The Full Walking On Cars Interview

Irish indie rockers Walking On Cars have sold truckloads of albums in recent times, and played in front of hundreds of thousands of fans. But the Kerry five-piece still aren’t the most famous residents of their native Dingle.

In fairness, it’s difficult to compete with the longstanding international reputation of Fungie the dolphin. The suspiciously long-lived aquatic mammal even has its own statue in the town centre (though for obvious reasons, Fungie has never actually laid his beady little eyes on it).

“I was actually out with Fungie last week,” singer Patrick Sheehy says, in a soft, barely discernible Kerry accent. “He was nice and calm. I nearly touched him. I was in this little punt, going about three knots, and he was floating right next to us. It was fucking cool, man.”

Any chance he’ll be immortalised in a future Walking On Cars song?

“We’ll see, we’ll see,” he laughs. “You never know.”

The twenty-something singer and main songwriter – known as “Pa” to his nearest and dearest – is holed up in an isolated rented house a few kilometers outside his hometown. The last time Hot Press met him face-to-face was back in January during the Eurosonic festival in Groningen, the day after Jools Holland had presented the band with a European Border Breakers Award (EBBA), at a widely televised awards ceremony.

Their EBBA gong was thoroughly deserved. Every year, ten European artists receive the award to recognize their success in countries other than their own. This success is measured by a combination of airplay, sales, live performances in Europe, and their position in the European Border Breakers Charts, which are compiled by Radiomonitor (who rank tracks from around Europe, based on airplay abroad). Previous high profile winners include Adele, Mumford & Sons, Disclosure, Damien Rice, Kodaline, The Cranberries, SOAK, The Script and Hozier.

Not bad company to be keeping. What’s interesting about Walking On Cars, however, is that it all seemed to happen so quickly for them. True, they first formed in 2010, but the response to their debut album has been nothing short of phenomenal. Their pulsating, cinematic offering, Everything This Way, was released on Virgin EMI early in 2016. Named ‘Best Album of 2016’ by Apple Music and iTunes Ireland, it was the only Irish album to be certified double platinum in Ireland last year.

Worldwide sales are currently in excess of 250,000, with the album going top five in seven countries and top twenty in a further 23 in the iTunes chart. Their hit single ‘Speeding Cars’ has streams in the tens of millions, while its video has been viewed more than 18 million times on YouTube. It is some achievement.

“Do you know what?” Sheehy laughs. “We didn’t expect ‘Speeding Cars’ would be such a big tune. If it was down to us, it wouldn’t even have come out as a single. In fact, a few of us in the band didn’t even want it on the album. And then, in hindsight, it’s the one that made it big all around Europe. So what do we know, huh?”

That smash single included, like Fungie the Dolphin, just about everything to do with Everything This Way went swimmingly. Now, with that album’s promotional campaign just about done and dusted, Sheehy and his bandmates – Sorcha Durham (pianist), Dan Devane (lead guitarist), Paul Flannery (bass) and Evan Hadnett (drums) – have returned home to Dingle to try to dream it all up again.

“We’re back in Dingle, and we’re writing now, so it’s kind of back to basics, really,” he says. “That’s where it all started, so we’re trying to get creative and hope that it goes as well as the first record.” How far into album two are you?

“We’ve been writing, I suppose, on and off for the last six months now and I’d say we’ve definitely half of it done. But it’s just written, nothing has been recorded yet. So the truth is that it’s early days.”

“WE’VE GROWN UP AS PEOPLE”

Most smalltown bands who’ve achieved the kind of international success that Walking On Cars have experienced would have immediately decamped to the bright lights of some big European or American city. Of course, Dingle has its rock ‘n’ roll credentials in that Other Voices is filmed there. But what’s the appeal otherwise?

