At home with Brendan Murphy

We all dream about quitting the rat race, moving out of the city and settling somewhere, rural and unspoilt. For most of us it remains just that – a dream. But not for Brendan Murphy, frontman with The Four Of Us, who moved from Dublin to the seaside village of Carlingford, County Louth just over three years ago.

“I’d been living in Sandymount for six years prior to that and I started doing what most of my friends were doing, which was looking for a property,” he explains. “But I wanted a house that was bigger than the one I was in and hopefully one with a sea view which I’ve always wanted. The prices were crazy anywhere on the coast south of Dublin and I discovered I was going to be in Wexford before I could get one at a decent price.
“A friend of mine, a lawyer said to me, ‘you’re mad in the head’ why don’t you look north of Dublin? He told me they’re building a motorway as far as Dundalk and house prices would probably start rising once it’s finished. The moment he said it I thought of Carlingford. It’s always been a beautiful area, this picturesque village nestled at the foot of the mountains overlooking the sea. We used to come down on bike rides to this area when we were kids.”
Murphy and his then girlfriend (now his wife) discovered there were some new houses going up in the village and they high-tailed it up the N1 to check it out.
“We saw this house and fell in love with it instantly,” he says. “A week later we closed the deal. It’s a three-bedroomed detached house of 2,000 square feet, set up on a height at the bottom of a mountain overlooking the harbour. It was still at the foundation stage which allowed us to decide on everything from the painting to the design of the kitchen.
“’ve never regretted it even though property in Carlingford was always perceived as being expensive. I’d missed one property boat in Dublin and I wasn’t going to miss another.”
So far so good. But surely anyone involved in the music business needs to be at the heart of the action, not stuck somewhere in a remote village?
“It’s not as much of a difference as people might think,” he insists. “I know people who live in Dublin who drive home from work at rush hour and it takes them over an hour. I can be back in Dublin in not much more than an hour whenever I want.
“But yeah some people I knew were quite surprised that I’d moved out of Dublin. But then a lot of them came down to visit and within a year of me moving, two of my closest friends had also bought houses in the area – one in Carlingford and one in nearby Greenore.
“I love it here; I’m five minutes from the centre of village with everything from the supermarket, to the post office and the pub close at hand. My affections were always split between the north and south so it’s the perfect place for me
“It’s definitely a healthier lifestyle apart from the fact that the pub is only five minutes away,” he adds. “There’s a beach nearby where I try to walk or go for run there whenever I can. And there’s a Four Seasons hotel which has just opened and they’ve got a gym and a pool.”
One of Ireland’s most enduring bands The Four of Us have been around since the late ’80s with Brendan and his brother Declan at the heart of the group. Known for brilliantly melodic songs such as ‘Mary’, ‘Drag My Bad Name Down’ and ‘She Hits Me’ among others, their live shows are never less than compelling. Right now they’re in the midst of an Irish tour in support of their most recent album, Fingerprints.
“At the minute I’m in Dublin two or three days a week,” Murphy says “We’re working with EMI doing promo and we’re off to Germany soon for some dates, I like the idea of doing a combination of disciplines. I don’t want to take the fun out of it – I couldn’t be getting up five days a week doing the same thing. We tend to go through a couple of months of writing, a couple of months of recording and then there’s the live show.”
When not writing or performing Murphy chills out to his favourites records or watches a movie.
“Records are important to you when you hit a certain age and one of my favourite albums of all time is Some Girls by the Rolling Stones. It was their reaction to punk and it was quite raucous for them with songs like ‘Respectable’ taking the piss out of punk.”
Another long time favourite of his is Talking Heads’ Stop Making Sense. “I’d been a fan of the band since the first album. They were revolutionaries as far as I was concerned.
“Remain In Light is almost tribal and at the same time so futuristic and so anti cliché. Tom Waits’ Raindogs is another album I love that springs to mind but the one that I’ve been listening to a lot is the debut album by Kris Kristofferson. I love the use of the language on songs like, ‘For the Good Times’, ‘Help Me Make It Through The Night and ‘Sunday Morning Coming Down’.
Movies are a passion and he has a healthy collection of DVDs including Sideways, The Big Sleep, Blood Simple and Fargo to name just some.
“I’d be a bit of a movie nut and I manage to see a lot of them. I love the Cohen Brothers and the way they seem to work together. The more myself and Declan have done stuff the more you realise there is a kind shorthand we have when we’re working, a way of doing things that only siblings have.”
Pics: Greg McAteer
Fingerprints is out now on EMI