On this day in 2005: Damien Dempsey released Shots

Originally published in Hot Press in March 2005:

30th August, 2003. The scene: backstage at the Lisdoonvarna Festival in the RDS. I'm interviewing Damien Dempsey on camera for hotpress.com. It should be an easy gig. All I need is five minutes. Instead, it's like pulling teeth. First, I have to jostle for talk-time with Glen Hansard (who's busy attempting to teach Damien a song for a possible on-stage collaboration later that day). Then, when we finally settle down to do the interview, Damien is somewhat less than effusive.

For sure, as I grill him about his upcoming performance, his family and the then recently released Seize The Day, he's polite, and demonstrates his prairie-dry wit. But he's also pre-occupied, growing increasingly curt and self-conscious as time wears on.

Maybe it was my fault. To this day the resulting video footage is affectionately regarded in HP Towers as an example to show to journalism students, so they can see how it shouldn't be done.

Credit: Cathal Dawson

Eighteen months later, as we meet again in Dublin’s Central Hotel, I can’t resist dredging up the memory. “Yeah, I was definitely very nervous that day,” Damien laughs.

One thing becomes immediately obvious – there is a vast difference between the Damien that played alongside his childhood heroes that balmy summer’s evening in the RDS and Damien Dempsey today. As he prepares to unleash his epic third album Shots on an expectant world, there's an air of confidence that's been won through hard experience. Since we last spoke he's toured with Morrissey, worked with Brian Eno and won the heart of the great Dom Joly… even if he is still trying to sneak girls up to his room without his Da finding out. But more on that later!

The watershed, undoubtedly, was accompanying Morrissey on a US jaunt that saw Dempsey playing to audiences of over 6,000 nightly.

“Before the Morrissey tour, it was sleepless nights all the way,” he admits. “When I did Radio City Hall, I got a lift into Manhattan from New Jersey, and drove across the Hudson towards the Manhattan skyline. From six blocks away I saw this neon sign, with big red letters. I was like ‘Jaysus, I have to play there’. I knew Sinatra and Billie Holliday and Nina Simone had played there, so I was absolutely terrified.

"Then I saw my name up over the door, under Morrissey’s in Radio City Hall. I was scared out of my mind, but when I walked onstage someone in the front row shouted, ‘Damien! It’s Georgie from Brooklyn!’ Loads of guys I knew from Rocky Sullivan’s, where I used to work, were there – and once I saw them, I felt I could relax. And I did.”

Elsewhere on the tour, Morrissey’s fans were similarly welcoming.

“The Morrissey crowd was very polite,” he notes. “They’re an intelligent crowd. Most of them listened and I think I got one boo for the whole month, which wasn’t bad!"

As one might imagine, touring with Morrissey was a colourful experience, and Damien found much common ground with the famously reclusive star.

“He’s a tortured soul, like meself…” he laughs. "He asked us out for a drink with his crew one night. He took the piss out of me for about two hours but I gave it back to him, don’t worry. He was pretending he couldn’t understand a word I was saying. He said he used to go to Crumlin for his holidays when he was a kid, and I was like, ‘oh, very salubrious’.

“We were in Philly in an Irish bar, that night,” he adds. “All the staff were from Tyrone and wanted my autograph, and they didn’t know who Morrissey even was. That was a laugh. I think one of them was a fan and got the rest of the staff into me."

In April, Stephen Patrick Morrissey was quoted as saying, “If the words and the voice can be combined to be arresting then I’m a slave to that person for life. I quite like the work of Damien Dempsey… he has a fantastic voice.”

Not a compliment to be taken lightly, eh?

“He’s real crack, and has this real Dublin wit, which he must get from his parents,” he observes. “The night I met him, I got off the stage, and he grabbed me from behind, throwing a few digs to the ribs. He said, ‘love yourself today, what sort of a message is that to give anyone?’ Then he says ‘the veggies are gonna get you’ – ‘cos he knows I’m not veggie. He found out I wasn’t and he said onstage he was gonna knock the bejaysus out of me.”

As it happens, Moz very nearly made a vegetarian out of the young Dubliner.

“Veggie stuff, that’s all there was backstage,” he states. “It was nice though. If I had that all the time, I might well have been a veggie. I could’ve murdered a sausage at the time, though."

