Andy Dufresne remains the only man to crawl through a river of shit and come
out clean the other side, but Gavin Glass wants it to be known that he's had his own struggles. It's been half a decade since he last released an LP of his own, and he isn't exactly a slouch.
“The album was this metaphorical big boulder that was in my living room, just staring at me constantly,” the Dubliner admits today. “I could only have a tiny Shawshank Redemption-like hammer and chisel to pick away at it! It took four years to make it. I would run a band out of the studio if it took them that long: 'lads, it's finished!'”
The problem? That studio. Since he last found a sliver of time while touring with Lisa Hannigan in Nashville to record 2010's Myna Birds, he opened the doors of Orphan Recording and the acts have been passing through them, eager for his expertise, ever since. The “producer head” also meant he kept second-guessing himself on his own material to the extent he could sympathise with Brian Wilson. “If I didn't have to work for other bands to survive as a musician, I would definitely have no problem locking my door and doing the sandpit thing. Send a barber in to me every three months for a shave, bring me an odd sandwich!”
All that said, he loves being the man behind the, um, glass.
“The best thing, without sounding like Derek Smalls from Spinal Tap [another stellar pop culture reference from the man], is working with children. When I say children: musicians that are just coming out of the hatches and just starting off. To see them develop and learn something. When a band says to me 'man, I knew this was going to be good but I didn't think we were going to get it that good and I can't thank you enough for what you've done' – that's when you just go 'I love me job.'”
He might be the nicest man in music (you heard me, Grohl), but a point came when he had to be selfish and tend to his own flock of songs. That point was when his “iPhone had no more room to have ramblings on it.”
That the result, Sunday Songs, is eight tracks of condensed beauty is a testament to his judgement, and that of collaborator Scott Halliday (I guess he's his Red).
He's assimilated those Americana tropes into the bloodstream, but for the most part he sounds like a guy from Stillorgan at the peak of his craft. The beguiling trio of 'Light Heart', 'Silhouettes' and 'First Stone' live and breathe the streets of Dublin.
“I found myself writing songs about driving over the county line – in my mind I was going, 'I could be driving over the line from Laois into...' but no, I was just trying to rip off Bruce Springsteen. But no, you can't say 'drive on out down the M50.'”
Instead, Glass ditched the clichés and went for the jugular. Combined with the reflective nature of the songs (named for that day because they're like hangovers – shit's gone down and it's time to clean yourself up), it makes for his most honest collection.
“I'm at the dusty end of my '30s now,” he says. “I think at this stage in your life, you should be writing about what you know. Come to terms with that thing of '40's around the corner' but do it in a hopeful way. The acceptance of that, that it's cool.”
The nearest corner brings dates with Villagers, playing these songs with his newly-assembled “kick-ass gunslinger band.” But the touring ends at some stage, and then... Does he want to become a father?
“Totally! It's mad you picked up on that.” He seems a nurturing sort of fella, and earlier he'd said it was lucky during recording that he doesn't have kids yet.
“I wanted to be a dad when I was 18. I have it in me for whatever reason. With the album, there's a little bit of that story in there. I've always wanted to be a dad but I'm in a better place now for achieving that than I was a couple of years ago.”
He seems in a good place generally.
“I'm in a great place at the moment. I've a great woman and a loving dog and great friends around me. As you get older you realise what you have. What's real and what's fake. I was as insecure a kid as anyone growing up, but when you get to that older stage, the insecurities seem to dissolve.”