David Keenan: "This year it’s going to be my freest and wildest Electric Picnic performance"

DAVID KEENAN
Croí / Saturday, August 30

“I’ve played Electric Picnic since 2016, from the smallest stage in the Village Green section, to the Main Stage. You notice the difference with festivals in Europe; they’re a lot calmer, I’d say, than Irish festivals. I think we need an outlet for the wildness that’s in us, and also to come together and be inclusive. It’s new, fresh and every year it changes – but at the same time it’s ancient: we’ve been doing it for thousands of years.

“At the Croí stage, you’re dug into the ground with people around you in an amphitheatre. It could be 2025, it could be a thousand years ago – we’re doing the same stuff. There are new things like phones, social media, but the actual gathering together and celebrating music, art and culture, it’s ancient.

David Keenan at Electric Picnic 2023. Copyright Miguel Ruiz.

“EP has been falling on my birthday every year, so it has significance. This year it’s going to be my freest and wildest Picnic performance. I’ve come out of two years of depression and struggles with addiction, and I’ve made it to the other side of that. So I have a new album and it’s all in there. This gig in the woods with my band and friends, on my birthday, it’s going to be a celebration of gratitude for being alive and getting to do this.

“It’s different to a gig where you go into a manicured venue, or even if it’s an old lovely theatre – getting out into the open, or into nature, at a festival, is combining the two things that are important to me. I love going in and getting lost – and seeing where I end up by following the breadcrumbs of noise.”

Listen to David Keenan’s latest single ‘50 Quid Man’, from his upcoming album Modern Mythologies, below. His next single, 'Poison Water', is out this Friday.

Electric Picnic returns to Stradbally Hall in Co. Laois from August 29–31.

Read the full Electric Picnic Special in the current issue of Hot Press: