Coming up Roesy

With his debut album, Sketch The Day, Paint The Night finally due for release, Birr singer/songwriter Roesy brings to fruition a long period of creating rich pastoral songs, characterised by their unique mystical imagery and immense warmth. Seven of the songs on the album were recorded in London with Bernard Butler, formerly Suede’s guitar virtuoso. Of the songs recorded with Butler, Roesy says, “Initially the intention was that they’d be demos but we decided to record them as if we were making an album. When I came back I decided to put them out, and recorded the rest of the songs myself. So the title Sketch The Day, Paint The Night is apt, because the album has that feel that some of the songs are just outlines, while others are more fleshed out.”

Roesy met Bernard at the behest of their mutual publishers Warner Chappell, who, he says, have been very supportive. “They sent him some of my recordings. He liked what I was doing and wanted to get together with a view to producing them. He’s a really lovely guy, very down to earth and very focused on music. I went to his studio set-up in his house on the first day and I wrote and recorded ‘Lily’ there and then. The next time we went to Edwyn Collins studio, which was brilliant. There was an amazing atmosphere – I felt so relaxed.”

With regard to Bernard Butler’s input, Roesy says he found the experience invaluable. “I hadn’t worked with a producer before and found it hard in some ways. He’d really encourage me, especially when I thought something wasn’t working. It was great to be able to talk it out with him and let go of the ego thing. It just flowed, I liked his ideas and never really felt I had to say ‘Stop, I’m not into that.’ He had suggestions about instrumentation, like using pianos to brighten up a lot of the songs, which I hadn’t done before and is now part of my set.”

Roesy, aka Alan Roe, started writing poetry at the age of fourteen, before getting big into music. “People like Tom Waits and Richie Havens really blew my mind. I first formed a band with my brother, when bands like the Hot House Flowers and An Emotional Fish were around. We used to love sitting in the park on a summer’s day listening to these bands on the stereo.”

Following the break up of his regular band, Roesy is now performing with pianist Josh Johnson who he met at an IMRO songwriting seminar in the summer. “I am up for working with a band again. I loved playing solo and needed to do that for a while, but there are songs I’ve written that are nicer with a fuller sound.”

He has moved back home to Offaly, after stints in Dublin and Galway. “I’m sick of Dublin, a bit tired of cities in general. It’s hard to put a finger on, but I guess I stopped enjoying gigs, because I felt a change in the atmosphere around the city. Maybe when people have a lot more money, you get more people going to gigs to have a bit of a session rather than to listen to the music.

“Now I’m playing in venues around the country and there seems to be a different feel,” he reckons. “I really enjoy playing in mad small places like The Black Bird in Ballycotton. You meet lovely people in small towns. My music goes down well in cities as well as smaller places, but it’s quite mellow stuff, so understandably it’s better to have an audience of people who are in the mood for that.”

There’ll be need for “a bit of whisht down the back” at the album launch gig at the Project on February 27th, where the audience can hear tracks from the long-awaited album, released by Northern label Schism, which contains many of Roesy’s well-loved live standards like ‘What Would I Know,’ ‘Delaney Lied’ and ‘In You Come,’ (co-written with Declan O’ Rourke who’ll be supporting Roesy on the night.)

“I’ve been trying to get this album out of the way for so long, and have loads of new stuff that I’m dying to move on to, and I’ve gone through several different phases and styles of writing already. But I hope that once I have the album out, I’ll be able to reach more people,” he says.

Roesy’s other creative outlet is painting, as displayed in his self-produced cover artwork for the album. “I’m planning to put on an exhibition in a gallery in Birr soon. When I finish a gig and when I finish a painting, the high is exactly the same. The music and the painting do come from the same kind of place. I suppose all forms of art are similar in the way that everyone will see or hear something different and individual in it.”