“What’s the appeal of Dingle?” he muses. “You know what, all our families are here and all of our friends are here. A lot of people ask us, ‘Why don’t you move to Dublin or move to London and dive into the scene a bit more?’ But when we’re off tour, we like to just be normal and chill out. So we’ve no plans to move anywhere else anytime soon. It’s just a nice place to be, here in Kerry: it’s very chilled and it’s very quiet. All the people treat us like they’ve always treated us. We’re not up on pedestals to anyone here. We’re very much just part of the community. So it’s all very normal and we like that.”

Do you find the wild Kerry countryside creatively inspiring?

“I think so, yeah,” he says. “The landscape definitely plays a part, whether we know it or not. It’s a very quiet place. It’s easy enough to find a space where nobody is going to bother you. You can hide away for a couple of days. If you were from a city, you’d have to rent a rehearsal space. Like, we have a house all year round here that we just go to and put down ideas and do a little bit of recording or whatever. So we’re kind of spoilt on that front.”

Describe an average day in the house…

“Well, we actually went to Kenmare this week, which is an hour-and-a-half over the road. We rented a little house for a few days. So yeah: what we do is get up, have breakfast, a bit of granola, a bit of yoghurt or whatever, and sit around and jam out ideas. Go through lyrics, go through ideas, and see what happens.

“We often get together – and nothing happens, do you know what I mean? We need to keep showing up, keep showing up, and eventually things get put together. You look back and go, ‘How did we even create that?’ So you keep showing up and eventually it just happens.”

Are you keeping an eye on the news and current affairs while you’re out there, or is it just a purely creative bubble, free of outside influences?

“Not really. We tend to just stay in our own little world down here. Though you cannot help but see Trump on the fucking news every day of the week. But you know, we try to keep our focus on things like our families and writing. We’re very isolated here. I suppose we do live in a bit of a bubble. It’s kind of the way we like it.”

Sometimes an item on the news will spark an idea for a song…

“Yeah, for sure,” he agrees. “I suppose doing so much travelling over the last year, we’ve grown-up as people. It’s definitely something we’ve written about in the last few months, the last year of touring. So yeah, the concepts lyrically will vary from when we were kids to the past year.”

“WE WERE ALMOST AFRAID TO DIVE IN…”

Patrick Sheehy may not have a huge interest in politics, but he does have an opinion on Kerry TD Danny Healy Rae’s recent comments on drink driving.

“He said that two or three glasses of Guinness won’t impair your driving,” he scoffs. “I think it’s ridiculous. It’s almost embarrassing. Obviously this is a huge subject in the country, and obviously alcohol hinders your ability, whether you have a pint, two pints or three pints. Some people would fall over after three pints, and some people can have five pints and drive home. But the fundamental thing is you can’t drink and drive and that’s that. Why take the risk? I mean, it’s always gonna increase the probability of having an accident if you have a drink. It’s ridiculous, really.”

Sheehy is reluctant to discuss the band’s work in progress in too much detail, but he is not exactly secretive! “We’ve got two or three songs that are completely finished,” he states. “One of them is called ‘Coldest Water’. It was written six months ago, maybe, when we were just off tour. It was one of those ones where we sat down and an hour or two later it was finished. It was a very quick process. Sometimes it could take months to put the final pieces of a song together, but this one happened very quickly.”

Can you give me a verse?

“Ha! No way, man,” he laughs. “This isn’t the sneak preview!”

Everything This Way was helmed by the MyRiot production team of Tim Bran and Roy Kerr (whose past credits include London Grammar and Richard Ashcroft). Any thoughts on who’ll be producing their sophomore album? “We haven’t really had a proper discussion yet,” he admits. “We’re possibly gonna try a few different producers. I’m not sure: do we want the whole album to be produced by one person or do we want to mix it up a little bit? It’s all to be decided, so again we’ll keep you posted. We don’t even have a working title yet. We’re literally just gathering the songs, and once we gather a few more we’ll have a fair idea which way it’s leaning.”

