Dylan Gossett: “Folk is really coming up in a big way with a younger Irish generation"

When I meet Dylan Gossett it's in the Hilton Hotel Charlemont the day after his first wedding anniversary. Which the American artist told me he celebrated in Howth:

“ It was probably the best anniversary we could have asked for; we went and saw the summit, we went and saw the lighthouse and everything, all the flowers”.

“It was beautiful but it was freezing cause we went at sunset so sundown instantly everything got cold.

“Then we went to a place called The Abbey Tavern, we had a drink there, and then we went to a place called the Bloody Stream.

“I was playing live music with a bunch of local people, so I was playing and they were playing, and they had like…every instrument I could have possibly imagined. Everyone was playing and it was just like the coolest experience, very very cool”.

Gossett has a puppy-like sense of awe and wonder. He’s handsome, earnest - truly an all American man (he hails from Austin, Texas) and his earthy musical sensibilities reflect that.

But one of the many unusual things about Gossett, is that he is a huge, undeniable hit in Ireland.

Without releasing an album, he has sold out two upcoming Vicar Street dates this June and an Ulster Hall one to boot.

His popularity with Irish listeners is something he has taken note of: “Folk is really coming up in a big way with a younger Irish generation and I feel like my music has a lot of that folk-y, storytelling aspect to it”.

Hypothesising he says: “I think that’s the big reason, and I think the fact that I’m young too and I can more easily connect to a younger generation, but really I wish I knew”.

With his songs regularly hitting ten of millions of streams on Spotify, (His breakout single ‘Coals’ has almost 120 million listens alone), what is this appeal of folk music for young listeners at a time when more polished pop offering are readily available: “I mean it can be like a bad song with a bad singer but if the lyrics are good, people love it”.

Continuing he says: “I think in the day & age where we’re so flooded with people being like “look at me for thirty seconds”, there’s so much overstimulation that having a nice, easy song to listen to with depth to it, that’s not like surface level stuff to it, I think is really fulfilling.”

This is also what the Texan star credits as his pull as he says his music is “very laid back and lets the lyrics of it breathe”.

He says ironically he got attention via TikTok because he wasn’t actively seeking it: “I think it was the fact that we weren’t trying to pull attention, I mean it was very organic, I just said ‘let me put my phone in front of me, prop it up on a water bottle, and sing a song from my lyrics on the screen’, like that’s all I was worried about.”

“ And I think it all happened really organically, and I think that goes a long way with people”

And with that, what can fans expect from the artist's latest offering Songs in the Gravel, out today, (March 22)?

“I think this is kind of an expansion on No Better Time (the artist’s debut EP)”.

“I mean No Better Time was literally just; I wanted to get music out and I thought ‘There’s no better time than now to just do it, let’s go’ and it was all made in my bedroom.

“This next EP, Songs In The Gravel, I did two songs in the studio, so it’s actually half & half , it’s kind of a progression towards a full studio album, so it’s a little bit of a mixture”.

“There’s four songs total on it, and like ‘Somewhere In Between’ and ‘If I Had a Lover’ (written before Gosset met his wife) were made with a producer and a band and all that, and then obviously ‘Finally Stopped Dreaming’, ‘Bitter Winds’ was still made from my bedroom”.

“It’s kind of like I didn’t want to jump too quick into a crazy live band, it didn’t really fit my sound, so yeah it’s kind of like an entry, it’s a little more folky, you know, banjo and stuff on it.”
“I think it’s a really cool kind of transition from No Better Time to Songs In The Gravel”.

• Songs In The Gravel is out today (March 22)

Dylan Gossett Irish tour dates:

Belfast, Ulster Hall- June 18
Dublin, Vicar Street - June 21
Dublin, Vicar Street- June 22