Credit: Cathal Dawson

Damien’s experiences travelling in the States were integral to the making of Shots.

“It definitely broadened the mind,” he asserts. “Going around America and meeting people from different backgrounds was brilliant. In Miami Beach, the seagulls were chasing me down the beach, thinking I was a corpse. When I strip off, I’m like a milk bottle! It was interesting. A lot of the security at the shows are Black guys, and they really liked the stuff. They could see the influences of their own stuff there, in my songs.”

Unfortunately, Dempsey’s American dream came to an abrupt halt when he had to cancel the remaining three dates on the Morrissey tour, to return to London to complete the recording of Shots.

“When I heard that I’d have to come back and have the album done by December, I was fierce agitated,” he remembers. “Initially I said, ‘tell Sony I’m calling it off, and I won’t be able to get it together’. Fortunately it all worked well in the studio. Sometimes it’s fresh when you do it fast, as opposed to spending ages tweaking it. I felt better doing the album after the Morrissey tour, because my voice was so much stronger – it was primed. Ringfit, as I call it. On form.”

Damien was in the States in the run-up to the Presidential Election.

“When Bush was voted in, I’d just left the US,” he says. “It was depressing. You just have to remember that half of them didn’t vote for him. A President is seldom voted out during a war. That said, hopes had been high. So many anti-Bush people are broken-hearted that he’s back in.”

Having delivered tracks like ‘Marching Season Siege’, ‘Celtic Tiger’, and ‘Great Gaels Of Ireland’, there has always been a political edge to Damien's work. He's immensely proud to be Irish, and you can see it when he wraps the green, white and orange flag around him.

“Elements in history are still affecting us today and I feel a need to address it," he says. "A lot of what happens today is a direct hangover from European colonialism, carving up lines here and there, with no foresight into what would happen years down the line. You need to keep telling people about these things so they won’t forget – and so that it won’t happen again. But it is happening again. That’s a song I’m working on right now.”

One of the highlights of Shots is ‘Chocktaw Nation’ (“I am in your debt/I just want to thank you/I got so upset/when I learned of your wisdom and your virtue”).

“I learnt about the Chocktaw, a Native American tribe who had sent food to the Irish during the famine, and was very moved by the story,” he explains. “So I was apologising for that. It’s about the Irish people who ran the tools of oppression in some of these places…the likes of General Sheridan who was bad to the Native American, so I was apologising to them. It’s a song about patience.”

Dempsey is perturbed at the response of Irish people to immigrants over the past few years.

“We have a similar history to a lot of people coming here now,” he explains. “The fact that we were refugees and needed to emigrate…people might find a bit of common ground, if they listened to the song, with people they see on the streets. It’s fear, I think, the result of people being on a small island for thousands and thousands of years.”

Another one of Dempsey’s concerns is what he calls ‘Ireland’s so-called economic boom’ – the nuisance that has already been documented on Seize The Day (‘Celtic Tiger’).

“I’m still living at home at the moment, on a back to work scheme,” he reveals. “People see you on the TV and think that you’re loaded. Me and me father live in Donaghmede, me mother’s in North Strand. I go there when I’m sick of me aul’ fella or when he's sick of me.

“With this boom, a lot of people have pocketed a lot of the money… it’s feathered a lot of nests,” he continues. “Yet you go to the primary schools, and most of them are falling down. People give you shit if you complain; they say there’s more jobs than ever. It’d be nice to have me own place, but I couldn't afford to move out. It’s a bit embarrassing bringing someone home. Me aul’ fella would be roaring down the stairs, ‘what are ya doing?’ So I’d have to go ‘Shhhh!’ I wouldn’t have parties or anything, but I might bring someone back from time to time.”

Would he not consider a move to the garden shed for that sort of thing?

“I enjoy me comforts too much,” he grins. “Jaysus, if you saw the shed… oil, car, breezeblocks, punchbag…”

Currently single, Damien maintains he isn’t looking for anything ‘serious’.

“I’m holding off getting into a relationship until I have a place of my own and a bit of financial stability,” he admits. “I need to put in the work first. Besides, travel would be a lot of strain on her."

The good news, ladies, is that this could all change within a matter of months. With the big 3-0 looming soon, the Dubliner feels as though his time is coming.

