Mescall buzz

Consider the backroom boys and girls who exert an invisible but very real influence upon the airwaves. Masked and anonymous songwriters labouring in small rooms (in big mansions), sending their wares out into the world to colonise pop’s consciousness, spared the social retardation of fame but rolling in money.

Limerick-born songwriter Don Mescall mightn’t be battling it out with Cathy Dennis and Mike Batt just yet, but a decade and a half in the music business has proved him both a grafter and a crafter.
“When I signed my first publishing deal, they very gently started putting me with people who would pick out my stronger points and that I’d learn from,” he explains, strumming a guitar as he sits in a Morrison Hotel conference room. “Eventually I wrote with Graham Lyle of Gallagher & Lyle, and for the last four years I’ve been writing with Randy Goodrum, who wrote ‘You Needed Me’ for Anne Murray as well as songs for Toto, Michael McDonald, Garth Brooks, Trisha Yearwood – some of the most covered songs in the world.
“I’m sitting in this huge studio outside Nashville, pinching myself and going, ‘How did this happen?’ But through your songs you connect with people, and you’re constantly learning, it’s like an apprenticeship.”
Mescall recently signed a seven-figure deal with Nashville pop-country label Curb following a heated bidding war. The first fruit of this is his solo debut album Innocent Run, which includes a tune by the name of ‘Trouble Is’, currently sought after by acts as diverse as Aerosmith and the Backstreet Boys. Indeed, Mescall is unusual amongst his singer-songwriter peers in that his upper registers echo Tyler rather than Dylan or Van, not that you’d know it from his speaking voice, which remains resolutely Limerickian.
“I’ll tell you what, I decided 16 years ago when I moved to London that if I lose the accent it’s time to go home,” he laughs. “If I came back with an English accent I’d be strung up.”
Fearful of being tempted by the false security of the covers circuit, Mescall left his native city just as Irish music was entering the post-’80s doldrums.
“That was before that whole singer-songwriter buzz started in Ireland,” Don recalls. “There was Freddie White, Mary Black, Christy Moore and that was that. There was one singer-songwriter night on a Sunday for the whole of Limerick. So I thought, ‘I gotta get out.’”
The next few years were spent trying to get a grip on the greasy pole of open mic nights and support slots in London. The breaks came slow, but they came just the same. His songs found their way onto albums by Frances Black, Eleanor Shanley and Richie Havens, and the ensuing attention resulted in a publishing deal. Next thing, he was a regular commuter to Nashville and guest at LeAnn Rimes’ house. None of which swayed him from the meat of the matter.
“This has happened only because of the songs,” he maintains. “Once I get into songwriting, I block everything else out.”
So how does it feel to have Aerosmith and the Backstreet Boys playing tug o’ war with one of his babies?
“I thought someone was taking the piss. I said, ‘Get out of here!’ I always thought it was a girl’s song, I’m kinda hopin’ LeAnn’s gonna record it… but everybody seems to want it.”