like Depeche Mode, David Bowie and the Rolling Stones. That one TV appearance has made a huge difference. I didn’t get to play in Hollywood, though!
Róisín: Yeah, that was amazing! I thought it was going to be one of those business parties where people are talking over you – you’re background music, basically - but Steven Spielberg was right in front of us with his phone recording the gig. JJ Abrams was next to him with all the Star Trek lads. Snow Patrol were playing after us and James Corden got up and sang with them. James was the honorary Irishman of the night, so he came up and gave a big speech. He’s actually an amazing singer who’s done musicals and all these other things. There were two-part harmonies in that Snow Patrol song, and he nailed them! I saw this American funk band, Vulfpeck, in London who were unbelievable. They’re going to be massive in 2016. It’s a toss up between their The Beautiful Game and Bell X1’s Arms for my album of the year.
Mal: Seeing Little Green Cars was a standout for me; we’re all big fans. I was also blown away by Ben Watt from Everything But The Girl who played in Whelan’s with Bernard Butler. Headlining the Olympia this year was a big one for us. Album-wise, I really like Applewood Road by this Australian singer-songwriter called Emily Barker.
Andy: We opened last night in Belfast for Bastille, which was great and also quite strange because for once I was sober! You hear horror stories about headliners messing your sound up or only allowing you to use a postage stamp-sized bit of the stage, but them and their crew couldn’t have been nicer.
Stephen: We did two UK tours with Pulled Apart By Horses who are one of the most intense bands I’ve ever seen, and Twin Atlantic who I’m also a massive fan of. It felt like we were bunking in every night for free! Their light show is just insane! Twin Atlantic’s GLA album is awesome too.
Stuart: And produced by Irishman Garret ‘Jacknife’ Lee…
Vinny: Being the closing band at Electric Picnic was a big standout. We couldn’t believe that so many people braved the rain and the sleet to see us. Hot Chip’s Alexis Taylor did a solo show in the Workman’s Club with just him and a piano, which was incredible. Album of the year has to be Radiohead’s Moon Shaped Pool.
Stuart: Anyone manage to get tickets for their 3Arena show in June?
Mass chorus: No!!!!!
Róisín: I did! I went on at 8am, hit the button and got them straight away, which put me in a minority of one among my friends.
Stuart: It was deeply depressing to see Radiohead tickets immediately pop up on secondary sites for €500 a piece. Should the practice be criminalised?
Áine: It’s turned into a business for people, hasn’t it? Buying tickets for shows they’ve no intention of going to and either sticking them up on eBay themselves or selling them on to one of those agencies. I’d definitely make that a criminal offence.
Róisín: People should call it what it is, which is touting. Radiohead said they were going to stop it by putting people’s names on them and then asking for ID.
Stuart: I’ve been told that if the name and the ID don’t match up, they definitely won’t be getting in, which might be the slap in the face people need to stop buying from touts.
Kevin: Glastonbury really have it sussed. They make you submit a photo which is printed on to the ticket, and if you can’t go can only be sold back to them. It’s a bit tough love, but if you buy a Radiohead ticket for €500 or whatever and are stopped at the door you probably won’t go that route again.
Stuart: I have to admit to hitting the whiskey hard when at five o’clock in the morning it became evident that Hillary’s presidential goose was cooked. How did the rest of you deal with Trump’s shock victory?
Áine: I was on the tea rather than the whiskey, but was just as distraught. I had a Google search, which I was refreshing every two minutes to see if the vote had changed. At one stage, she was ahead by 25, and then two seconds later he was way up there. As soon as it was clear he was going to win, I was like, “Oh my God!” The day after you had kids in school shouting at their Mexican classmates, “You’ve got to leave, build the wall…” It was disgusting.
Andy: They’re a bunch of mad bastards over there, aren’t they? I can’t get my head around it. It makes you look at House Of Cards and think, “If Trump says, ‘Grab ‘em by the pussy!’ and still becomes President, how comes it took Kevin Spacey so long to get to the White House?’” If you had Trump as a character in a TV drama, people would think him too far fetched.
