Going back to our roots

It’s a neat idea. Take three cutting-edge Dublin bands, put them on stage together in a top venue, where they’ll perform super-group style before an invited audience. The twist is they’ll be playing songs not from their own repertoires but classics made famous by other legendary Dublin outfits, past and present.

It’s all part of a brand new concept, JD Roots, which grew out of the acclaimed JD Set that ran from 2002 to 2010 (initially as a competition for unsigned bands). Last year’s re-invention of the idea saw Neil Hannon, Cathy Davey, Jape, and Romeo from The Magic Numbers perform their own versions of Vampire Weekend’s debut album, at the Button Factory, Dublin.
With a hometown theme in the same venue, JD Roots 2012 offers a slightly different take. The groups involved, The Minutes, Delorentos and We Cut Corners, are all highly acclaimed and popular. They are well up for the challenge too, it seems.
“We really liked the idea of doing something like this,” says Delorentos’ Kieron McGuiness. “It’s a lot different. There’s something really creative about it. The brief is fairly loose as I understand it. The way it was told to us, it had to be either songs by Dublin bands, songs about Dublin or even a song that dominated our youth growing up in Dublin. That was the template. As it turns out the songs we’re playing are all by acts from Dublin.”
Given the vast legacy of great Dublin rock music, reaching back over 40 years, choosing favourites can’t have been an easy.
“It wasn’t,” McGuiness concedes. “Each of us in the band had two or three suggestion, everything from trad to 70s rock to more modern stuff. We decided early on that we wouldn’t do massively modern stuff like say, Villagers or Jape or Cathy Davey or any of the other local bands that we were close to. I can’t tell you the exact songs we’re doing. In the mix there’s a U2 song, a traditional song, a global smash hit and a local hit that we like. We’re talking Thin Lizzy, The Pogues and Whipping Boy, a big inspiration for us growing up”
For drum and guitar two-piece We Cut Corners, sourcing appropriate Liffeyside classics was
equally daunting.
“We’ve been wracking our brains over the past few months,” explains the band’s Conall Ó Breacháin. “We’re almost decided at this stage. I think we’ll probably do Sinéad O’Connor’s ‘Mandinka’ and we’re going to do ‘Stay, Faraway So Close’ by U2 and probably The Frames’ ‘Lay Me Down’. We’ve been emailing the other bands with our versions and they’ve listened and come back with various ideas. There’ll be three full days of rehearsal, where we’re going to hammer things out. It’ll be a big group of us onstage on the night. It should be fun.”
For The Minutes the project presented something of a dilemma, as the band’s bassist Tom Cosgrave, explains. “To be honest we found it hard to find a lot of Dublin bands that had influenced us over the years,” he explains. “Thin Lizzy would be the main one. We’ll definitely do one or two of theirs and maybe a Phil Lynott solo tune. I think we’re going to do a Whipping Boy tune too, something from Heartworm. We know the other bands so it should be easy working with them.
An even bigger challenge for all the musician is how to approach their interpretation of their chosen songs. Will it be a case of playing it safe or re-inventing from the foundations up?
“We do want them to sound somewhat different,” says We Cut Corners’ Conall Ó Breacháin. “We don’t want to ‘cover’ the song. For something like ‘Mandinka’ I clearly remember Sinéad doing it way back on the MTV Awards. She came out with a backing track and microphone. I was blown away. It’d be amazing to get some of that feel. For The Frames one, on the album it’s a soft. organic production but there’s a lovely driving rhythm on the toms. We might make it a big rhythmic tune.”
The Minutes’ Tom Cosgrave takes a slightly opposing view: “I wouldn’t want to do a song and make it something it’s not. I don’t want to start messing around with a classic. There’s only three of us in the band. We haven’t much scope for changing things too much. I’d like to have three drum kits set-up and it would be really great if Brian Downey came along and jammed along on the Lizzy numbers. Actually, that’s not a bad idea. I might give him a call and see if he’s up for it – you never know.
“It’s going to be a bit of a challenge and it might be a bit weird,” he concludes. “Hopefully, it’ll be a lot of fun for us and the audience. We‘ll be approaching it like it was one of our own gigs. We won’t leave the rehearsal rooms until everyone is happy with the set”