He might not be up for discussing the songs too much, but he will admit that they’ve been experimenting with their sound. “We had a bit of promo in Germany at the start of the year,” he reflects, “and we’ve a little bit of promo to do in France during the summer, but generally we have as much time as we need to get this right. I suppose looking back at the first album, because it was our first album, we were almost afraid to dive into the whole sound world.

“We weren’t really comfortable with it yet. We all played our individual instruments – the acoustic guitar, the electric guitar, piano, bass and drums. You know, your traditional set up. So I suppose that’s all we did for the first record. But maybe even before the end of the first record we started experimenting with other sounds. And now album two is around we’re quite comfortable with other sounds. We’ve kind of dived into the world of Logic and synths and drum machines and other stuff. So I think people aren’t going to expect what we’re actually up to.”

“AMERICA’S SUCH A BIG PLACE”

Sheehy attributes the band’s success to their strong work ethic. Once it’s the right kind of work, that is! A few years ago, when they still total unknowns, the band members all quit their day jobs to devote themselves to music full-time.

“I think initially that’s how it started,” he recalls. “We quit our jobs and actually went for it. I think that was the beginning of it. We had been kicking around it for a while, we had been writing things, but we also had our day jobs, so we couldn’t really give it everything. So we kinda sacrificed a lot at the beginning, to actually get ourselves in the mind-frame of being in a band.

“We all had this mindset that we weren’t made for normal jobs,” he continues. “We absolutely hated our jobs. Some people don’t like their jobs, but they just get on with it. They do nine-to-five and they live for the weekend, but I physically couldn’t do it anymore. I hated it. I fucking hated it! So it wasn’t even a choice, really. It was something I had to do whether I was going to be successful or not. It wasn’t for me. I just had to do something that didn’t wear my soul down every week.”

What was the job that you quit?

“Oh god, I was working as a store manager in a tile company,” he admits. “Very rock ‘n’ roll! I spent most of my days on a forklift knocking over tiles by accident. Paul and Evan were barmen. Dan was living in Australia. Sorcha was a waitress. So we kicked all that on the head.”

Dan came back from sunny Australia to join an obscure indie band in miserably wet Dingle?

“Yeah, he was living in Australia and the guitarist we had took over a pub here, so Dan knew there was a vacancy in the band. He got in touch and he flew home. And that was it. At this point there was no success at all. It was very early days when he came back.”

Were your families supportive of your collective decision to quit gainful employment?

“Yeah, they were. A lot of us quit college as well. At the beginning I guess there was a little bit of: ‘quitting your job and quitting college is a no go when you’re in your early twenties’. But they knew what we wanted and I suppose once they see that you’re happy they’re cool. They might have wanted us to get degrees and have a fallback plan, but it wasn’t good for the soul.”

Given that they signed to Virgin EMI just a couple of years later, it proved to be the best decision they ever made. By Sheehy’s own admission, the massive success of their debut came as a complete surprise to the entire band. “We couldn’t believe it. I think it’s now over quarter of a million sales worldwide… so it’s ridiculous. We never expected anything like it. We hoped that it would, of course, but you can’t predict these things. So Germany and Austria and places like that have been a huge market for it. Holland also. Obviously Ireland. And we probably didn’t do as well in the UK as we hoped, but it didn’t seem to matter compared to the rest of Europe. So it’s all going pretty well.”

How about territories such as Australia?

“No, we haven’t even gone there, to be honest. ‘Speeding Cars’ was a radio hit in New Zealand, but we never got there either, so we might have to make a few trips over to that side of the world, too.”

Of course, America is one of the biggest music markets in the world. While the band have already made a few brief excursions Stateside, they know that they’ll have their work cut out for them if they really want to break big over there.

“We’ve done a few promo trips, but I think if you’re going to crack America you’ve literally got to go over there for six months to a year and stay there,” he explains. “So what we’ve been doing for the past year, we’ve been over and back maybe three times, for two or three weeks. But the more we go over, the more we realise the vastness of it all, and how much ground there is to cover. There’s no national radio in America: it’s literally like trying to crack 52 Irelands.