Róisín: Because we’re all quite liberal and tend to follow like-minded people on Twitter and Facebook, we didn’t realise the support Trump had. Hopefully, the more outrageous stuff, like the wall and banning Muslims from the US, was just him telling voters what they wanted to hear.
Stuart: The slight silver lining is that four more states legalised recreational cannabis. Should we do the same here?
Andy: They should do it all over the world. My view is legalise everything because then it would eliminate organised crime. Tax it and spend the money on stuff like the health service.
Róisín: It’d be safer…
Áine: Tobacco’s worse anyway.
Stuart: Are you all prepared to stick your head above the parapet and actively campaign for Repeal The 8th?
Róisín: Definitely.
Vinny: We’ve worn the jumpers on stage to show support and would definitely do a gig if asked.
Andy: There’s a lot of support for it among our age group, but there are still a lot of older people who need convincing. I think you do that by calmly presenting your case rather than shouting, “You’re a bigot!” at them. All that’s going to do is make them more entrenched in their views.
Áine: It seems to be more of a Young vs. Old thing than the Same Sex Marriage referendum. I actually think it’ll get quite nasty.
Stuart: It appeared to be almost a legal requirement this year to pick some fancy location to record your album or shoot you video in. Vinny, how did Overhead, The Albatross end up in the Czech Republic?
Vinny: That’s where we wrote our album, initially, more years ago than I’d like to remember. We basically just packed up the whole studio, jumped on a plane and spent three months in a rented house in a little forest by the side of a lake.
Róisín: Sounds unreal!
Kevin: Sounds a bit like a horror film to me!
Vinny: Hehehe! It was the most beautiful place I’ve ever been to. It was sunny when we arrived and then in no time it started snowing. It was so cheap over there. We had no connection with the outside world, except this one café with dodgy hi-fi in a town that was half-an-hour away. It was the most un-rock-and-roll-thing of all time. We’d get up early in the morning, eat really healthy, go for swims in the lake and stuff like that and spend the rest of the day writing music. There was nobody ringing up saying, “Vinny, are you coming to the pub with us?” The answer to which would’ve been, “Yeah, see you in five minutes!” if we’d recorded in Dublin.
Stuart: The Riptides went for the rural idyll as well, but in Texas where James Vincent McMorrow had previously recorded his Post-Tropical album.
Mal: It’s a studio in El Paso called Sonic Ranch, which is on a 23,000 acre farm with its own reservoir. You’re recording in the middle of nowhere, right on the Mexican border. The guy who owns it is a massive music fan, and works within your budget.
Stuart: Go back next year and you’ll probably find a bloody wall there…
Mal: I hope not. We were at Sonic Ranch for five weeks, free grub, living on the grounds, and including the flights and everything it was the same cost as recording the album here. I’d thoroughly recommend it.
Stuart: Róisín, you donned the snuggliest-looking parka I’ve ever seen for your Icelandic sojourn.
Róisín: It was summer but still feckin’ freezing. It was John Broe, who co-wrote ‘Better This Way’ with me and also does my videos that came up with the idea. All I had to do was walk and look moody in front of these icebergs, volcanoes, cliffs and waterfalls. We had a drone for the aerial shots, which would have previously cost you tens of thousands to film.
Stuart: Lads, I ought to point out that we have in our midst an Irish Tatler Woman of The Year award-winner… Did you get a frock?
Róisín: Yeah, I went out at the last minute and bought a big red one. I ended up in Whelan’s with it afterwards much to the amusement of the regulars and the bar staff! It wasn’t just entertainment, it was journalism and sports; I was completely star-struck because the Irish paralympians were there. There are some very embarrassing selfies of us with our awards on our heads.
Stuart: Of course, you have some competition from that paragon of femininity, Bono. Mal, would you accept a Woman of the Year award if it were bestowed upon you?
