The Reinvention of Jerry Fish

He’s a 21st century self-made man, is Jerry Fish. Artist, entrepreneur, bandleader, record label boss, and a bit of a shaman too. This month sees the release of The Mudbug Club’s long awaited six-years-in-the-making second album The Beautiful Untrue, a carnival of sounds and styles that mixes torpid swampadelia, torch songs, country and western weepies, jazz, blues and Waits-like weirdness in equal measure, all played with impeccable taste by a crew of musicians who know just when and where to scuff it up, and featuring stellar cameos from Carol Keogh and Dublin rockabilly sensation, Imelda May.
As far back as the Emotional Fish days, Jerry – that’s Gerard Whelan, originally from London, via the working class area of Darndale in Dublin – has cut a raffishly magnetic dash, a deep thinker as well as talker. But in the last few years he’s come into himself as a songwriter, performer, family man and all-round renaissance dude. (One of his ongoing projects involves recording an album of actor Michael Madsen’s poetry, although he’s eager to play that one down for the moment: he’s got a new album to pimp.)
“This is not so much about the record as the birth of my label,” he says, impeccably presented in black shirt and tie on a fine Saturday morning in the Central Hotel in Dublin. “I know it’s been six years (since Be Yourself), that does seem like a long time. It’s all very well for people to talk highly about it now, how wonderful a record it is, and it is a great record, but when I released it, it sold 22 copies in its first week. HMV bought three copies and put it in the easy listening section. Nobody got that record when it was first out, and it took me two years plus to actually work it. It became a success in Ireland and then it was released a year later in the UK, and at the end of that I realised I don’t wanna be an artist who just releases records and tours them and sells them and then releases another record – I want to have a record label.”
Jerry’s modus operandi is influenced in no small way by the example of the late Ahmet Ertegun, the legendary Atlantic Records co-founder who signed An Emotional Fish back in the late ’80s. What Fish envisions is old school label theory put into indie practise, using the freedom afforded by digital technology.
“I got to hang around with Ahmet, and I’m a big fan of that old style of record company, like Stax,” he says. “To me, that’s kind of what we’re going back to. I’ve got this dream of a label with a house band and a house producer, which is me. Digital distribution has turned the music industry on its head. Now it’s rare to find a musician without a home recording set-up, and that’s pretty phenomenal; it’s a new world we’re in. The last record was done on analogue, so I hired Dick Meaney, who worked with the Jesus and Mary Chain and My Bloody Valentine. Dick hasn’t made a record since the 90s and he’s never used digital equipment ever, he’s only ever used tape, so he kind of trained me in the world of engineering. I met Dick when I was working with Alan Moulder and Dave Stewart on Junk Puppets. I learned so much in those days, with some of the best producers around, (people like) Clive Langer – so for me it’s important to put that into practise. But you’re never gonna get away from the fact that, without a song, the thing doesn’t exist. We need the song.”
We do indeed. But we also need the publishing. Only in rock ‘n’ roll is callowness regarded as a virtue.
“The industry likes ignorance,” Jerry says. “And a lot of people do not like dealing with the artist, they want to deal with a mature manager. I was a mushroom as youth, kept in the dark and fed a lot of bullshit, you know what I mean? To me the curtains are wide open now, and the wizard is standing there bollock-naked and there’s nothing he can do about it, it’s gone. Even the young bands today, and I love so many of them, are aware of how it all works. It’s a new dawn, a really exciting time.
“I’ve always thought I’m just one jammy, lucky fucker,” he continues. “It’s because I’m forever counting my blessings. I love the fact that I’ve shoes on my feet. And I love it when I’ve no shoes! And I was loved as a child and that’s a very important thing. Ahmet always said to me, ‘I’d love to hear you sing, ‘God Bless The Child’.’ I’d never even heard of that song, a Billie Holiday number, and I got to play it with the National Concert Orchestra a year or so ago. I’m getting to fulfil these things as an older person.”
One imagines Ertegun would’ve loved what he’s doing now.
“Yeah, I now can see what he saw. I’m kind of like my own A&R man. Because I have to admit, when I was part of a rock band I was quite clueless in what we were doing, I was very much just a songwriter/performer, I never thought of any other aspect of it. I started off as a child wanting to be Marc Bolan, now I’ve discovered Professor Longhair, and as you get older I think you get to see outside of yourself. I’m a massive Serge Gainsbourg fan as well, and Cohen, so I’m old enough to take on that world now.”
