The Centre Can Hold

Welcome to Dublin’s Heritage Centre. Please be warned: this tour does not involve Vikings of any description, nor will it be of any interest to misty-eyed tourists. Your guide is a charming young man by the name of Ciaran Brady, who happens to beat the living daylights out of a drumkit for a living. And thankfully, his band’s music isn’t half as hoary as their name suggests.

Heritage Centre have been playing as a quintet for a year, but have already established themselves as young contenders, thanks to their enthusiasm for gigging and their uptempo pop-rock tunes. Brady and singer/guitarist Conal McIntyre provided the original blueprint for the band several years back, gigging under the ‘Heritage Centre’ banner to little success. When they enlisted the talents of David Rogers, Stephen Tiernan and Liam Byrne in May 2008, their sound and style flourished and they became what Brady describes jokingly as ‘one big happy family’.
“Myself and Conal had recorded and demoed an album, but it was very low-fi,” he explains. “We just knew eventually that we’d have to get people in, because we wouldn’t be able to play live as a duo, there were too many instruments. We figured that a five-piece would be the only arrangement that would work.”
As with most young bands eager to make an impression as an eclectic collective, Brady says that their influences sprawl as wide as Led Zeppelin, Ben Folds, TV on the Radio and Nirvana. “But more so than bands we’re into, we’re just into making poppy songs with big choruses,” he claims. “Simple, worthwhile arrangements, rather than complicating things.”
Heritage Centre’s music speaks louder than words: their songs are, indeed, crammed with clear-cut melodies, tailor-made for summer singalongs and radio play. The music-buying public are becoming increasingly enamoured with the quintet, too – their debut EP, The City, The Tree and The Fox has been selling well since its February release. Its packed launch at Whelan’s provided Brady with one of his favourite gig memories to date.
“It was unexpected, definitely. We’d hoped a few people would come, obviously, but the amount of people who showed up was just mad – it was the first time in a long time, apparently, that a local band had pulled that kind of crowd. It felt like all the work was worthwhile.”
Work is something that Heritage Centre aren’t afraid of, either. A quick glance at their MySpace page reveals a long list of forthcoming gigs around the country to promote their new single ‘I Will Protect You’. Brady says that they went against the advice of many by releasing a single so quickly after their EP.
“A lot of people are saying ‘You’re mad – your EP is only gonna be out less than two and a half months by then’,” he says. “But to us, we’ve got about 30 songs now, and it just seems like the way the music industry’s going, you can’t rest on your laurels. Look at the likes of Kings of Leon and The Killers putting out two albums in two years. The bands who are doing well seem to be the ones that are putting new stuff out there constantly. Music lovers want to feel like they’re part of something, so if you keep giving them music, it gives them more access to you, especially small bands like us. It’s really important to us. The more music we have in the public domain, the more opportunity there is for people to like us.”
The band hope to record an album this summer, budgets and the availability of a quality producer permitting.
“We’re very hardworking and we have a lot of ambition,” he nods firmly. “I think all of us realised that nobody is going to hand you a torch, and say ‘Here y’are, now go and be the Next Big Thing’. You really just have to get up at 9 o’clock in the morning and send a thousand emails, and get replies to about two of them, be happy with that and then do it all again the next day. You have to play gigs and keep recording. We don’t have delusions of selling out Croke Park in five years’ time – I mean, if it happens, we’ll snap it up!”, he chuckles. “But at the end of the day, we’re musicians, and what we should be doing is playing music and recording music – that’s the reason we started doing it in the first place.”