Headline Act: Once Upon A Time In The North-West

"Highlights so far would probably be recording the album in Los Angeles and playing in Croke Park. Lowlights? Well, there haven’t really been that many…”

Audacious statements such as the one above are usually uttered by self-appointed Rock Gods, too-big-for-their-boots buzz bands or simply poor, deluded sods. When it’s delivered in a candidly genuine manner by the bassist of a band currently preparing to knock Bundoran, County Donegal’s socks off, however, you can’t help but trust his sincerity.
Damien Kelly has had ample time to reflect on his band’s fortunes. It’s been almost five years since hard rocking jam-band Jaded Sun formed - yet, despite such accolades as being the third Irish band to ever play Croker (supporting Bon Jovi) and breaking download records in 2004, debut album Gypsy Trip only hit the shelves last month.
“It’s taken a long time,” Kelly acknowledges, “but we’re in it for the long-haul. We’re at the stage now where we just want to tour the album everywhere. This is what we’ve been aiming for for the past five years, after all.”
It was through a stroke of good luck that the northside Dubliners came to achieve their dreams of setting foot in a Los Angeles recording studio.
“We worked with a guy called Jimmy Coup, who was the guitarist with Andrew W.K.,” he explains. “We were in a rehearsal studio in Dublin and he was next-door, because he was in Ireland to do the Vibe For Philo gigs in Vicar St. He barged into the room and said (adopts nasal American accent) ‘Wow, you guys are amazing!’, and we were like. ‘Who the hell are you? Get out of our studio!’. But he said he’d come to check out our next gig that weekend, and he kept his promise. He knew a lot of producers in LA, and Richie Mouser (Weezer, Tears for Fears) was the one who wanted to work with us the most. So we got the money together and flew over to record.”
Gypsy Trip, an album that combines uptempo blues-rock numbers with ballads powerful enough to shrink your stonewashed denims, is certainly an extremely polished-sounding debut – but that’s something which was planned by the quintet all along.
“We’ve always wanted to make a proper-sounding album – we didn’t just want to be another unsigned Irish band making another amateur-sounding album,” Kelly imparts. “We wanted it to be professional. There’s no point in doing it otherwise, and we’re very happy with the end product.”
They’ll be pleased with the press they've been getting then – an American magazine recently described Jaded Sun as ‘the newest Messiahs of rock ‘n’ roll’ while a feature in German Penthouse, of all glossy gazettes, is in the pipeline.
A chuckling Kelly admits that their German PR company “is willing to sell us on the back of cigarette packets and milk cartons. But any exposure is good exposure. And it gives us a good reason to buy it without pissing off our girlfriends”.
Is success in their own country important to them, too? To take an example, The Answer – a band that ploughs a similar musical furrow - have had to travel abroad to gain most of their plaudits.
“We know that there isn’t a massive market for our music in Ireland. Or any music, for that matter, just because it’s so small,” he ventures. “But there are certain venues and certain radio stations who’ve gotten behind us, and we have a lot of time and a lot of love for them. Of course it’s important to try to be as successful as we can in Ireland, because it’s our home and our base, and it’s where all our friends and family are.”
Kelly concedes that Jaded Sun’s sound – a melting pot of influences including Led Zeppelin, Guns ‘N’ Roses, Pearl Jam, southern rock and, strangely, Oasis (a band the bassist cites as the reason he first learned guitar) – could easily be overlooked by arty young things, saturated in electro gadgetry and Top Shop trendiness.
“It’s always gonna be tough, and it’s been made tougher with the likes of indie and electropop and shoegaze bands, the stuff that’s popular now in Ireland. It’s maybe harder for a rock band to get breaks. But we’re not too worried. We’re not going to hit our heads against the wall trying to win people over – but we’ll travel the length and breadth of the country and play to the people who want to see us.”