Country and Irish musicians get raw deal from media claim

Patrick Feeney and Louisiana-born Robert Mizzell talk to Jackie Hayden about their upcoming Grand Tour which they hope will change attitudes towards the genre. Buckley admits that, while this music genre might get a raw deal, some of it is deserved. “I’m not into the real Irishy Irishy country stuff like ‘Pretty Little Girl From Omagh’. It’s a great song, but we all get tarred with the same brush, and I want to show that there’s another side to this music.... I’d like people to get away from all that crap on the radio, and listen to the credible acts. There’s low budget records that gets played on local radio that shouldn’t ever get airtime,” he tells Hot Press.

Feeney says. “I have great respect for the likes of Daniel O’Donnell, Westlife, Leona Lewis and my idol Michael Buble. But I wouldn’t be into U2 or pop bands like that. To me, U2 aren’t good singers but are good show people. Bands like that came out at the right time and were just lucky.”

He acknowledges there’s a stigma attached to Country and Irish music. “I don’t understand why. In the showband era, the Dickie Rocks were the Boyzones of their day, so I don’t know how that all changed. It might be a kind of snobbishness where city dwellers look down on things that are basically rural. The music doesn’t get the national media coverage that it deserves based on the attendances that artists like myself get week in and week out all over the country.

Read the full interview in Hot Press (out January 14).