Ooh, Danu, oobie doo..

With four albums out and endless tours hither and yon, I assume Danu must be making a packet, yes? Not so, it seems.

Donnchadh: “There’s seven of us, and usually a sound engineer when we go on the road. America’s our main market, but this year the dollar isn’t worth a fuck. We’ve also switched agencies, and we’re not very happy with our new agency. They made a hames of it. So our bank balance is about £40,000 overdrawn! When we first toured America we’d stay in the Holiday Inn. We had to stay in a place where there was a bar! But we copped on when we saw how little we were bringing back from America. Now we stay in four rooms in Motel Six at $49 a room. But we’re not waitin’ to get rich out if it.”
I wonder if the novelty might be wearing off Irish music in major markets like the USA, and they agree.
Donnchadh: “Riverdance is worn out now. It gave Irish music a great boost when it came out, but now it’s kind of winding down and Irish music hasn’t got the profile it had a few years ago. Titanic was great for Irish music too.”
But, I protest, when Riverdance started to travel the world the purists were outraged by the alleged damage it was going to do.
Donnchadh: “But you won’t make a living off purists! They’re no good to anyone. Purists wouldn’t even buy a bottle of water!”
Benny: “Tastes change so fast, and bluegrass is the big thing in America now since the film Oh Brother Where Art Thou.”
Donnchadh: “And I’ve heard that this new film Cold Mountain has a lot of bluegrass in it.”
Benny: “But we do have an old-timey North American song on the new album which our new singer Muireann Nic Amhlaoibh learned from the singer and fiddler Bruce Molsky.”
And you don’t have a manager?
Donnchadh: “No, Benny is our manager.”
Benny: “We’ve tried two or three different managers to see if we could make more money, but managing ourselves gives us more control. We’ve had to learn from our mistakes.”
How about your record label Shanachie?
Donnchadh: “Shanachie made us mean something in the States. Richard Nevins is a great man for music. He has about five or six thousand seventy-eight records himself.”
Do Danu albums require much pre-planning?
Donnchadh: “We don’t hang about! The Road Less Travelled was the first album Muireann sang on after Ciaran went back to university. She joined Danu on a Monday and we were recording it three weeks later in Liam Clancy’s studio in Rinn in County Waterford. Having two brothers, Tom and Eamon Doorley in the band gives us a stability too, and we were at school with our guitarist Donal Clancy.”
Benny: “The new album is a big change for the band. We’ve started getting airplay on daytime Radio 1 here. John Creedon and Ronan Collins have played us. And R na G give us a lot of coverage, and the weekly trad programme on WLR.”
Donnchadh: “I got three-fifty from IMRO the other week!”
Benny: “That’s nearly enough for a pint!”
Donnchadh: “Not in Temple Bar, it’s not!”
Benny: “We’ve been getting a bit of television too. We did a Christmas Eve special with Sharon Shannon on TG4. But the Late Late Show is impossible to get at the moment.”
Donnchadh: “They don’t like good Irish music. They like boy bands. Scottish television had a programme on New Year’s Eve with Aly Bain, Phil Cunningham, Capercaillie, Blazing Fiddles, all Scottish traditional musicians singing their own music. Why couldn’t RTE do that? RTE aren’t doing anything for Irish music.”
I ask them if they’ve ever tried to sell themselves to a major label.
Donnchadh: “No. Sure major labels aren’t interested in Irish music no more than the man in the moon, like. And there’s only so much diddly-diddly people can listen to, right?”
The cover of The Road Less Traveled suggests that no member of Danu could be described as a dedicated follower of fashion. This observation is met with much good-humoured nodding of heads.
Donnchadh: “The cover photo was taken early one morning on the way to Dublin. We had 25 minutes to spare in Clonmel. Everybody was grumpy.”
Benny (laughing): “But that cover did us a favour, actually. For the gig in Brussels the Government had to go shopping for new clothes for all of us. When we walked into the dressing room we found lovely new shirts and stuff.”
Donnchadh: “Sure it was great to get a shirt for Donal Clancy anyway!”
So what about the next album? How far ahead do Danu prepare for these things?
Donnchadh: “After The Road Less Travelled was finished I rang Declan Sinnott and asked him to produce our next album. But he felt he hadn’t anything to bring to it and he said no. But then he doesn’t really work with trad bands as such, so we’re looking for a producer now.”
Benny: “Yeah, we’d like a producer who didn’t depend too much on the technology but was more interested in the natural feel of the band.”
Donnchadh: “Benny’s been pushing for us to go for a DVD Audio. There’s a great one by the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band. If you do another Irish CD where does it end up? I’ll tell you. It ends up on the second floor of HMV over in the fuckin’ corner where nobody can see it. So DVDs are the way to go, like. I was walkin’ past tinkers’ caravans in Dungarvan and inside one of them was a wide-screen television! The whole works! If they have them, like, you know what I mean?”
