Atlantic Records

“People in Ireland are sick of singer-songwriters,” Keith Mullins spouts. And he should know. A songwriter and guitarist who dreams of rambling across the states like Dylan, he recorded his tender debut album The Great Atlantic in a log cabin in Tuam. In fact, he lives up to all the cliches of the windswept singer-songwriter and is happy to describe himself as “another moany fecker with a guitar”.

“I don’t take myself very seriously at all,” he laughs. “I take my music really, really seriously. As a person I’m laid back and easy going.”
Mullins got his start in music like many of the greats, by having an instrument forced on him against his will at a very young age.
“In my school we had to learn traditional music, as you do in most schools. Ours was a bit more pushy! You couldn’t get away with the tin whistle! So, I learned the banjo…”
‘Oh, that’s quite cool!’ I suggest.
“Eh… it wasn’t cool at the time, no.”
Oh dear. Still Mullins has his school days to thank for shaping his musical path, although fate certainly played a part too. “I was in Leaving Cert and we were doing our final mass,” he recalls, “and all my friends were doing music for it. I said I’d help simply to get out of class. I couldn’t sing, I couldn’t play, I couldn’t do anything. I wanted to skive off and hang out with my friends. I was amazed at how well they were able to play the guitar.’
“I went home and told my parents I wanted to buy an electric guitar and they were like, ‘Don’t be stupid, it’s just another one of those fads, you’ll get sick of it after a few weeks’. The very next day I got a letter in the post and it was a prize bond for £100. It was the strangest thing! I went straight into Galway and bought a guitar.”
Mullins cut his teeth in hotly-tipped indie fivesome Pier Nineteen, who released debut LP At Evensong in 2006.
“We demoed the songs loads of times,’ he sighs, “but then by the time we recorded it and put it out we were all sick of it I guess, and sick of each other in a way. We didn’t really do anything with the album. We released it , played a few gigs. That was it. Things fizzled out eventually.”
The soulful Galwegian says striking out on his own didn't intimidate him. “I like working on my own,” he remembers. “I was looking forward to not having to compromise on anything and being in full control. The guys I recorded the album with were all friends. Some were in Pier Nineteen. It was a really nice thing actually.”
The Great Atlantic was recorded in a flat pack log cabin (they do exist, apparently) a mate had ordered online and had shipped from Scandinavia.
“My friend Larry literally built the place himself from logs,” he laughs. “The whole thing was really relaxed. Friends who happened to be around Galway would call in and pick up a guitar or do a bit of singing or whatever. One of Larry’s hobbies is collecting wine. There was loads of great wine around the place!”
One especially whimsical highlight of the album is the twee lullaby ‘Neil Armstrong’, which the young strummer says came about quite by chance. “I was sitting with my niece and we were just colouring in and there were two astronauts on the colouring book. The next time I picked up my guitar, I just started singing and that line came out, ‘How’d you get to be an astronaut?/Is what I’d like to ask you Neil Armstrong/As I colour you in’”
We’re not sure if it was the wine or the logs, but The Great Atlantic boasts more than a few seafaring references. “It’s more of a representation of how far away I am from where I want to be in my musical life,” Mullins explains. “I was really influenced by Townes Van Zandt and Bob Dylan. I started reading a lot about them before I started recording. They picked up the guitar and went for it, just travelled around America. That’s something I’d love to do. And the thing separates me from America is the Atlantic Ocean.”
‘I don’t really talk to my friends about stuff that bothers me,” he admits. “I tend to just write it down… and a lot of it tends to end up in songs. Most of the time they’re very personal and honest songs, I think…” he trails. “…but then, there are times when I just write about astronauts.”