One from the heart

"I think it was the second time I did Witnness, in 2002.” Mundy is recalling a moment – not just any moment, but the moment – when he knew that the shift from major label drop-out to national success story was not too far away.

“God, I remember it really well. If I’d have messed up that gig, I was definitely going to have a really hard time. Before it I was getting sick with nervousness. And I remember, on the stage, the amount of goodwill and good energy that there was there towards me, and towards the music. I remember singing ‘July’, and nearly crying in the middle of the song with happiness. It was near the end of the gig, and I thought ‘This is going really well’. The crowd were singing it back. They were even hosing down the people in the tent. It was like a real, kind of; it was a real moment. And I knew it then. People just talked and talked about that gig.”
It wasn’t so long before this milestone that Mundy had been written off as just another casualty of the record industry. Having signed to Sony in 1996, the Birr native achieved a sudden international success thanks to the inclusion of his song ‘To You I Bestow’ on the platinum-selling Romeo And Juliet soundtrack. But it wasn’t to last. This initial burst of activity gave way to a long period of disillusionment with the music world following his sacking from the label.
A period of travelling in South America was followed by a back-to-basics gigging routine that saw him picking up his acoustic guitar and harmonica and boarding the good ship Bus Eireann for a gruelling series of shows all around Ireland. “I hadn’t much confidence, to be honest, before the album came out,” he recalls. “I’d been dropped, I had to go out gigging on my own – I couldn’t afford to bring out a band. I was really starting from the bottom again.”
His ascent to national recognition began to gather pace in the summer of 2002 with the release of his sophomore album, 24 Star Hotel. Containing hits-in-waiting ‘July’ and ‘Mexico’ (both picked up by radio and quickly becoming anthems on the festival circuit), the album’s initial pressing of 3,000 copies soon ran out. ‘Mexico’ and ‘July’ having also registered in the charts, Mundy embarked on a national tour, played Witnness and Lisdoonvarna, supported Neil Young and recorded a cover of Shakira’s ‘Whenever Wherever’ for the multi-platinum Even Better Than The Real Thing compilation (“Well, I don’t really have… breasts, as such,” he laughs, when I mention the song. “My breasts are small and humble [he examines his chest] but I’m hoping to get them smaller.”)
All the while, the success of his album and live shows was reinstating his faith in making music.
“I felt, like, if 25 or more thousand people like the way I’m writing songs on this album, then they’re likely to enjoy the next batch of songs on the next album,” he reflects. “And for me, it’s like I’ve been accepted and I can relax a little bit more.”
Not only has he been accepted, but Mundy has taken control of his own career – something that, as a spurned former-major label artist, he was determined to do.
“I’ve completely left the past behind me now,” he says, determinedly. “I’m my own boss and I call my own shots. I ring up a studio if I want to record in it, I call the musicians if I want them to play. It’s just really basic, but it’s easy, and it works.”
This independent attitude was something he cites as crucial to the making of his new album. Raining Down Arrows was recorded over two and a half weeks in the dusty environs of Austin, Texas, a location Mundy speaks of as his inspirational home. For one thing, it’s the place where he bought the infamous cowboy hat that would later adorn the cover of his platinum record 24 Star Hotel, and holds, for him, a certain musical pull.
Aside from a fascination with artists from “that part of the world”, over several trips to the town he became enamoured with the local scene and set about recording his album with the help of a husband and wife duo who played in several Austin bands. The studio of choice was ominously titled The Slaughterhouse – a remote location, seven miles outside the town.
“It’s quite deserty out there,” he explains. “Very dry land. You can hear strange sounds in the bushes. There are rattlesnakes and scorpions out there, lots of deadly things – a pretty wacky place to make an album. But it was great. Especially working with strangers, you can tell them what you want. There’s no familiarity there. It was a great exercise. Sometimes when I work with friends, the music gets lost because I’ve told them a filthy joke the night before and they’re still laughing at it and we’re playing this big sensitive love song and they’re playing it too hard or not really putting their heart into it. But when you’re a stranger working with a stranger, there’s more respect there.”
Also, the fact that there were so few people involved with the making of the record meant that the pressure to instil a ‘Mundy’ stamp on his music was not as strong as with previous efforts.
“When you have a big deal,” he muses, “you have your managers coming in and going ‘Turn that down, turn that up’, then you have the A&R guys coming in, then the head of A&R, the engineer and the producer are having a row in the corner, and you end up going ‘Stop! This is my music!’ This time I didn’t have anybody. And I think it sounds like that as well.”

