At home with Sean Millar

As a working musician, radio presenter and all round family man, Sean Millar, better known to you and me as the singer/songwriter Dr Millar, leads a predictably hectic life. He lives with his partner Pom and their two young children in a 1930s apartment block in Dublin’s historical Liberties quarter, a place he describes as, “the very heart of traditional, working-class Dublin”.

“I think we’ve been here for about five or six years so we’re well settled in,” he says. “It’s a solidly-built, old fashioned kind of place. When we first moved in we thought it reminded us of one of those old New York apartments you see in the movies. But the location is the best thing about it – right in the centre of the bustling city where it all seems to be happening.”
Music obviously plays a big part in Millar’s life and anyone familiar with his oeuvre won’t be surprised to learn that he has what is, by any standards, an eclectic collection of CDs.
“Strange thing is, I wasn’t a big collector of music when I was much younger,” he says. “It was a running joke among all my friends that I had the worst record collection of us all and I was the one who ended up becoming a musician.
“I’m by nature a chaotic, disorganised person so when it comes to filing my CDs I’m a bit of a nightmare. So you’re likely to find The Velvet Underground’s Live At Max’s Kansas City next to Kila next to something by Neil Young. Storage has become such a huge issue with us recently. I don’t know how long we can continue to live in a place like this with two small kids – my daughter is now six and my son is two. My partner Pom would love to have a garden for them so we’ll have to see what happens in the future.”
As the presenter of a weekly alternative radio show – The Hot Press Hot Spot – on East Coast Radio, Millar receives a steady flow of new releases in the post, something he describes as a mixed blessing. “Albums are one thing but people send me boxes of singles and I just don’t have the room to keep them. I have a policy of getting rid of something if it’s not the kind of music I’d buy myself.”
When it comes to his listening choices he says he goes through specific phases at a time. A particular favourite right now is the work of cult Texas songwriter Ray Wylie Hubbard. “He’s just a phenomenal songwriter,” he says. “He was this minor cowboy sort of figure who has had drug problems over the years but he turned his life around. Lucinda Williams sings on his album, The Local Gringo’s Lament, which I bought at one of his gigs in Texas. His stuff can be hard to get – Tower Records had just one copy of his last album, which I bought.
“At the moment I just can’t get seem to get enough of a Buddy Guy album called Blues Singer,” he says. “It’s the production that appeals to me most, I think. And I’m going to buy the new live Planxty album as soon as I can get to a record shop.
“I’m ashamed to say I don’t listen to that many singer-songwriters,” he continues. “I would obviously love people like Warren Zevon and I’ve got Neil Young’s Harvest Moon on the CD player at the moment. I’ve been a Neil Young fan all my life, and along with Bowie and Lou Reed, I’ve never stopped listening to him. Sometimes your environment can affect your listening. I live in an apartment and if I put on The Ramones everybody in the building hears it, so you have to be mindful of that.”
Movies used to play an important part in Millar’s life but he says that these days he would rather stay in and watch the box.
“I used to be such an obsessive movie-goer and rarely would a week would go by without a trip to the cinema,” he says. “I’ve never collected videos or DVDs. There’s a Blockbuster and a Laser Vision store nearby so I rent movies rather than buy them. But TV has got so good these days. The Sopranos is such an amazing series that I can’t get enough of it. And I love nature programmes – I could watch as many documentaries about sharks as I could possibly take!”
Reading is another big passion with Millar and a large book collection takes up much of his space – hence the storage crisis!
“I have an eight-foot bookshelf and a bedside locker full of books,” he says. I intensely consumed literature when I was younger and I’ve still got two books that I bought when I was 19, Notre-Dame De Paris by Victor Hugo and The Charterhouse Of Parma by Stendhal. I’ve carried them around for years, wherever I’ve been. I tend to keep ones that I can’t bear to part with, like Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides – he also wrote The Virgin Suicides. It’s a sad story about a guy who is a hermaphrodite, a really good book that I’d thoroughly recommend to anyone.
“For years I couldn’t stand biographies, my attention would just drift but a fantastic one I’ve read recently is This Wheel’s On Fire by Levon Helm, the drummer with The Band. I think their first two albums, Music From Big Pink and The Band are probably the best music there is. They’ve everything you could possibly want in music. I can’t think of anything better.
“I don’t read a lot of Irish literature or listen much to Irish music come to think of it. It just doesn’t seem relevant to me. The way I see it is, I livein a big bustling, multi-cultural city, with a million people from all over the world. There are gay bars and African shops all around me. That’s not reflected in any of the music or literature. Having said that, I went to see Sack last night, and they were great. Their song, ‘Tag’, from their last album is probably my favourite Irish track of all time.”

Tarzan’s Ambition, a Sean Millar best-of, will be available in July