Kila in our midst

itting in an upstairs room in Galway’s Skeffington Arms Hotel, Kíla percussionist Lance Hogan is supping a pint of plain and looking warily out the window.

“This must be the first time I’ve ever been nervous before a Kíla show that I’m not actually playing in,” he remarks, laughing softly. “Well, of course I am playing, but I’m gonna be about 12 fuckin’ feet high!”
The City of the Vibe’s annual Film Fleadh is in full swing and a crowd of more than 1,500 music fans has gathered in Eyre Square for the world premiere of his band’s new concert film Once Upon A Time... on a specially erected open-air big screen. One of those bobbing heads outside belongs to Mr. Tommy Silverman, CEO of Tommy Boy Records. Apparently, he’s flown in especially. Shush!
As things eventually transpire, the screening is absolutely phenomenal, with the audience reacting exactly as they would if the seven-piece band were playing live. Not that Lance, who directed the film, ever really had all that much to be worried about. He knows it’s good. The DVD’s cover blurb features the kind of heavyweight critical plaudits that money can’t buy, with the likes of Neil Jordan, Kevin Godley and Niall Stokes all singing the movie’s praises (oh, and some bloke called ‘Bono’ liked it as well). According to author Pat McCabe’s liner notes, “It’s a James Joyce Ballet, an astonishing composition of light, movement and sound.”
Made on the proverbial shoestring, Once Upon A Time... was shot in December 2006 at one of the band’s renowned Christmas shows in Vicar St. Lance and his wife, Suzanne Doyle (who produced), have been irregularly working on putting it together ever since.
“It was filmed about 18 months ago,” he explains. “It’s taken us that long to put it together. On what was pretty much a zero budget, it’s obviously very difficult. We were kind of getting a chunk of money together to do the edit, then another chunk of money to mix the sound, and so on.”
Needless to say, the determined duo pooled their extensive rolodexes.
“We owe a huge amount of favours. To me, what really made the difference was getting Maurice Linnane in to edit it. He used to be with Dreamchaser, and he’s a genius editor. He really helped us out and was incredibly generous with his time.
“But really this would not have happened without Suzanne. I know she’s my wife so I’m obviously gonna big her up, but truly this wouldn’t have happened without all the hard work she put into it. She has done everything from finding the finance, organising everything and everyone, and making it happen, down to now doing the PR and marketing. She’s phenomenal. She was the main drive. Not because of me, but she always got Kíla.”
A native of Dun Laoghaire, Lance has been playing with Kíla for 14 years now (as has his brother Brian). Although he originally studied it in college, this is his first foray into filmmaking in many years.
“I made some films when I was in college, but I’ve never really directed anything since. But I’ve always had my toe in, because I’ve done a lot of soundtracks over the years. So I’ve worked with the audio end of things constantly. The reason I left college was because I got an awful lot of work in studios. Ironically, I was asked to produce Kíla’s first album when I left college, which is how I got involved with the band. Music kind of took off for me then. I’ve toured with Dead Can Dance and done other stuff, but Kíla’s really my main focus.”
Always a fan of the genre, he freely admits he took his inspiration from two other famous concert movies.
“Inspiration? I stole a load of ideas from Stop Making Sense and The Last Waltz,” he laughs. “I’m a huge fan of concert films. I’ve had a rake of them at home since I was a teenager, drumming away in young bands, having the craic and dreaming of touring. I was always studying everything I could get my hands on visually – so you could actually see what the musicians were doing, how they were set up, what pedals they were using. I’ve always been fascinated by that.”
Given that Lance was noisily ensconced behind his drum-kit throughout the filming, how did he manage to direct proceedings?
“Basically I gathered eight camera people, one of them being an old college friend of mine named Robbie Ryan. He’s a director of photography based in England. So I called him over and asked him to be director of photography on the project. So what we did was we made a plan with the eight camera people that we knew. We literally had to pre-plan what everybody was going to do and what they were going to cover.”
Although Kíla always put on a powerful live show, the band pulled out all the stops on the night – enlisting the help of trapeze artists, acrobats, trumpeters and colourful dancing troupes to create a spectacularly vivid filmic fusion of music, art, theatre and circus. As Kevin Godley’s blurb puts it, “If one could envisage a live concert film that feels like Africa crashing into Ireland, with visual effects by Cirque Du Soleil, it might look and sound something like this.”
According to Lance, they were lucky it worked out so well.
“It was real guerrilla filmmaking. You leave a lot up to chance and, on the night with the camera crew, you really had to trust them. Because obviously if some unexpected action suddenly happened, I didn’t want eight cameras going on that. You know, with so much going on visually, all eggs were in one basket on the night.
“Like, we had three cameras up on the balcony, and song by song they’d swap the wide shot. The whole show was planned out. I suppose there’s a lot left to luck, but we controlled as much as we possibly could.”
The film comes in at around 70 minutes, though the average Kíla gig tends to go on a little longer.
“I cut out about six songs, because they didn’t work, and one or two performance things that we had done just didn’t work. They didn’t look good or little things went wrong.”
Now that the film is finally done, dusted and transferred to DVD, Lance plans on using it as a sort of visual CV.
“There’s a perception amongst many music industry people that Kíla’s a trad band, but we’re actually not! Not at all! We use traditional instruments, but they’re our own songs. It’s not diddley-aye – it’s quite a unique sound. It’s world music. Actually, I even hate that tag because everything is world music.
“But I’m sick of trying to explain to people exactly what it is that we do. But now I can send this DVD around to do the work. That was the main incentive. Because I want to open doors and there are certain types in the industry that I just can’t convince to come to a Kíla gig. Now I’ll just mail them a Kíla gig.”