At home with...Carol Keogh

Naturally, Carol Keogh of The Tycho Brahe loves, lives and breathes music, but for the vocalist in one of the most beguiling and innovative groups around, her abode happens to be without the one thing you’d expect every musician and music fan to own.

“I’m probably the only musician you’ll meet who doesn’t have a stereo,” she confesses. “I do have a discman and a computer that plays CDs but I’m not the most avid collector in the world. Every so often, I selectively buy things and people play me stuff that they’ve bought, so I’m very aware of what’s going on. I’m fairly simple-living really and not terribly acquisitive. I mostly prefer used things to new, so a lot of my books are second-hand, and I love trawling thrift stores and charity shops for second-hand clothes. I’m sure that if I ever get around to learning to drive, my first car will be an old banger.”
Having said that, Carol does have a very broad collection, ranging from Radiohead, Brian Eno, Joni Mitchell, Margaret O’Hara, The Blue Nile, Low, Red House Painters and many of her contemporaries including The Frames, The Jimmy Cake, BellX1, Ann Scott, The Dudley Corporation and The Last Post. “The last thing I bought was Fragments For A Rainy season by John Cale, which is a collection of his live performances,” Carol reveals. “ I also picked up Tapestry by Carole King which has been one of those albums that I’ve been meaning to buy for years. My Dad has some influence because he is a big jazz fanatic with a massive collection, so every so often I dip into that and borrow stuff, so I’ve got some classic jazz like Chet Baker and Billie Holiday. At the moment, I’m listening to a record called From Spirituals to Swing which was recorded in 1938/1939 in Carnegie Hall featuring relatively obscure jazz, blues and gospel artists of that era.”
And of course, there’s lots of Tycho’s material around. “I’ve got tonnes of demo CDs and work in progress that I keep forgetting to throw away,” Carol says. “When it comes to looking for something I’m supposed to be working on I can never find it. I keep posters, flyers and laminates from pretty much everything these days. I used to be really bad for keeping mementos, but then I realised I couldn’t remember half the gigs I’ve played. I think I’m getting more sentimental in my old age. “
Chez Carol has lots of book shelves and she is an avid reader. “I’ve just finished reading Brian Wilson’s autobiography, Wouldn’t It Be Nice, which was quite a trip!” she says. “I’ve got a lot of contemporary novels from Milan Kundera, Peter Carey, Peter Ackroyd and Margaret Atwood which are some of my favourites. Also, I’ve quite a bit of poetry, my favourites being Gerard Manley Hopkins, Seamus Heaney and Walt Whitman. I always have Roget’s and the Oxford English Dictionary handy and a mini Times Atlas of the World which I bought this year so when I do finally get to travel in Europe this year, I’ll actually know what the map looks like.”
Many other well thumbed reads are concerned with people and places a lot more closer to home. “I like a lot of stuff about Dublin,” she states. “Such as a book called The Heart of the City by Peter Pearson who is one of the founders of the Civic Trust. He is so passionate and caring about heritage environment. I used to work for Drimnagh Castle where I grew up and he was one of the committee members there and one of the people who saved it from destruction. I also have Strumpet City by James Plunkett and James Joyce’s Dubliners.”
“Myself and Kim Porcelli have pledged at least three times that we are going to finish Ulysses within a year and of course we haven’t yet!” Carol laughs. “Every so often I might read a few chapters and think I’m doing pretty well, but then I’ll put it down and you have to keep going with it. One of my favourite books is called Man On The Moon which I bought as a present for Donal a few years ago and surreptitiously took it back. It’s about space exploration and it was put together in 1953, so it’s years before man actually landed on the moon. It’s got all these drawings, projections and notions what space capsules and modules will look like and it’s really cute. Paul Noonan gave me a book called Bad Hair, but I don’t know whether it’s a comment on his hair or mine!”
“My room mostly reflects what I do,” Keogh considers. “Apart from the music and the guitar and amp it’s mostly photographs everywhere because I take a lot. At the moment, they are mostly photographs of my niece. I have two cameras – a super-eight that must be twenty years old and still in working order, and my Minolta SLR that is about fifteen now. I dread the day when I have to replace them with new-fangled yokes, although I would love a digital video camera – so I’m not a complete Luddite! I also like to make my own things where possible. Knitting hats was a fad for a while. I make my own Christmas cards – none of that shop-bought Hallmark nonsense. Although I studied painting at college, I’ve only recently started painting again. But there are two paintings of mine from my college days that hang in the hallway of my house. I also have a painting of a duck by an artist called Madeleine Smith which I bought when the Blackfort Organic Gallery was shutting down where we played a gig which is really like the cover of Love Life.”
“I suppose the most important thing in my room apart from my bed is the computer,” she reflects. “It’s a bit scary to think everything is in it but it keeps things a lot more tidy. A lot of people find it odd if you’re doing something like music and using a computer but I’ve got very used to it. I’m a faster typist than I am at handwriting and it’s more fluid for me to type. I have a TV and video that are not that often switched on, but Monday evenings at 8.30pm are reserved for University Challenge, so perhaps I’m a closet egghead.”

[photos: Cathal Dawson]

The Tycho Brahe play the Temple Bar Music Centre, Dublin (February 28); An Taibhdearc, Galway (March 20); and The Lobby, Cork (April 29 & 30)