Hot Press meets Shiels of Gold

Considering it sounds like the opening half-hour of a particularly hammy slasher film (or the cheesiest musical ever), at least Kodaline’s Hot Springs story has a happy ending. To set the scene: four pasty, fresh-faced Irish lads pitch up at a small, lakeside Arkansas town and start playing some songs by a campfire. They then head for the local watering-hole to meet the natives. You can hear the sinister banjo riffs already. Fear not, it was merely the highlight of the Swords pop-rockers’ recent jaunt Stateside.

“It is,” Mark Prendergast says of Hot Springs, AR, “the kind of place you’d see in a film. This big lake with a caravan park beside it. All wooden houses, everyone with boats on the lake. Total Middle America.”
Discovered by our intrepid musicians on a day off from supporting Airborne Toxic Event on their US tour, it’s also the childhood home of Bill Clinton. The bar they checked out was the first ever built in Arkansas, where Al Capone once would hide from the law.
“There was a band playing that night, all these guys in their sixties doing two hours of blues. It was fucking mind-blowing. Every single musician that was there was just out of this world. There were guys who could barely walk going up and strapping on a guitar. We played ‘Johnny B. Goode’. Fucking typical, it was the only blues song we knew. Then the cook came out and played a few songs, all the waitresses sang!”
According to singer Stephen Garrigan, the chef was “like Billy Joel” when he jumped on the keys. And Garrigan would know, he’s met the ‘Piano Man’.
“There was a guy called Chickenhawk,” continues Prendergast. “He wore a cowboy hat and had this crazy Southern accent. Then there was another guy called Deputy Dan. It was like characters from a TV show making us food and stuff. Now we’re friends with them on Facebook. Mental.”
Overall, it was a trip of extremes. Commencing and concluding in Toronto, it took in the blistering heat of Texas and snows of Minneapolis.
For Prendergast, the “experience of driving across America in a van” surpassed the shows. Faced with 16-hour drives, and having opted to stay in the van rather than shell out for hotels, he was surprised they didn’t murder each other.
“I was worried about it,” the guitarist admits. “We’ll usually argue about anything. If a band doesn’t argue, there’s something wrong! But there wasn’t a single fight. It was the most surreal trip. I think because we were on such a high. Playing all these shows with Airborne, and every different town was like visiting a different country.”
It sounds like a triumphant run of dates. When you do finally head for an actual different country, of course, you could be in for a rough landing. Facing pressure in Europe, there’s no Chickenhawk to tell you everything will be alright. It would be France. Their long-running Joolsesque music show Taratata, to be precise.
Having just performed ‘All I Want’, Kodaline decided to serenade their Gallic audience with a quickly-assembled medley of Daft Punk’s ‘Digital Love’ and Phoenix’s ‘1901’. They pulled it off – eventually – but if you’ve seen the now-infamous clip, Garrigan suffers an agonising two minutes where he can’t locate his key to begin the song. What was going on underneath that mass of blonde hair?
“Nothing, my mind just went blank! We threw that together just before the show. Then we – not ‘we’, me! Then I just... fucked it up.”
“That was the longest two minutes of my life,” says Prendergast. “It was this big production and nerves just got the better of us. The second Stephen got it I think everyone simultaneously went, ‘Oh thank fuck!’ They were all saying that we shouldn’t worry, that they weren’t going to show that part. Then all of a sudden, it’s the most talked-about thing we’ve done in the last month! We were really down-hearted, we thought it was shit. But looking back, it actually worked out.”
Has Garrigan looked back yet?
“I never watch that stuff, but last night I did. I didn’t want to up until then. I think the crowd reaction really made it.”
So sucking up to the French by covering their own bands eventually paid off...
“Haha! Two great bands. Did you know Daft Punk and Phoenix are from the same town? From Versailles. Air as well, I think. And it’s a really small town. The thing about Versailles is that French people seem to say that it’s not a particularly interesting place, there’s nothing really going on there.”
Mundane suburbia, where the kids get creative to keep themselves occupied.
“That’s probably it.”
Remind him of anywhere?
“Ah sure! Swords is grand!” Garrigan laughs.
Both Prendergast and Garrigan clearly love Daft Punk and gush about the robotic duo’s latest, Random Access Memories. A long time trailed and now dividing opinion, it’s a real event album for 2013. As for Kodaline, their debut, In A Perfect World, finally sees the light on June 17.
“It’ll be interesting to see what songs people like,” muses Stephen. “What songs really affect people. We still don’t know what to expect.”
Every time talk turns to hype, they’re quick to refocus on the music. The fact is, success in this business also brings a certain degree of fame and recognition. Garrigan says he’d happily play “five shows a day” and you believe him. You also feel that, once he leaves the stage, he’d really rather the spotlight did not follow. Daft Punk located a creative loophole in the form of their helmets, meaning they can be both massive and unrecognisable in a crowd when they wish. The perfect solution?
“Does that mean I have to dress up as a robot?” he deadpans, before retelling a story he heard at Sony France, where a top label exec was tricked into thinking that a Daft Punker doddling on the premises was actually a new intern.
“I don’t really mind the attention so far. We’re completely new, so we’re just going with it. Not everybody’s going to like our music, because everyone’s got different tastes.”
Their new video suggests they’re now ready for their close-up. Until now they had enlisted actors (most notably Game Of Thrones’ Liam Cunningham) to drive the narratives, but ‘Love Like This’ involves the whole band. How hard could it be? Not very... for Mark, Vinny and Jay.
Garrigan spends most of it being slapped in the face, splashed with water and dragged around the floor.
“There were a lot of out-takes! As the day went on people started hitting me harder and harder and harder. After so many takes, and everyone getting tired, they got frustrated... I was surprised the guys in the band weren’t queuing up with baseball bats! I’m really uncomfortable acting.
“We’re more about the music, y’know? We’re going to be in the next one but it’ll be a happy medium between getting a story that represents the song in a good way and...”
The lead singer not getting beaten up.
“Yeah, that’s pretty much it!”
You’ve got to love a band with ambition.

In A Perfect World gets a live airing at Longitude, Dublin (July 20) and Indiependence, Cork (August 2)