Mal: If it were bestowed upon me, yes. We won an Eric Award in 2014. It was made out of airboard, so our guitarist was going to use it to insulate his attic! Bono winning Woman of the Year was a bit odd, but I can kind of see what the intention was.
Stuart: Fight Like Apes posted a very powerful Facebook message last month basically saying to their fans, “Part of the reason we’re splitting up is that you’re giving €10 a month to Spotify rather than buying our records.” What’s your take on it?
Vinny: I definitely understand where they’re coming from; it’s tough out there. I wouldn’t blame people who are probably going to your gigs and buying merch, though, for the industry’s woes.
Stuart: Anybody received a Spotify royalty cheque for more than 50¢?
Vinny: We got one for ninety quid once. First song we ever released. I was like, “Where’s that coming from?”
Andy: It’s very tough. For every million listens you make seven-and-a-half grand. And then you divide that… Spotify is the best model at the moment, but finding a direct way to get to your fans is absolutely vital. We went from a mailing-list of 2,000 to 25,000 in six months as a result of gigging. I was talking to the Bastille tour manager, and even they’re finding it tough going. A lot of the bands that you think are on life-changing money, are actually paying themselves an average wage.
Stuart: How big a deal is merch for Fangclub?
Kevin: It pays for the touring. I was on double-duty selling t-shirts on the Twin Atlantic tour, and their merch guy said the same thing: “If we were relying on ticket sales, we’d have a 60 watt bulb dangling above our heads on stage rather than this big production.”
Vinny: For us, it’s definitely always been merch. A year ago we were sleeping in the van, now we can afford accommodation. That’s progress!
Stuart: By the way, I see you had a celebrity soundman the other night…
Vinny: Oh yeah, Jay from Kodaline! He was our engineer long before he played bass for them, and filled in for our guy when he went to Iceland with Meltybrains? We said, “Jay, if things don’t start looking up for Kodaline, there’s always a gig for you here.”
Mal: We had a bit of luck with NBC’s The Today Show using ‘Get Through’ for three months. An Irish fan of ours happened to be the next-door neighbor of one of their music supervisors, which tells you how random these things are. It wasn’t huge money but it means we’ll be able to buy Christmas presents this year! When The Doors said back in the ‘60s, “We’re not going to let our song be used in car ad”, record sales were massive. They’re not now, so you have to be open to having your song on a TV show or in an ad.
Vinny: We were lucky enough to get a sync for the Bank of Ireland, which paid for our album.
Áine: A lot of people think that if you’re in the music industry you’re a millionaire. They don’t realise you’re probably earning less than them.
Vinny: Wait, you’re not all millionaires? I’m in the wrong room…
Stuart Clark: Fight Like Apes also highlighted what they felt was the lack of radio support for Irish indie bands, especially now that TXFM is no longer with us.
Steven: We were in the offices the day before they closed, and the atmosphere was terrible. Everyone at TXFM was so great to us.
Vinny: Radio stations are going through a hard time too with people streaming their music. I don’t have a radio in my apartment anymore. I no longer drive a car, so the only time I hear the radio is when I’m in shops and cafés.
Áine: The only time I listen to radio is when I’m travelling. That’s it.
Stuart: Would you guys be in favour of a quota, like they have in France and Canada, which tells stations, “33% of the music you play has to be Irish?”
Andy: I actually think Irish radio has been great in the last couple of years. I’ve a radio alarm and when it goes off in the morning, it’s normally an Irish act that’s being played. If an Irish record is good enough, it’ll get the airtime.
Stuart: Let’s name some of the Irish DJs who go above and beyond the call of duty for homegrown artists…
Everyone: Dermot & Dave!
Róisín: Fergal Darcy is amazing for Irish radio.
Áine: iRadio up near me have been incredibly supportive.
Everyone: Dan Hegarty!