“It’s really a long process, and I suppose we just didn’t have the time to do it because we were wanted in these other territories where we were successful. We spent a lot of time in Germany and Holland and elsewhere in Europe. They had gotten us pretty good promo spots on TV shows, and the gigs were selling out, we got good support slots and things like that. Whereas we really were just kind of a drop in the ocean as far as America’s concerned, because it’s just so big. Hopefully if we have the time for album two to give it more we well, but it’s just such a big place.”

“THAT WAS THE MOST NERVOUS I’VE BEEN…”

Patrick is a huge admirer of Hozier, who’s probably the most recent Irish artist to make it big in America. “Yeah, fair play to him” Patrick says,” he’s been absolutely all over it. It wasn’t until after he broke the US that he broke the UK. It’s funny how things work. I know the UK didn’t want him at the beginning, and then he went on Saturday Night Live or something and it completely blew up. And then the UK blew up. And then the whole fucking world blew up for him. So yeah, I think Hozier’s just a special artist, isn’t he?”

What has been Walking On Car’s biggest moment to date?

“Doing the 3Arena in Dublin was properly the pinnacle of it all so far,” he reflects. “It was on our ‘to do’ list since we started the band. All these big artists play there, so it was always in our minds from the start. Obviously when we did start off it seemed like such a long way away, and so when we got to play there and fill it out… well, it was a pretty amazing feeling.”

Another memorable moment came in January 2016 when they played a stunning version of ‘Speeding Cars’ on The Late Late Show, brilliantly backed by the RTE Concert Orchestra.

“That was when ‘Speeding Cars’ came out last year,” he recalls. “The Late Late got in touch, and they wanted us to play ‘Speeding Cars’, and it just happened that the RTE Concert Orchestra were doing sessions with some artists. We just happened to stumble upon it. When they approached us, we couldn’t wait because we’d never played with an orchestra before, and this was a super-cool thing to do. And Gavin Murphy orchestrated the whole thing. We didn’t change a thing: they literally just worked around us and put rockets onto it. It was pretty spectacular.”

All going to plan, Walking On Cars will be spending much of the rest of 2017 holed up in their Dingle retreat in creative lockdown mode. However, amongst other big festival shows around Europe, there will be three big Irish gigs this summer.

“Yeah, we’ve shows on the 24th and 26th of June, and the 12th of August,” he explains. “We’re doing the Royal Hospital Kilmainham in Dublin, which is the big one, as well as the Marquee in Cork. And we’re up in Belfast on the 12th of August. The Kilmainham gig is our biggest show to date. We’re freaking out, but we’ll be grand, it’s all good. We’ll have new material out before then. So we’ll be playing some new tunes – and all of the old album. We can’t fucking wait, it’s gonna be ridiculous.”

Are you spending much time rehearsing for the gigs?

“We’re focusing on writing. We actually haven’t rehearsed at all. So we’ll probably spend the next month writing, and then after that we’ll focus on touring for the summer.”

Do you get nervous before big shows?

“You know what, Olaf, I get more nervous with the small shows,” he admits, laughing. “I remember we did a gig in London for all these radio and press people. There were about 40 people there, and I swear to God, man, I just wanted the ground to swallow me up. It wasn’t a ‘clap after every song’ type thing, it was very much like a ‘judge you’ kind of thing – you know what I mean?

“That was the most nervous I’ve ever been in my life, was with 40 people in the room. We did the 3Arena with thirteen or fourteen thousand and that was fine. But 40 people you can see into everyone’s eyes. That scared the shit out of me!”

Walking On Cars play the Royal Hospital Kilmainham on June 24; they are followed by The Coronas at the RHK, on July 1. Walking On Cars also play The Marquee, Cork, on June 26; and Custom House Square, Belfast, on August 12.