Smells Like Green Spirit: Jameson's St. Patrick's Live Event

So intricately woven is music into the fabric of the Irish identity, that you really have to feel for our artists. More than any other country, we send our musicians out as mascots, particularly when they’re playing abroad. It is never more keenly felt than at a Paddy’s Day gig. Kieran McGuinness of Delorentos will be on home soil this year, playing the Jameson St. Patrick’s Live event in Vicar Street, but he’s also stepped on foreign stages for our national holiday.

“Last year we played in Paris with The Gloaming,” he recalls. “Afterwards, of course, we went for a few drinks around the arrondissement. It was an amazing night. I think we’ve been in London for it as well. It’s a great night for music and there’s a focus put on Irish music around that time. We’re absolutely delighted to be lucky enough to be Irish.”
So those shows bring out a patriotic side, where you end up playing an ambassadorial role a little like The President... Or Bono?
“Well I have to be honest with you, there are very few times in the day when I feel like Bono!” McGuinness laughs. “Very few times in the year when I feel like Bono. But yes, you do feel like that.”
Not that the Dublin quartet are the types you’d necessarily find swinging gigantic inflatable hammers emblazoned with the tricolour as they skip down Dame Street. Last year, they admitted to Hot Press that economic and political issues at home and their success in Spain made them seriously entertain this idea while on the Iberian peninsula: “We’ll get villas and make all the music we could ever want in the sunshine”. On fourth album, Night Becomes Light, McGuinness’ own ‘Dublin Love Song’ portrays his relationship with the capital as a love/hate one.
“Like any Irish people who spend a lot of time abroad, we’ve got a complicated and complex relationship with Ireland and what we think about it,” McGuinness says. “Any time there’s a light shone on Ireland, it’s easy to sit on either side of the fence and say it’s the greatest in the world or the shittest country in the world. There are a huge amount of issues around it. But I think that the good thing about playing music is that you don’t have to represent anything if you don’t want to. Let other people make decisions about what you represent. That’s fine with us. Our job is to choose the best setlist so everyone has a great night, basically. There will be other nights of the year to pontificate and make a big deal about things, but this will be one just to have a great party on.”
Joining them in the celebrations will be We Cut Corners and headliners Little Green Cars.
“If our band had a collective consciousness, the collective consciousness would say it’s a very big fan of both Little Green Cars and We Cut Corners. So we’re delighted to be playing with them.”
Which puts to bed any worries of a tense backstage stand-off between Delorentos and We Cut Corners, whose latest albums are competing for the Choice Music Prize the same month.
Delorentos, of course, already have one of the prestigious gongs on the mantelpiece of their collective consciousness for 2012’s Little Sparks.
“If you write an album and you leave the process thinking that you’ve something that you can be proud of, that’s the most important thing. When we started out as a band, we would’ve looked to others for validation. As we’ve gone on, we know where we want to be, what music we want to make and we feel like we have something to say. So we don’t need the validation as much. We’ve had a huge amount of benefits from winning the last one though. It was a great thing to happen. But it would be greedy to think we should have it again!”
“Personally,” Kieran continues, “I think James Vincent McMorrow’s album and We Cut Corners’ album are absolutely fantastic. We’d love if those guys won. I haven’t heard the others as much. Obviously U2; I’ve heard their album. I presume their nomination was just downloaded into the inbox of the Choice and they had to accept! Joking aside, it’s a strong list. Our job is just to write the best music we can. We’re out in our bunker in Portrane writing songs and feeling quite divorced from the Irish music scene. That’s fine with us.”
To the task at hand – namely, bringing the new material on stage and to the people.
“There are a couple of songs that have really started to chime,” McGuinness concludes. “’Valley Where The Rivers Run’ is something that has come out really, really well live. It’s a real moment in the gig. As well as that, ‘Show Me Love’ and ‘Forget The Numbers’ have been getting amazing responses as well, which is cool. It’s great to have a song on the radio – it doesn’t happen very often!”