Meat To The Beat

When, at the conclusion of our interview in a city centre hotel, your reporter tells Kells quintet Ham Sandwich that he’s going to spare them yet another spiel on what a dodgy name they’ve chosen, it elicits a hearty cheer from the ranks. A cheer, it must be said, that soon turns to bemusement when I begin to garble about the Ham Sandwich Theorem (also called the Stone-Tukey theorem, after Arthur H. Stone and John Tukey) found in a branch of mathematics known as measure theory.

“We should call ourselves the Stone-Tukeys,” considers bassist Johnny Moore, before returning to the subject of his band’s handle. “We were talking yesterday about Johnny Cash’s ‘A Boy Named Sue’, the whole thing of, if you listen to that song, it’s the same as calling your band Ham Sandwich.”
Um, I don’t follow.
“Everytime someone says, ‘Aw man, that’s a shit name’, you go, ‘Well, I gotta fight you then!’”
“Our fathers called us Ham Sandwich to make us mean,” says singer and guitarist Podge McNamee. “But it did actually do a bit of a job, it secretly helped us along.”
Yes, well, this writer recalls a press release from the band quoting Bono on the subject.
Podge: “That’s been mentioned about a million times.”
What do you expect if you put out blurb with a Bono quote in it?!
“We were backstage at a Chili Peppers gig,” Johnny recalls, “and I saw Bono there and said hello and said I was in a band called Ham Sandwich, and he said, ‘You should change the name’.”
It’s too late to stop now. Ham Sandwich have just released their debut album Carry The Meek, recorded with Karl Odlum in the band’s base of Kells, Co. Meath and also in Virginia, Co. Cavan. It’s a sober, often intense, melancholic record very much at odds with not just its creators’ name, but also their quirky visuals, stage costumes and piss-take Lionel Richie videos. Take our word for it, this ain’t no party, no disco, no post ironic pop art fooling around.
“You can have serious music, but it doesn’t mean you have to mimic your music,” reasons Podge. “We’ve always just been ourselves and not been too caught up by what people think. A lot of bands seem to write their music and put this serious persona out there, and they’re not being themselves. That’s one of the reasons why. It is very clashing, but that’s just how things panned out with us.”
And it’s something they’ve gone some lengths to rectify with the beautifully stark and minimalist video for their ‘Keepsake’ single, which is a deft melding of 4AD guitars with Go Betweens melodies, and for my money, their best song.
“It only took us two and a half hours, with very little money,” Johnny explains. “We’ve been working with this really decent guy, Killian Broderick, for about two years or more, he’s become really good mates with the band. He’s learning and we’re learning, but it’s really interesting having a bond with someone who loves what he does.”
And who can interpret the music correctly. If there’s a theme that unites the ten songs on Carry The Meek, it ain’t exactly upbeat.
“Most of the songs come from relationships and things that have passed,” admits Johnny.
“Heartbreak,” interjects vocalist Niamh Farrell.
“John took rocky relationships,” says Podge, “and turned it into ROCK!”
Hardly. But the album’s major strength is its non-porous nature, especially for a debut. Certain songs could benefit from a rethink, but the band’s sound is undoubtedly distinctive and fully-formed.
“We wrote a good few other songs for the album,” says Johnny, “but they weren’t really on the same theme, so it meant that they didn’t get included. If it didn’t fit into that ideal, there was no place for it on the album. It’s the happy album next!”
I’ll believe that when I see it. But go on.
“We were listening to a lot of different bands for research,” he says. “For the guitars, we looked at the Pixies and different guitar set ups that are similar. And we listened to bands that were on the same melancholic wavelength – The Wrens, the Smashing Pumpkins. And especially with the vocal set up, we had Lee Hazlewood and Nancy Sinatra.”
For sure, every song on the album hinges around the emotional dialogue between Niamh and Podge.
“I suppose it goes back to the Irish tradition of telling stories through songs,” Johnny considers. “It’s like a mini play of how things didn’t work out; there’s two characters in it explaining what went wrong.”
“…and will they reconcile and so on,” adds Niamh. “When you’re singing the lyrics you do get into the mood of it, just like an actor will get into a character. For me I’d think about something that would really piss me off, and then I’d get really angry, and that would work. Especially if you play a gig and there’s two rows of crowd standing around the bar way, way back, it’s really hard to get into a gig when you’re in that situation, but there are things you can think of that will click. It’s always anger actually!”
Podge: “It really is like a sing-off. It’s something that a solo singer doesn’t have, you can’t…”
Niamh: “Feed off another person.”
Ah. So it’s a three-in-a-bed musical romp, as it were.
John: “A ham sandwich!”
I feel a Whitesnake anecdote coming on. Bizarrely enough, the Hammers once ended up on the same bill as Coverdale and co in the Olympia. I shit you not.
Niamh: “Yeah. For two nights!”
Podge: “It still doesn’t make any sense!”
So, were they, ahem, touched by the hand of Coverdale?
Niamh: “We weren’t allowed to be! We had to be out of the backstage area five minutes before and five minutes after he was onstage. And at the end of the two days, this woman came out of his dressing room carrying pink satin-y cushions. I was like, ‘That’s not rock’ n’ roll!’”
Podge: “We toured with My Morning Jacket, one of my favourite bands, and that was amazing, that was our first big tour, but for some reason nothing has touched Whitesnake, just the bizarreness of it, the cheesiness and the hilarity of the band and their fans. You can’t help but get into it.”
Johnny: “It’s like going to a fancy dress for two days. Spandex and everything. It reminded me of the medieval things they have in America.”
What, the theme parks where the staff are not allowed to wear, say or do anything incongruent with the 16th century?
“Yeah, it’s just like that.”
Well, Coverdale’s old bandmate Richie Blackmore once went through a period where he gave up the electric guitar for the lute, donned a floppy Gandalf hat and wouldn’t play anything but medieval music, accompanied by a girl in a gown and flowing tresses. It almost put me off Machine Head for life.
Podge: “Tell him what Coverdale said about you.”
Niamh: “Oh yeah, I was sitting down the front of the gig, the bouncer let us into that space in front of the barrier, and Coverdale came over and he said, ‘Alright love?’ and my mate was sitting beside me going, ‘Ham Sandwich! Ham Sandwich!’ And he was like, ‘Wot? Sandwich? I’d ’ave you between two slices of bread any day, love!’ I was sitting there going, ‘There’s a creepy wrinkly man making sexual propositions to me!’”

Hear Carry The Meek live in HMV, Grafton Street (February 15); Whelan's, Dublin (23); Spirit Store, Dundalk (March 1); Murphy's Live, Crawdaddy, Dublin (6); Roisin Dubh, Galway (9); and Cyprus Avenue, Cork (13 + Queen Kong)