With the industry up in arms over downloading, I ask Danu if it effects Irish trad at all?
Benny: “No. I suppose there aren’t enough people interested in downloading Irish trad to make it worthwhile.”
Donnchadh: “That’s probably a good thing. It’s a problem for multi-million bands U2 and Madonna, but as for Danu...” (laughs).
Life on the road for a seven-piece band must be fraught with tensions, so how do Danu cope?
Donnchadh: “We try not to be actin’ the arsehole. It’s hard enough without people having issues on the road. It’s hard enough getting gigs these days, at home or abroad.”
Benny: “The gigging scene at home isn’t what it used to be no matter how many in the band. Attendance at gigs is affected by the drink driving rules and there’s definitely a cultural shift that’s maybe reducing the numbers of people who’ll go to gigs. In some places people don’t want to pay for music. In a club they started in Clonmel they found it hard to get people to pay two quid to hear good bands! So it took a while for people to get used to the idea. It takes time and a bit of education.”
Donnchadh: “The same as the smokin’ ban. People’ll get used to it in time.”
Are Danu in favour of the smokin ban and how it will be policed?
Donnchadh: “I couldn’t give two shits.”
Benny: “People might make it uncomfortable for smokers if they light up anyway. Maybe looking at you and even pointin’ at you! But I hope it too doesn’t affect people going to gigs.”
So maybe Danu need to take a leaf out of Pierce Turner’s book and start doing gigs in people’s houses?
Donnchadh: “Sure there wouldn’t be enough room in a house for all of us! But that’s a great idea and it’s already big in the States.”
Benny: “House concerts, they call them.”
Donnchadh: “Yeah. Andy Irvine would have done a shitload of them. And James Kelly. All those guys. It works for duos and trios as well. I wouldn’t do one though. I couldn’t be doing with having to take off me shoes in somebody’s house and having to talk shite all night! I wouldn’t be able for it!”
So what do the Danu two listen to yourselves?
Benny: “We go through phases. It could be JJ Cale one day, something else the next, like Johnny Cash’s last CD.”
Donnchadh: “I’m listening to the Frankie Gavin and Alex Finn album from the seventies. It’s phenomenal music. Also, I have A Tribute To Joe Cooley. Amazing music. I wouldn’t buy the albums of the new bands like The Strokes, say, but I’d listen to them on the radio.
Benny: “Going on the road is a great learning process because other people introduce you to different things you mightn’t have heard.”
I put forward the notion that whereas the seventies gave us Planxty, The Chieftains, Clannad, De Danann and The Bothy Band, the decades since haven’t been as fruitful, despite the emergence of such fine exponents as Altan, Dervish, Kila, Tommy Hayes and Dennis Cahill, and Danu themselves. Has the golden age of Irish trad passed?
Donnchadh: “I think the music was better back then. I don’t know why.”
Benny:” We’re still listening to stuff like Jackie Daly’s solo album from 1977 and it still stands up. People were playing their arses off more back then.”
Donnchadh: “Those bands had fuckin’ charisma. Didn’t they? Today people tend to sit around playing sessions and they’re bored out of their fuckin’ brains. I find Irish music today very boring sometimes. There’s no phrasing in it. The phrasing is the most important part of any tune, and you have to be able to control it. Richard Nevins tells us he doesn’t care how fast or slow we play a tune so long as we get the phrasing. The new bands are all looking for fancy new tunes. Those lads you mentioned from the ’70s had their pick of the best tunes.”
So after their ambassadorial gig on behalf of the Irish nation, Danu must surely now be regarded as local heroes around the Waterford area?
Donnchadh (adamantly, but with the hint of a tongue in cheek): “Definitely not. Paddy O’Brien is the local hero. And Declan Nerney.”
Regarding the Pop Idol type of tv programmes, where do Danu stand of this great issue of the day?
Benny: “They’re a joke. We’ve been in competitions and we’ve lost all of them.”
So what do Danu do next?
Benny: “I had this idea for us to do an album of solos, which we’ve done and we’ll have it out in March on Shanachie. It’s not a Danu album as such but features each of us doing solo tracks. It gave the individuals in the band the chance to do what they wanted to do rather than having to consider the band all the time. It’ll be our fifth album in seven years. We’re thinking of calling it Up In The Air.”
Donnchadh: “It only took us three days to do it. Two albums in six months. Paddy Moloney wouldn’t do any better! We can sell it at the gigs. That’s where you can make a few shillings to cover your per diems.”

Danu’s album The Road Less Travelled is out now on Shanachie Records