Interesting territory. We’re now seeing a generation of artists – Dylan, Springsteen, Tom Waits, Lucinda Williams – go where only the blues and jazz artists have gone before: retaining their artistic vitality and creative relevance into their 50s and 60s and beyond.
“Yeah, it’s the first time we’ve seen this. In the same way that Ray Charles was vital, Ella Fitzgerald, Duke Ellington, we’ve always had these elders around. I mean, I’m also very lucky as well: Blondie came on the radio the other day, ‘Call Me’, and I’m like, ‘Shit, how lucky am I? That was my pop music!’ How wonderful not to be growing up with the fuckin’ Pussycat Dolls! With 2-Tone, we were following a craze! ‘The Hole In The Boat’ has a real link to ‘Ghost Town’ and the Specials.”
Ah yes. That would be the opening track on the new album, with its queasy sailing-off-the-edge-of-the-world feeling. The song, Fish says, was inspired by a vision of boomtown Dublin as halfway between a mad mardi gras and open-sewered asylum.
“I grew up in London as you know,” Jerry says, “but my family, my two great-grandmothers, I looked up the 1911 census, and they were neighbours. I’m from the river. I’d say if you went back far enough I’m just an amoeba that crawled out of the Liffey. So Dublin’s a big part of me, and like a lot of old Dubs, I didn’t like the changes that were happening here. And ‘The Hole In The Boat’, you listen to it now and people are gonna go, ‘Wow, he’s talking about the collapse of this banking civilisation,’ but it’s not, it’s about the moral… how decrepit we were becoming, how we were just worshipping money, it really upset me.
“I rented a basement in Temple Bar, and I was dreaming up these songs there, trying to learn how to use this equipment and write in this dank room. I’d be writing stuff like ‘Back To Before’ and ‘The Hole In The Boat’, and I’d come up for air, go upstairs and take a walk around Temple Bar, and there’s girls with their dresses over their fucking heads and all this debauchery and madness happening around me, and it just seemed quite surreal. And I felt I was actually in the bilge of a ship and there’s a gaping hole in the thing, and I’m pumping out the water while they’re partying on deck. Meanwhile there’s someone in the hold trying to save everybody. And I just love the metaphors in that: ‘Still we row! There’s gonna be land somewhere!’”
Jerry pauses a moment.
“I don’t want this to be dark,” he considers, “because I’ve told you before, I need to be positive. I’m a black hole, it just takes me over, so I have to keep singing ‘Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah’ in case I fall asunder. But there were dead bodies and famine victims right on the canal basin where we now have beautiful apartment blocks and light sculptures. It’s a beautiful change but…”
It’s built on bones.
“It’s built on bones. What isn’t? Going back to the native cultures, death was not taboo. Civilisation is designed not to enrich the soul but rather to capture it. First thing, get the children away from the adults. It’s just conqueror after conqueror, until we don’t even know who the conqueror is. But spirit doesn’t die. Still we row. I mean, the love song I have, ‘Rogue Melody’ it’s something I waltz with my baby daughter to and I weep, it’s two lovers who don’t want to talk about it because love has crippled them in the past. It is a four-letter word. And in the last verses of ‘Back To Before’ she says, ‘We’re better off without it. It’s meant to be. Had we followed another path, god knows how tragic that would’ve been.’”
The “she” Jerry’s referring to is Carol Keogh, best known for her work with the Plague Monkeys, Tycho Brahe and Autamata, and who has now just embarked on a much anticipated solo career. Keogh’s extraordinary and unearthly vocals grace a handful of tracks on the new album.
“The wonderful thing about going back on the road with Be Yourself was I criss-crossed with a lot of artists,” Jerry explains, “so I’d heard Carol sing a bit, but more as a personality we kind of got on – a very strong spirit there. And when I brought her into the studio I have to say I was just agog, my mouth was open. When she sang ‘Back To Before’, we were like, ‘Did she swap bodies? Who’s that?’ She’s got an uncanny vocal ability, it really is remarkable. We’re closer now and I’m listening to a lot of stuff she’s writing, and I think I caught her at a good time, ’cos she’s actually got a wealth of work behind her. Carpe diem, is that what they say? I really believe everything is in its place. Like Imelda (May), she came early on in the album. I know Imelda a long time, since she was very, very young. I’m nearly Uncle Jerry to Imelda.”
