At Home With... Nina Hynes

Some artists look upon their home base as a bastion of activity, a place to retire to for a social-cum-musical session after a gig or a night out, while others want their nest to be a haven of respite from the hazards of touring and the pressure of gigging and dealing with the media.

Nina Hynes sees her current domain in a bedroom in a friend’s house in the Dublin suburb of Fairview as a mix of those two options. Although she has moved a lot over the years, including France and Donegal, she’s now living on the other side of Dublin Bay from her original home in Dun Laoghaire.
“I grew up in a very active house in a family of ten children, but my home also tends to be a place I go to for solace as well as a place where I do a lot of my work. I’ve lived on my own a lot, so I do like to slip off to my own world now and then,” she explained.
Unlike most musicians, Nina doesn’t have a large record collection.
“I rarely buy records. When I’m alone I never listen to music, and I rely on friends to introduce me to different types of music. But the ones I have are an eclectic mix, ranging from The Muppet Movie to Minnie Ripperton to Joseph Arthur. I’m more into buying vinyl, so perhaps I’m just a romantic. There’s more of a ritual attached to putting on a vinyl record, and the sound of vinyl is also warmer, although people give me CDs.”
Nina doesn’t like music to be used for background purposes, preferring to sit down and listen to it or not at all.
“The last piece of music I listened to was with David Kitt’s partner Poppy last night and we listened to an album by Nancy Sinatra and Lee Hazelwood.”
The vinyl preference might be related to her growing up in a musical house, where, although nobody played an instrument, they had a huge collection of records of all kinds.
“We also had a harp, violins, guitars and a baby grand piano at home. We were all encouraged to play music, but I was the only one who really got into it.”
Not surprisingly for someone who is currently studying sound engineering, she is very much into sound systems “although you wouldn’t think so to look at my equipment which is quite lo-fi. I’ve become quite obsessed with the technology and how best to use it. But I also love listening to music on old phonograms and old record players that sound terrible but have a certain quaint quality.”
Because she’s living for the moment in somebody’s else’s house, Hynes is careful of the type of music she plays and the volume she plays it at, but promises herself “When I move house I’ll be setting up my own studio in my bedroom and I’m really excited about that.”
Radio is often how many musicians discover new music and keep pace with public tastes and trends, if only for the sake of their own careers, but Hynes is an exception here too.
“I’d listen to the radio if I had one. But the last one I had broke. It would come on for a short while and then fade out. But when I have a radio again the programmes I’d listen to would be like Donal Dineen on Today FM.”
As regards television viewing, Nina goes through phases where she watches a lot or doesn’t watch at all. For instance, she doesn’t watch soaps, is a big fan of Curb Your Enthusiasm but never saw Dave Fanning’s The Last Broadcast. She doesn’t have a credit card, mainly because she fears she’d not be able to control her spending, and doesn’t download music from her computer.
Her attitude to people smoking in her room is flexible.
“Particularly if I was going to sleep I’d prefer them not to, although if somebody really wanted to I’d say ok.”
Home is where she writes. “Nearly every time I pick up an instrument I write a song, but I’m not very disciplined about it. I like to work on my computer creating beats and changing sounds, but when I move into my own house I’ll play my piano a lot.”
She has a considerable collection of books and confesses to reading up to four at a time, both fiction and non-fiction.
“When I was reading The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by a Japanese writer I was also reading Tropic Of Capricorn by Henry Miller as well as one on sound engineering and one on musical notation.”
But is there a favourite object that Nina Hynes will always want to have close by her no matter where she lives?
“Yes. I always like to have a hat, even though I don’t always wear one. In 2002 I got an earring and I’ve never taken it out in case I lose it. I bought it when I was in Mexico on my own when I was at my lowest. It has a religious touch with a little medal on it. It represents the strength I got from that trip and it’s a memento of that period.”

Photos by Cathal Dawson.