Gettin' Horny Now: An Interview with Booka Brass Band

Halfway through coffees in The Central Hotel, the fire alarm starts a-ringing. Hot Press, not in the practice of endangering interview subjects, shoots a look across the table, where two of Booka Brass appear entirely non-plussed.

“Ah, sure it’s Ireland,” trumpeter Paul Kiernan reasons. “Fire alarms aren’t a real thing.”

He’s right, of course; nobody else in the bar bats an eyelid, the bells ceasing seconds after they kicked off. But it’s not that long since brass bands were a novelty in Ireland, and that’s certainly changed…

“It was definitely a new phenomenon,” Paul notes. “There was a niche there when we started. People would say, ‘Oh, wow, it’s a brass band!’” 

“There’s a few more around now, which is cool,” says saxophonist David Conway. “I think we showed an Irish band can do it, that it’s not all New Orleans or wherever.”
In part, the band can trace their roots back to the decidedly un-Creole setting of the National Youth Orchestra, where a number of their rank cut their teeth. More of the crew were studying classical performance, and they fairly quickly realised that both inspiration and talent were in abundance.

“We got together to jam a couple of tunes, and it wasn’t really planned to go anywhere,” David says. “We never expected it to become what it has. There was a small bar in Rathmines and we just went in and played, then played our first real gig in Sweeney’s.”

The group, a quintet at the core – with James O’Leary on trombone, Rónán Scarlett on drums, and the unfortunate soul who chose to specialise in an instrument that weighs approximately a ton, Jack Marks, on the sousaphone – but normally a nine-piece troupe by the time they take the stage, went on to forge a reputation as the finest party starters in the nation. You’d be tempted to say it’s not what one would expect from guys who’d graduated from the prim and proper world of classical music, but we’ve been reliably informed that those of an orchestral persuasion are prone to the type of behaviour that would make Keith Richards blush. Does that carry-on take place at youth level too?

“Youth orchestras wouldn’t be as bad,” Paul laughs. “But yeah, I started at 14 and thought to myself, ‘This place is insane!’ It definitely has a mad streak. People will lock themselves in a room to practice for 10 hours – and when they get out… Yeah, it’s funny. Classical musicians are crazier than you think.”

“But then,” David sagely points out, “most musicians are.”

Although anyone expecting Chilled Milk, the band’s first long-player, to be a non-stop white-knuckle thrill-ride will be surprised – and pleasantly so, too. While it starts in typically ebullient fashion, it’s not fanfare and fireworks throughout. It turns out that in-studio they’re happy to strip things back a bit more.

“We ended up axing half of what we’d recorded,” David reveals. “We were always so conscious of trying to get a full sound that we’d do too much. There was a lot going on, and it’s as though taking things out meant there was actually more there in the end. I think it goes back to what we were writing at the time, and looking at a lot of different styles.”

Paul adds: “What influenced us at the start was that New Orleans sound, different bands like Hypnotic Brass Ensemble or Hot 8. But what we write isn’t really that style, so to play that way anymore would be to imitate something that we’re not really involved in.”

Infused with as much slow jazz and world music influences as the familiar hip-hop and funk sounds with which their live efforts have become synonymous, tracks like ‘Astrocyte’ and ‘Portobello’ also show off a dexterity that wasn’t quite as apparent before.
“You can get a lot out of the instruments,” Paul nods. “They’re pretty versatile. If you want something slow and sad, you can base it more around the trombones. For something mellow, we might swap the trumpet for a flugelhorn.”

Without meaning to sound patronising to the listener, would Paul expect the average Booka fan to know his trumpets from his flugelhorns?

“Well, it might not be about picking up on the tonality or anything,” he smiles. “But if there’s a change, people will be aware of the effect – even if they don’t know exactly what’s happened or what’s changed.”

Not that the ‘average Booka fan’ is easy to pin down. Playing with The Frames or Lisa Hannigan; supporting Imelda May; tearing up festivals throughout the summer; and headlining their own lively shows, there seems to be a universality to their appeal – hence why their sights are set on action further afield.

“We’ve been looking at moving to London for the last six months or so,” David reveals. “We’re now at a point where we’re all out of college and that, so we’ve got time to focus on things. We’ve never had a chance to do J1s or inter-railing or anything like that either, so it’ll be cool to have an adventure as well.”
Paul continues: “Ireland is a place we’re always going to be playing, and there’ll always be opportunities to come back. But it would be nice to make an impact in the UK and in Europe – and basing ourselves there seems a good place to start.”

Of course, copies of Chilled Milk will be sent out like foot soldiers, to start the process of continental domination – and it’s a calling card that’s seen no small amount of work. “It was a learning curve,” David says. “The recording process itself was big for us, because we’ve normally just been a live band. Ben Rawlins, who recorded the record, gave us a lot of help, and we’ve spent a long time on Chilled Milk. We brought out an EP, and learned a bit – but it’s cool to look back now and see how much we’ve improved. With an album there’s room to explore, and I think we’ve proved we can record something good – because for all the live shows we can do, we can never travel like the record can.”

And now, predictably enough, it’s travel on the mind. “Eastern Europe has a big brass band culture – all of Europe seems more open to something mad,” David suggests. “The Boban Markovic Orchestra, for instance, is a kind of different style to us but they’re huge. There’s more wind ensembles too. Contemporary music is filling concert halls in Germany and the Netherlands. That’s something we don’t have here – and that’s where my idea comes from, that they might be even more open to our music.”

“When we play in France, people actually listen,” Paul laughs. “Maybe it’s just that people are sober? But I’ve never had more craic at a gig than here at home.”
You can take the boys out of Ireland…

“We finished in Paris with a version of Riverdance, though. And ‘The Walls of Limerick’. They went mad for it.”

Point proven.

Chilled Milk is out now.