Perfect casting. Dirty Uncle Jerry.
“Yeah, I have this sinister character in me! But Imelda and I… I had three gigs on offer for the Mudbug Club on St Patrick’s Day two years ago. One was Beijing, the other was Montserrat… and I ended up in Cashel! There was a massive fireworks display, and we were part of the Skyfest, and I brought Imelda. This was exactly a year before she won the Meteor award, so it was really nice that we ended up on national television at half six in the day and nobody noticed her. She’s like Cinderella. But she’s been really working hard, she’s far from an overnight success, and her husband Darrel (Higham) is a complete gent and is one of the best guitarists in his genre probably in the world. They’ve really got a good thing going, and they’re really cool people. But she got so busy that she just couldn’t return to the record, so Carol came in.
“There’s no such thing as an accident or a mistake,” Jerry elaborates. “Every time you meet somebody it’s for a reason. I have some of the best musicians in the world working with me, Conor Brady and Simon Farrell and John Wilde on drums. I went to see the Rolling Stones, and I’ve a better brass section. And we all love what we do in the Mudbug Club. But there’s still an element that you want to have a rogue in there, you want to have some fucker who can’t play guitar. I’m still always looking for these kids who want to tear all the strings off the guitar with their fists. This is the first record I actually play guitar on, so I’m still part of that punk ethic, it can’t be clean. You can have the best players in the world, but I think sometimes Van Morrison (suffers from that). You’ve just gotta fuck it up, so I’m always looking to meet new people. And young blood can be old blood.”
Synge said all art is collaboration, not least being that which takes place between the artist and his influences. When questioned about the elements that went into constructing the world of The Beautiful Untrue, Jerry casts his mind back to the ‘70s.
“When I saw Willy DeVille on Top of the Pops, about an hour or so later I had some guy leaning on me on a wall in Darndale piercing both my ears!” he laughs. “So Willy will never leave me, ever. This guy with pearl earrings. The last thing someone sent me was an Edith Piaf song he was doing. It’s like one of the last recordings I heard of John Martyn. The voice to me was nicer than the sweeter one he had as a young man. Something happens to a voice… I’ve been very lucky to do a bit of recording with Harry Dean Stanton last year, and you can’t imitate an 80-year-old man.
“And The Blue Mask, Lou Reed’s album, seemed to be something I got and nobody else did, which is still in my head. Mingus’s The Black Saint And The Sinner Lady. The sound of a bass trombone – goosebumps. T-Rex. The bass player in An Emotional Fish, John Burke/Enda Wyatt/Dr Nebulous, he’s a beat poet, so at a very early age we were in a band together and he just fed me with Kerouac and Ginsberg and I became a massive Burroughs fan. I loved that world. That hasn’t left either. In fact I’m becoming more involved with people like Bukowski.”
On that subject: what’s all this about a spoken word record?
“Yeah, it’s Michael Madsen’s poetry. I’ve managed to record Iggy Pop, Harry Dean Stanton, David Carradine… I don’t want to be publicising it too much, I mean I don’t mind touching on it, but because I’m just releasing a record… That took me down another road. It’s something I had to shelve while I was working on this, because two projects just became too much. Jerry Fish was getting left behind – I had to get this record finished. But turn that (Dictaphone) off and I’ll play you some stuff.”
At this point Jerry pulls out his laptop and does precisely that, sticking the headphones on your reporter and clicking on pieces by the aforementioned luminaries. It’s quite an experience. These apparently extra-curricular activities have obviously fed into Jerry’s approach to populating his records with personae. One imagines his creative impulses are similar to that of the filmmaker or writer: you have a vision of a world that doesn’t exist, and the only way it’s ever going to get created is if you do the job yourself.
“Yeah, that’s really where the title The Beautiful Untrue came from: Oscar Wilde’s lying, or the telling of beautiful untrue things. I look at the body of work as like, ‘Wow, this guy just goes everywhere.’ And I like to sing in different voices too, take on different characters. So The Beautiful Untrue is storytelling. You’re a better storyteller if you’ve at least understood or lived some of the circumstance of the story you’re telling. So that’s why the title sat well with this record, ’cos it has so many stories and people within it.”