“Me songwriting’s gotten better,” he contends. “Better lyrics, better singing, better everything. But I’m still developing. I reckon in me 30s, I’ll be at my best. I’ll be at my most confident and my voice will be even stronger.

"There’s a lot I didn’t know in my 20s, there will be a lot I won’t know in my 30s. But I’ll know more about my strengths and limitations, so I’m looking forward to it. When you tell people in their 60s and 70s, you tell them about hitting 30, and they’re like, ‘you lucky bastard, they’re the best years’. So I think they’ll be great years for me.”

By the sound of it, Damien has had a brush with the much-maligned quarter-life crisis…

“I would have got that, Jaysus yeah, definitely,” he agrees. “I was still trying to get my first album out, and then it wasn’t doing very well. It was in the shops for a week and then it disappeared and I think I thought my chance had disappeared as well. At that stage, I had been trying for ages.”

Of course, it was around this time,twelve years after he first picked up a guitar, that Sinéad O’Connor famously walked into his life.

“The album (They Don’t Teach This Shit In School) flopped and I’d had a rough few months, so I went to America,” he recalls. “I came back from America and I found out that Sinéad had covered the song with Massive Attack. I was fairly chuffed to say the least. Like, Christy, Sinéad and Shane MacGowan were on me walls when I was younger. I got the album Universal Mother, a real rebel album, and I kept looking out for her to play live and then she disappeared. I thought I might get to meet them but never thought I’d get to work with them. So dreams can come true!”

True to form, when Dempsey finally met Sinéad, his nerves were the worse for wear.

“I didn’t know what to be saying to her, I was very nervous,” he recalls. “We did the duet in Whelan's for my documentary (It’s All Good) – she very kindly came in and performed for it.”

So what does he make of the recent news of Sinéad’s return to the musical fold?

“It’s great, someone like that can’t give up music,” he states. “It’s in her blood…it’s in her soul. I think she just needs a break every now and again. She’ll always come back to the music. She has to get out there and use her god-given gifts. Besides, she’s another mouth to feed now, so she has to make the bread and butter!”

Additionally, U2 sticksman Larry Mullen Jr’s fascination with Dempsey has already been well-documented.

“He’ll probably say something different with the new album,” he laughs. “I thought Larry would get it, he’s from Harmonstown, near Donaghmede. He called me a Dublin rapper, which I’m not really. Unless there’s a lot of information I want to get out in a short amount of time. I just need to get it all out in the one song.”

No-one was more surprised than Dempsey himself when it transpired that Led Zeppelin legend Robert Plant was also an admirer.

“My label in the US, Sanctuary, was courting him, as they say,” he notes. “They were like, ‘we’ll do this and that’, and he said to them ‘What I want to know is, what are you doing on Damien Dempsey? I want to see what you do with Damien. If you do a good job, I’ll think about it’. Sanctuary weren’t too pleased. If someone gives me stick, I think, well I have some high-profile fans, which is good enough for me.”

Having effectively found a home at Spirit, the UK management company of longtime Sinéad-cohort John Reynolds, Dempsey was also recently afforded the opportunity to work with the legendary Brian Eno.

“He’s a good bit of fun, a good laugh,” he says simply of Eno. “He’s very easy going, has lots of stories, none of which I can repeat. He goes off into his studio and does his own thing when he works on my stuff. I think he likes the different influences in my music, a bit of reggae, bit of trad.”

Despite his growing number of well-known fans, Dempsey admits that he hasn’t thought much about possible collaborations with fellow musicians.

“I’m a loner, a solitary person,” he explains. “The melodies come at home and I write the lyrics somewhere, maybe in a pub, or out on Howth head or somewhere like that. I’m not good at collaboration. I might try it, if I start drying up!”

Dempsey may be commanding the affections and attentions of a growing number of illuminati (Miles Hunt effusively describes listening to Seize The Day as ‘a moment I’ll take to the grave’), but it hasn’t always been this way.

“I haven’t experienced so much of that old ‘Irish’ begrudgery recently, though I got enough of it over the early years to last me a lifetime,” he confesses. “When I get a bad review now and people say I’m shite, it just bounces off me, it’s fine. Compared to the way it used to hurt, it was like a dagger, like a knife through me. It killed me big time. After ‘Dublin Town’, people said it was brutal. I wrote that when I was 17, but I still think it was good. Some people thought it was a gimmick or a novelty single, but you live and learn.

