A winding light

“We were sad to say goodbye,” recalls Steveamanakick, now known by the considerably less elaborate name of Steve Ryan, “but we knew we had to. I think Giveamanakick went as far as we wanted to bring it. When we started off there was a list of things that we wanted to do – pipe dreams – but we actually got to do a lot of them, plus a lot more! We got three albums out of it, we toured a lot and we played with all of our favourite bands, so when we sat down last year we realised we’d done what we set out to do.”

Does he reckon they’ll ever resurrect GAMAK?
“Myself and Keith had great times and we’re still obviously firm friends, but we’re definitely not interested at the moment. I’m very happy doing what I’m doing.”
And so he should be – with a meandering sound straight out of the annals of classic rock, it seems there are few band names as apt as Windings. How did Ryan come up with it?
“I don’t know,” he laughs, “I have no idea! Windings are the part of an electric guitar that converts the vibrations of the strings into sound waves but I only discovered that afterwards. First and foremost, I liked the sound of the word. It never occurred to me that people would mix it up with Wingdings!”
People think he named his band after a zany font?
“They do, they really do!”
Five years after the release of Windings’ eponymous debut, Ryan acquired a “taste for vinyl” while making a split-7” with Clare-born singer songwriter Vertigo Smyth – a penchant that’s palpable on new record It’s Never Night.
“We thought of it in terms of Side A; five songs and Side B; five songs,” he tells me. “To us, there’s a clear division right down the middle of the album.”
Boasting lyrical gems like “Sometime I feel like life has me beaten/Like a red-headed stepchild”, warpy standout track ‘Song Of The Doomed’ graces the downbeat second-half.
“I wrote it when I was in college,” Ryan recalls. “Everybody was able to get a summer job in a factory here in Limerick. I applied for a job and I didn’t get it and they sent me a rejection letter, which is the first verse of the song nearly word for word! At the time I was doing English Literature so I was big into Hunter S. Thompson. My favourite line was when somebody did him wrong and he ‘beat him like a red-headed stepchild’. I thought that was a great turn of phrase, I just hope it’s not offensive to anyone!”
Meanwhile, first single ‘Old Like J’ was written after an encounter with Ryan’s personal hero, Dinosaur Jr. frontman J. Mascis.
“I’m a huge fan,” he grins, “a very big fan – I can’t stress that enough! I kind of gushed at him a little bit, telling him what a big fan I was, that he was an amazing guitarist, that he’d changed my life blah, blah, blah. He had this long, silvery hair and he looked like a grunge Gandalf! He looked at me and went (adopts drowsy Massachusetts accent) ‘Yeah...’ and that was it! I thought ‘You’re so cool, you’re everything I thought you’d be!’”
There’s more than a couple references to ageing on It’s Never Night, but Ryan assures me it wasn’t intentional.
“I’d hate to sit down to specifically write about getting older,” he laughs, “‘cause I don’t wanna hear that! Maybe the passing of time as opposed to getting older – that’s something I think we’re all a bit conscious of.”

It’s Never Night is out now on Out On A Limb Records. You can watch the video for 'Old Like J' now on hotpress.com.