It also dares to explore painful emotions in a playful way.
“Yeah, tragedy has the face of a clown. I mean, I’ve been to sad and dark places, but I know people who’ve been to much darker and sadder places. I heard an old blues singer crying while he was singing, not in an actual way, but the way the old black, blues performers would take on a sort of (makes high keening sound) – almost comic as well. And Los Excentricos is a small three-clown circus, they’ve been the inspiration for the Mudbug Club, and I thank them in all the Mudbug Club records, because it’s clowns, it’s theatre. Someone told me that carnival was the one day you got to say fuck off to the king. They had to give people a release. It was an anarchist’s holiday. May there forever be carnival, and the need for it.”

CAROL KEOGH
“I met Jerry socially a few times,” Carol Keogh explains. “He was working on the record and looking for female vocalists, and my name came up and he asked me in to see what I could do. There’s another side to Jerry, one that is very different from the persona that he puts forward. He’s actually been incredibly supportive of me since we sat down and chatted about where I’m at and what I’m trying to achieve. He’s offered any help he can give.
“He’s a really nice guy and a dedicated family man and he comes at things from a very positive approach. I sometimes get the feeling he’s had to fight for that. It’s there in ‘Where The Sun Don’t Shine’. I think that song is really from the heart.
“Jerry is a great one for inventing characters. His performance on a record is partly acting. The filmic side of it is a conscious thing: he has some great visual ideas as well as musical ones. ’Back To Before’ is a funny one. I just found a voice that doesn’t really sound the way I normally sound: there is that Alice In Wonderland element to it. I was thinking part coquette and part innocent, ’cos there is that in the lyrics. We’d a lot of fun recording. I was only in there while he was mixing for a couple of sessions. I did some backing vocals and the other song, ‘Rogue Melody’ which has a different quality to it again. We haven’t done a live show yet. I will be singing at some of the gigs, certainly the Dublin one, so the challenge will be the flick between characters. There may be costume changes!”

IMELDA MAY
She's the Liberties girl whose raucous rockabilly stylings are taking Ireland and Britain by storm. With her album Love Tattoo a top ten hit both here and in Blighty, and Jools Holland among her prominent cheerleaders, Imelda May is set to be one of the break-out artists of the year in 2009. But she's never forgotten her working class Dublin roots – or the part Jerry Fish played in forging her musical identity. She had agreed to appear on The Beautiful Untrue long before success beckoned.

“I was only a teenager when I met Jerry at a party. There was a good old sing-song going on in the back of a garden until four in the morning out in East Wall,” Imelda recalls. “Our tastes are similar. Both of us would be very passionate about, for want of a better word, keeping it real. He’s into having an authentic old sound but still keeping it contemporary, and that’s something close to my heart as well. He’s like a mad wizard when you’re recording with him. He just stands there and you sing along and he says, ‘Maybe try it in a ‘40s style. Now I want you to sing it like a madwoman, you’re a gypsy!’ He’s like Ed Wood (laughs).
“Jerry was saying to me that we’re both from working class families, which in music can be quite rare. You get a lot of kids who had garages to play music in, and we didn’t. And as well as that, you’re in smaller houses and you’ve more time together so you listen to stories and have sing-songs more. And I do think that might have had something to do with the fact that you don’t want realism. The whole area I lived in – people would kill me if I turned up (for a show) looking scruffy. They’d say, ‘Oh for god’s sake would you dress up!’
“I’m the last of the children in a large family, so I could spend time with my parents at the end of rearing the kids. My parents are from a different generation and I loved the records and movies they had in the house. They were laughing because I was talking about Norma Shearer or Rosalind Russell, all the old film stars, and they were saying, ‘How do you know about them?’ and I said, ‘I picked them up off you’.
“My mother was a dressmaker and my dad was originally a teacher of old-time dances before he was a painter and decorator. He couldn’t make ends meet when people started dancing on their own in the ‘60s and ‘70s – so he had to pack it in. Looking at the old black-and-white photos of me mam in the fabulous dresses and me dad with the hair slicked back and the tails... it had a lot of romanticism about it. The music and the imagery together painted this fabulous picture for me as a kid – it took you into another world.”