The result is Mundy’s most accomplished work to date. Although for the most part bereft of the radio-friendly, hummable licks of ‘July’ and ‘Mexico’ (“I should hope so,” he quips), it bears the mark of an artist in transition. Themes of love and loss prevail, with song titles such as ‘By Her Side’, ‘Love and Confusion’, ‘Soul Mate’, ‘All The Love’ and ‘You Are The One’ fuelling the view that this album is Mundy’s answer to David Kitt’s recent loved-up release, Square One.
Musically, he’s also exploring new territory – experimenting with surreal effects, full-on-band folk, a broader choice of instruments and more extreme divisions of his own style. This gives the record something of a split personality, poppy one minute, folky the next, then dark and intense.
“There are a lot of love songs on this album,” he admits. “Some of them are from ages ago and some are quite recent. Actually, I think every song on it pretty much is a love song. Some of them are positive; some of them are negative. Was I in a relationship at the time? I’m always in relationships. Did that have an impact on the direction the record took? I think love has a big impact on me, in general. With women or with life or with whatever. It affects me in a great way. Sometimes you have new found love and it’s amazing and it’s perfect and it’s everything, then you have the difficulties in a relationship, then you’ve the end, then you’ve the ‘Can’t live without you’ thing. And they’re all from different times, but there is a time when they all fit together on a record. And I didn’t think about it, it just so happened that they all asked to be recorded together. Is this album my Square One then? No, it’s not. It’s my dark, romantic album.”
It’s also his most direct. Instead of meticulously constructing a collage of sounds, Mundy has succeeded in tapping a more direct line into his creative well – an aspect of his sound that’s echoed in the fluidity of his songwriting.
“I want to be as ‘Mundy’ as I can,” he explains. “I don’t like to edit it too much, I just let it flow out, just flow, and I try not to stop it although I dry up for months and months and months without writing anything. I never try and force it. It doesn’t come out right. It comes out contrived and all those funny bits… they wouldn’t come out if I tried. It’s like if you haven’t cried for two years or something and when you start crying you just let it go, you don’t try to cry another way. If you’re laughing from your heart as well, you can hear it. Some people laugh fake and you can tell. That’s like songwriting. If you do it from your heart, you can’t go far wrong.
“I don’t read into being a singer too deeply, though,” he adds. “All that ‘You’re a singer and you change people’s lives and you make them feel a certain way’ with your music… If you look into that it can be a little bit freaky, so I just skim over the top of it and try not to… [pauses] It can be quite heavy, y’know what I mean? Like, just the idea… people have come up to me and said certain songs have got them out of depression and that can be a little bit scary. But I suppose it’s better people are saying it got them out of a depression rather than into one.”
While he shies away from the emotional link he has extended to listeners through his records, he is quick to point out the power of playing to and connecting with a live audience.
“The best gig I’ve ever seen was Bruce Springsteen in the RDS last year,” he says. “Now I don’t love all of his albums, but when he plays, he puts more than 100% into it. He bleeds for his crowd. I just think hats off to him. Me and Glen (Hansard) went to see that gig and the two of us were like, ‘Oh my God’. I love watching Neil Young play live too, he really gets into it. I just love people who really lose themselves in it. I try to do that myself. There are times when the band and myself are locked in together and we’re into taking a song on a little trip. It doesn’t happen all the time. Thing is, if the audience helps you go there, you can help them go there and this electricity thing happens and there’s a whole… I don’t know what it is… It’s just a big ball of energy. It’s a great thing. That’s what musicians play for, that thing.”
While this synergy is the driving force behind most musicians, it does come at a cost. Mundy knows all too well just how low you can get in the pursuit of the moments that make it all worthwhile.
“I went over to the States a couple of times on my own, staying in hotel rooms on my own, not knowing too many people in the same city,” he remembers. “It can be very lonely, sitting in a hotel room, trying to eat a bowl of soup on your own just to keep your energy levels up. I think you need companions. Going around with your guitar on your own, doing gigs – it’s not good. I’m the kind of person… I don’t like to look inside too much. If you’re a thinker at all, sometimes you can create a situation that really isn’t there, and it can evolve into panic. I think it’s a bad thing to look too hard into yourself, cause you can get lost. And a lot of people do that and it can become a disease. I tend… [he pauses for a moment] Is he singing my song?”
Low in the background, we can hear The Frames playing ‘To You I Bestow’ in nearby King John’s Castle, Limerick, where Mundy has just finished his set. The fact that two thousand people are this very moment singing the words to his song serves as a poignant counterpoint to the dark times he’s recalling.
“I think Glen’s expecting me to walk out on stage, but I can’t!” he laughs. “The Frames have been very good to me. People give out about a lot of things, but The Frames really have a good heart, very generous people. Jealousy – there’s a lot of small talk around Dublin, and everywhere. Anyone gets a bit of success and people start talking bad things… These guys deserve more than they get sometimes. More success, I mean. When I moved to Dublin they were one of my favourite bands. The Mary Janes were another, Interference another. I used to save up all my shekels, go busking all week, to go and see these guys.”
These days, he’s more likely to be on tour with them, fondly reminiscing about times on the road in America with Paddy Casey, or treks across Australia with The Frames.
“That sort of stuff blows my mind,” he grins. “Going to all these amazing places and getting to share them with your friends. You can’t get better than that. Meeting the rock stars and going to the parties can be fun, but only if you’ve got somebody to share it with. Like, I could meet Glen in ten years’ time and be like, ‘D’ya remember that night in Sydney with such and such’ or be with Paddy and say, ‘Do you remember that night in Baltimore and whatever happened’. That’s the special stuff.”

Mundy’s Raining Down Arrows is in the shops now