O'Rourke on the wild side

Declan O’Rourke and I are sitting on the rocks overlooking the sea outside Dunguaire Castle in Kinvara, Galway. The laid-back singer – whose grandfather once lived in a cottage across the road from the castle – recently moved into a house near the town. These are very busy times indeed for O’Rourke, who has just released his second album Big, Bad Beautiful World, the follow-up to the acclaimed Since Kyabram, which went double platinum and catapulted him to the front rank of Irish singer-songwriters.

Born in Dublin, O’Rourke’s family moved to Australia when he was 10 and returned to Ireland four years later. However, Declan had strong ties with Australia and again moved to the country when he was 19. A big turning point in his life occurred when he came back to Dublin a week before the millennium, and attended a songwriter’s night in Molloy’s. The evening in question happened to be a send-off party for a singer who was moving to the US, and other artists in attendance included Paddy Casey and Gemma Hayes.
Suddenly surrounded by like-minded souls (“it was what I had been looking for”), O’Rourke dedicated himself to songwriting with renewed intensity and over the next four years built up a profile that led to the success of Since Kyabram. Interestingly, Big, Bad Beautiful World is a slightly rockier affair than the warm acoustica of his debut, with a full band now contributing to the more expansive arrangements. Part of the album was recorded in Grouse Lodge, the County Westmeath studio which has also hosted artists such as Muse, Bloc Party and Snow Patrol.
“I wanted to do the album with a full band, live,” he explains. “That was the kind of vibe I was going for. We needed a big room for that, and we wanted a residential studio outside Dublin, so that people wouldn’t be going off paying a bill during the day, or putting money in the parking meter or whatever. I wanted somewhere enclosed where people can’t really leave. We decided to go in there for 10 days and try and get the core of the album down. The plan was to do that and then for me to add bits later on, which was what happened.”
Despite Declan’s best-laid plans, the recording wasn’t entirely trouble-free.
“I think Brian Eno has a philosophy about using everything that happens in the studio to your advantage,” he says. “So I tried to approach it that way, and if there was something really bothering me, I’d use the time to clear my head and then come back with a fresh perspective. On the fourth or fifth day of the 10 days we were in Grouse Lodge, I went outside for five minutes with the others to kick around a football. I was running around on this uneven bit of ground, and I jumped up to kick the ball, and came down and tore the ligaments in my foot.
“I had to go straight to the hospital, and I thought that was really going to mess up the whole thing. But I was back within an hour, on crutches. And that was the way I spent the rest of the time. I was singing on crutches!”
Did Declan record in Grouse Lodge before or after Michael Jackson?
“After. I saw his signature in the guest book and stuff like that. Seemingly he did a bit of recording, but who knows? He was there with his children and everything. He’s living in Wicklow, apparently.”
O’Rourke has had a number of high profile artists championing his music, including Snow Patrol. How did he first meet the band?
“I was playing a gig somewhere in Dublin,” recalls Declan, “and it was a half hour slot. Afterwards, I was out mingling with the crowd and having a pint, ‘cos it wasn’t a big affair. This guy comes up to me, real humble, and says, “Hi Declan, I’m Jonny from Snow Patrol. I’m a big fan of your music and we love your CD. We listened to it in the bus all around America when we were touring there’. I was going, ‘Wow, that’s great’. I wasn’t very familiar with their stuff at the time; I knew a couple of the songs from the radio and what have you.
“But Jonny said, ‘We’d love to get you to support us some time, maybe in the States’. That hasn’t happened yet, but I’m hoping they’ll ask me again. Next thing, they showed up at one of my gigs in the Olympia. I started to get to know them a bit, and they invited me to go and do a bit of tour with them in Germany, and into Austria and Switzerland.
“That was the middle of last year, and at the end of that they said, ‘Listen, we’re doing a stadium tour around the UK in December, and we’d love you to come along and play a bit of guitar with us. I said, ‘Absolutely, great’. I played a few songs with them at each gig, and it was great hanging out them, you couldn’t meet a nicer bunch of guys.”
Gary Lightbody and the boys also invited Declan to join them on a performance of ‘Set The Fire To The Third Bar’ at Oxegen this year.
“That was great. They asked me to do a couple of songs with them, but I only ended up doing one, ‘cos they ran out of time. They gave me a big plug as well, and said at the end, ‘Declan’s new album is coming out’, which was amazing, what a lovely gesture. Their hearts are definitely in the right place, they haven’t forgotten what it was like for themselves on the way up.
“I actually camped that night, and they thought I was mad. I stayed around and met up with Damien Dempsey. We went and watched Daft Punk and had a few drinks. But Jonny from Snow Patrol was telling me recently that they want to hire a house down here in Galway next year to do a load of demos. He said they were very excited, ‘cos I was around as well. I said, ‘Make sure it’s near my house’. It’d be like a little Woodstock!”
Declan’s Snow Patrol connection has also led to a few other celebrity admirers. Later, while he’s having his picture taken outside a pub in the town by photographer Nick Hitchcox, the singer points over to a quiet spot on the pier and says, “I was taking a walk along there recently when I got a phone call. It was Paul from Snow Patrol, and he was in a bar in LA, a bit drunk. He says, ‘Hold on, I’ve got someone who wants to talk to you’. He puts on Anna Friel and she says, ‘I love your album. When’s the new one coming out?’ Incredible!”
Declan also won over another rather well-known individual during a recent appearance on Jonathan Ross’ radio show.
“Yeah, I got a call to come over and play on the programme, and it happened a couple of weeks ago. I met Ricky Gervais on the show, and he was actually really mad about the music, and he went away with both my albums. He was kind of protecting me from the shit in there, ‘cos Jonathan Ross was saying all sorts of stuff. I was a bit nervous going in, being sandwiched between those two, you know?
“But Ricky Gervais was lovely. I was only told that morning that he was going to be on the show. I went out that morning to buy a plectrum, cos I’d forgotten to bring one, but I came back from the shop and went into the green room, and there was Ricky Gervais. We didn’t say hello or anything, and I make a point of never introducing myself to someone like that, who’s higher up, ‘cos they don’t like it. I have a philosophy that I like to meet them on my own terms, like if they know who I am or whatever. And people respect that.
“So I said nothing, and then a few minutes later he went in to do his thing. They were having a great slagging match, and in the middle of it Jonathan Ross said, ‘Okay, shut up for a minute, we’re gonna have some music’, and put on a song from the new album. When it finished, Ricky Gervais said, ‘That’s probably one of the nicest songs I’ve ever heard on radio, that really stopped me in my tracks.’”
Did Declan talk to Gervais afterwards?
“I did, we had a lovely little chat. He was saying, ‘Is that song on the album?’, and I, thinking he meant ‘Galileo’, said, ‘The one I played live?’ He said, ‘No, the one the first one they played.’ I said, ‘Yeah, that’s on the new album’. And I was delighted, cos I sometimes worry that I’m getting pigeonholed with the ‘Galileo’ thing. So it was great that he liked the other one better. And as I was leaving, Jonathan said to me, ‘We’d love to have you back on the TV show’. I said, ‘Great, I’d love that’.”
It’ll no doubt be another milestone in an increasingly impressive career. Watch this space.

Big Bad Beautiful World is out now on N4 Records. Declan O’Rourke plays Whelan’s, Dublin on September 26; Dolan’s, Limerick on November 30; Cork Opera House on December 14; and The Olympia, Dublin on December 15. For a full list of live dates, see
www.declanorourke.com