Vinny: John Caddell, Joe Donnelly, Claire Beck and the rest of TXFM crew deserve an award for what they did for Irish bands. I hope they get radio gigs elsewhere because we need people like them.
Steven: Annie Mac and Huw Stephens have both been really supportive of us on their BBC shows.
Stuart: Did I hear right that the Riptide Movement are moving to Germany?
Mal: Yeah, we’re thinking of doing a year out there. It’s a great spot to tour. They all buy CDs, they all buy the merch and follow you round like a football team. Ireland’s brilliant too, but it’s an 8-10 date circuit as opposed to a 30-40 one. Germany also feeds into Switzerland and Austria, so that’s almost a hundred million people to try and win over.
Róisin: I supported The Coronas on their last tour there and then went back and did my own dates, which went really well.
Stuart: Does Danny switch into protective big bro mode when you’re out on the road together?
Róisín: Let him try! No, the three-and-a-half-year age difference was significant when we were younger, but now it’s nothing. He’s protective but not in a, “What are you doing talking to my sister?” way. We’re at the point of being good mates who go out drinking together. I also did support in Germany for Ryan Sheridan who’s becoming a bit of a star there. Fans arrive at whatever the ‘doors open’ time is on the ticket and watch the opening act. It’s such a bizarre change from Ireland where everybody’s glued to the bar until the headliners start.
Stuart: Most of you have been in bands since your early teens, but Áine, you only copped that you could sing two years ago. How were you so blissfully unaware of your talents?
Áine: All I was focused on as a kid was sports and the GAA. Even when I got into music seriously, my parents said, “No, be a football trainer!” Exactly why I can’t remember, but at 17/18 I asked Santa for a piano and began teaching myself how to play it. There’s one moment I’ll never forget; I was in Leaving Cert year and there was a piano in the concert hall where we used to go for break. I started singing Adele and everyone went, “Oooh my God!” From then on, I was like, “OK, maybe I can sing.”
Kevin: It’s funny how it’s that way in the country. I’m from Kerry and my whole life was just GAA and football until I got a soft tissue injury in my knee and was out for six weeks. Bored senseless, I picked up my dad’s guitar and looked the tablature up on the internet.
Áine: Even in Cavan, the football players are like Gods walking around.
Stuart: There’s no need to rank them in terms of how upsetting they were, but did any of this year’s rock star deaths strike a particular chord with you?
Róisín: His music aside, I just thought Bowie was a lovely man and so caring of people. Hearing Hunky Dory for the first-time was a real “Wow!” moment.
Áine: Neil, my manager, was very upset because he used to be Bowie’s radio plugger and knew him quite well. I’ve always loved ‘Starman’ and ‘Fame’.
Stuart: Getting to interview Bowie in 1999 before he played the Hot Press HQ Hall of Fame, now The Academy, more than made up for the ten fruitless hours I spent standing outside London’s Claridge Hotel in 1977 hoping to get his autograph. What’s your most wanton act of fandom?
Áine: I camped outside the Aviva to get front-row for Gaga. I got my spot, but really badly needed to go to the toilet, so it was a win/lose situation!
Steven: I skipped school and got a plane to Nottingham to see Lamb Of God in a tiny club called The Bodega.
Vinny: I don’t do the fan thing much, but I got a picture with Steve Davies at Castlepalooza. He was playing snooker and DJ-ing at the same time. It was so good!
Mal: I camped overnight in 1997 to get tickets for Oasis in The Point. I’m a massive Liam Gallagher fan, but the night I went to see them he was supposedly sick and Noel was singing instead. I was like, “What the fuck!” I actually got to say it to him when he was playing here with Beady Eye. “Thanks for making me stay up all night, Liam!” He just laughed.
Róisín: I was supposed to be going on a date in Dingle, but left the fella sitting in the bar when I heard Declan O’Rourke was playing down the road in McCarthy’s. I still go, “I love you, Declan!” whenever I see him having a drink in Whelan’s.