Kean Kavanagh: "It really irritates me when people portray all the anti-immigration beliefs as anything other than racism. It’s so dishonest"

You take what you’re given and you romanticise it. Mired turf on a floodlit, post-match pitch. Stories relayed across kitchen tables, across lifetimes. A TV dinner sits on a lonely lap in the glow of the telly. This is the Ireland of Kean Kavanagh’s debut album: half-humourous, half-tragic and mined straight from the head and heart.

For years, the singer-songwriter has made an art of playing with imagined realities. On his EP Dog Person, Kavanagh took on his titular alter ego that’s half-dog, half-person. In a way, Kavanagh seems to be Irish music’s answer to Flann O’Brien, creating alternative worlds from destinies forked in two.

Born in Houston, Texas, Kavanagh was still an infant when his family resettled in Portlaoise. Although Kavanagh grew up in Ireland, that he could have had an entirely different life Stateside perplexed and mystified him.

“I literally have zero memories of Texas,” Kavanagh says, notably wearing a Dallas Cowboys t-shirt. “But it always felt like a special thing, that there was this other life I could’ve had. We could have as easily stayed there. No shade, I’m so happy to grow up where I did. But that other life was always a bit of a fantasy.”

Such fantasies came to the fore when the Laois singer-songwriter was conjuring ideas for his debut album, The County Star. Imbued with country and western and rock textures, the LP leans into an Americana sound, and traces the cultural ties between Ireland and the States. Tracks like ‘The County Star’ and ‘The Whistle’ could be sung by Hank Williams, while ‘Never’ has hints of My Bloody Valentine. The pull from both sides of the Atlantic is clearly evident on the record, both in content and in form.

“The album is a mix of things inspired by my own life,” says Kavanagh. “But there’s plenty of imagined stuff in there as well. I started to centre on this figure of the ‘county star’, and it can mean so many things. On one hand, it gives these Irish, GAA-centric vibes, but it could also be the name of a newspaper in Texas, or even the name of a pub. The idea of this local county star is just amusing to me. There’s something funny about being the star of nothing. It’s a kind of parochial paradox.”

One of the stars of this album, at least visually, is Pa Campion, an Elvis-impersonator-slash-town-hero, played by comedian Peter McGann. Campion plays a vital role in the three music videos for The County Star, in an increasingly surreal rollout that blurs the line between fact and fiction. Campion has his own Instagram, plastered with posts of Kavanagh and fellow Soft Boy peer Kojaque.

At first glance, you’d be forgiven for believing Campion to be a real person – in many ways, he is. But all of this mythos came to a head when it was announced on Kavanagh and Kojaque’s Instagram that Campion had departed the earthly realm. At once, fans were posting sincere condolences, while others joined in with the supposed act. But, as the singer tells me, it was all part of the plan.

“When Kev [Kojaque] and I started writing the initial concept for the videos, Kev suggested we get an Elvis impersonator in on it and that Peter McGann should do it,” Kavanagh chuckles. “I thought he was so perfect for the role, but there was no way we could get him. In the end, we just got onto him and he said ‘yes’ immediately. We had a budget for three videos and figured we could write a narrative within that framework.

“We knew from the first video to ‘The Whistle’, where it pulled back to everyone in funeral suits, that we had to kill Pa. In the lyrics to ‘A Cowboy Song’, there’s a looming darkness that’s about to take over. So we figured we’ll lean into it and kill the fucker.”

The charade continues to write itself. But it begs the question: is anything really that fictitious if it’s steeped so heavily in reality, even an alternate one? As Kavanagh imparts on The County Star, fantasy and real life aren’t so mutually exclusive. The figure of county stars like Pa Campion is a constant, no matter the locality.

“I wanted the visuals of this album to signify the imagery of Americana: space helmets, cowboy hats and the like,” he continues. “Kev and I had spoken before about the whole phenomenon of Irish Elvises, so we figured we’d explore that. Why are there Irish Elvises? It’s bizarre. There’s so many of them.

“That’s just one example of the weird connections between Ireland and America. JFK is another case in point. Women used to dedicate shrines to him in their house right beside Jesus. Culturally, we’ve always looked westward, almost as much as we’ve taken certain pop culture cues from the UK and Europe. We’re in this weird middle space.”

This straddling of cultures is a constant throughout The County Star. As Kavanagh offers, it goes far beyond local Elvis impersonators. For all the long-standing Irish fascination with the United States, and vice-versa, the appeal has soured following recent upheavals under the Trump administration. With the sudden halts to J1 and student visas, and the current practice of social media vetting of applicants, Kavanagh says the American Dream is having something of a wake-up call.

“That allure of America has changed pretty drastically,” he says. “I was just on my phone earlier and I saw a video saying that the J1 program in America had stopped, and they were interviewing students who were saying they wouldn’t have an interest in going to America. It’s crazy for me, because 10 years ago, I went to America for the summer. I had my passport, but everyone I went with was on a J1 visa. Even then, when there was already a lot of shit happening in America, it was still desirable to do that. I don’t know if that’s the truth anymore.

“It just feels like a great, big lie, doesn’t it? The promise of this American Dream just feels completely false. I mean, the head of state is pretty much the most famous liar of all time. It’s like, how do you even get into it? It all epitomises the promise of America. The propaganda that we all fell for through American pop culture has intentionally, or unintentionally, painted a very different picture than the reality.”

Amid the growing disillusionment among Irish people over emigrating to and visiting the US, to some extent there is also an embrace of right-wing ideologies in Ireland, which seem to mirror the rise of conservative extremism in the States. These sentiments motivated Kavanagh to pen the ballad ‘Father Brown’s’, after hearing a story from his dad one day.

“About a year ago, I was at home with my dad in Portlaoise,” the singer recalls. “He was telling me about a recent encounter he had with his friend, as they were driving through some land in Stradbally. In the car, his friend told him the story of the Massacre of Mullaghmast. In 1578, a colonist named Sir Francis Cosby and a few others lured a couple of the tribes of Laois and Offaly to Mullaghmast to have peace talks. Once they arrived, they were all murdered.

“As my dad told me this, it really stuck with me. Then that evening, he came home fuming from a swim in Portlaoise, after two lads in the sauna were talking about the recent news of a boat carrying Libyan immigrants that was lost at sea, about 60 people died. They were joking about it, saying they would have ‘shot them themselves’. It enraged my dad and he said to them, ‘You have very short fucking memories to be laughing about this’. I mean, how many people related to you would’ve had to go to America or England, and left for the same reasons these people are leaving their home countries?

“That day really stuck with me, and as we were writing the chords to what would become ‘Father Brown’s’, I knew I needed to write about it.”

Fuelled by disgust and anger, ‘Father Brown’s’ is a focal point of The County Star, forcing us to confront the rot we can no longer hide. With this, Kavanagh muses on the uptick of rightist ideas on the home front, from anti-immigration rallies to the growth of xenophobic attitudes amid the housing crisis.

“The rise of right-wing extremism in Ireland is just so ridiculous and short-sighted,” Kavanagh affirms. “It really fucking irritates me when people portray all the anti-immigration beliefs as anything other than racism. It’s so dishonest. There’s this fear of other people coming into the country, and I get that people say it stems from people’s frustration with how life in Ireland is at the moment.

“But I think it really comes from the American media and this big push for people to embrace that way of thinking. There are some very wealthy people who created this sort of shit. And it’s fucking maddening, because you want to shout that these people are just like everyone else.”

The County Star is out now.