“Adversity made me want to prove people wrong,” he adds. “I tried to do something different in the early days and people weren’t ready for it and didn’t understand, and a lot of them still don’t. But, sure, if I was gonna stop, I would have stopped by now!”

Having put that unwelcome aspect of his career well and truly behind him, Dempsey is concentrating on bringing his inimitable sound to the masses.

“I’ll try and go out there and give it everything I have,” he states. “I’ll give it socks and make it a spiritual event…I’ll make them laugh, make them cry, and have them sing along. Nowadays, the crowd sings every word. I’ll have to do a Christy Moore on them; ‘I’m singin’ this…shurrup! Let’s have the one voice on this one’. But it’s not a bad complaint really, y’know.”

Which is putting it mildly.

First up on the live front is a gig at London’s 100 Club, a legendary haunt that has been frequented in the past by the likes of The Rolling Stones, The Beatles and, indeed, almost any outfit of note since then.

“I don’t know much about it,” he shrugs. “I do know the Sex Pistols played there. Is there a good vibe? I mean I suppose you have to create the vibe… I’ll just do me thing, same as I do anywhere, if they get into it. If they don’t all you can do is your best.”

Having already played London’s Borderline and ULU venues, Damien’s passionately Irish sound has already demonstrated that it has the legs to make serious inroads into the UK.

“It’s the only way to be,” he concludes. “You can’t change what you do. I wouldn’t be very versatile. What you do, you do. If I tried to change, it would sound very contrived and diluted. Hopefully my voice will improve and get a little sweeter. It’ll all happen in my 30s. Although at 39, I'll probably say ‘yeah my 40s are gonna be the best’.”

One week later. The scene, London’s 100 Club. I'm watching as Damien ambles onstage to do what could prove to be a vital UK showcase. Among those in attendance are Maria Doyle Kennedy, Brian Eno, Joe Doyle (The Frames) and Trigger Happy star Dom Joly.

Predictably, Damien's set burns with a strong Irish passion, but it is also infused with a balmy reggae influence. It’s an unusual marriage, but Dempsey pulls it off with conviction and élan. The new single, ‘St. Patrick’s Day’, is immediately, overwhelmingly infectious, rich with old-Dublin imagery and early house rhetoric.

With his eyes shut tight throughout the set, Dempsey initially appears nervous, but it gives way to confidence and pride as the set moves on.

What is particularly striking is the overwhelming number of English revellers who sing Dempsey’s lyrics with as much conviction, passion and empathy as he does. Songs like ‘Industrial School’ and ‘Negative Vibes’ are no doubt imbued with an entirely different meaning for this crowd, but judging by the way in which they echo Dempsey, you’d hardly know it.

Dom Joly, meanwhile, happily sings most of the lyrics to tracks from Seize The Day, at the top of his lungs. All told it's an incendiary and triumphant show.

At the aftershow in the Phoenix Club, Dempsey is in a jovial mood. It’s the first time a crowd has heard the music from Shots in a live setting, and he appears relieved that it went down a storm. “I was shitting meself earlier,” he confides, confirming that he’s still having to rein in that pre-show jumpiness.

Later on, back at the Langham Hotel, a few of us, including Dempsey, and band member Eamonn de Barra, dive into the room’s mini-bar (okay, maybe that was just me) and proceed to watch early morning MTV (Damo’s not a fan of the Chemical Brothers’ single ‘Galvanise’, though he thinks Gwen Stefani is ‘fit’).

After tonight’s set, however, larger questions begin to loom. Like, how would he feel about celebrity and fame if, say, Shots went on to sell as many records as The Other Damien did with O?

“Well, I wouldn’t mind selling that many records,” he smiles. “But it’s not really my objective to go out there and be a celebrity. It’s not what I’m about. If I have a few more fans by the end of this year…now that would be just perfect for me.”

As ever he's a master of understatement. The excitement about Shots is such that it will almost certainly debut at No 1 in Ireland. Already a gold album seems guaranteed. The question is, how quickly will the rest of the world follow? One thing's for certain as he readies himself for the fray: Damien Dempsey will be giving it his best shots. The smart money is on a knockout...