The whole Kitt and caboodle

If this was the year of David Kitt’s Big Romance then, like all grand affairs that change your life, the head-dizzying highs have been accompanied by more than enough moments of anxiety and doubt.

2001 has seen the laconic Dubliner’s first album proper released to almost universal critical acclaim, and go on to establish a residency in the upper reaches of the Irish charts, eventually going platinum within six months. However, an exhausting tour around the UK and mainland Europe, and recent attempts by an Irish newspaper to implicate David’s father Tom Kitt (Fianna Fail’s minister Minister of State for Labour and Consumer Affairs) in the decision by Warner Music to sign his son, have also laid bare the potential pitfalls that lurk at the level where he now clearly operates. The kind of level that is seeing him move inexorably away from his position as this year’s lo-fi poster boy of choice and into the rarefied mainstream orbit of drivetime radio play-listing and, as we currently find him, Friday night appearances on The Kelly Show. Kitt may well have spent part of the summer sharing a stage with Tindersticks but he is also having to get used to sharing Green Rooms with the likes of Mary Black and notorious publicity hound-cum-royal biographer Andrew Morton. Your little sister has The Big Romance in her walkman, but don’t be surprised if granny knows his face.

So, how is David Kitt, ten minutes after a shuffling run-through of ‘You Know What I Want To Know’, as he sips red wine and smokes rollies in the near darkness of Ulster Television’s Roof Garden? Well, following a five-hour nightmare journey from Dublin (“Jesus, I thought it would fuckin’ never end!”) that’s meant skipped meals, rushed sound-checks and quick changes, he just seems tired, very tired, and glad to be sitting down for a quick drink, happy to chat about “grimy fuckin’ journalism”, new ways of making music, and those small moments that make it all worthwhile.

This is Kitt’s second appearance in Belfast in the space of five days. The previous visit summed up exactly why such an apparently laid-back customer is enjoying a career that’s fast approaching stellar. In a town that, in recent weeks, had seen the local media wondering if Belfast’s crowds were the most ill-mannered in the British Isles, David Kitt’s performance was so nonchalantly, heart-warmingly, stunning that, by the end of the show, he was cadging fags, conducting sing-a-longs and effortlessly convincing the audience that they were playing a big part in the best gig of the year. As low-key communal seductions go, Kitt’s performance at The Empire was a thing to behold.

“I couldn’t believe it,” he says. “Based on the gigs I’d played in Belfast before, I was quite tense about it and sort of worried about how it would go down. I think I set it up quite early in the gig when I said ‘Listen, this is the last gig in a really long run and I’ve had a shit day, so you’re going to have to help me out here’. And to be fair the crowd totally responded. I was really blown away by the response. It was one of – if not the – best nights of the tour.”

Kitt’s on-stage request for a pick-me-up was understandable. That morning he had woken up to find the Sunday Business Post running a story that attempted to trace a link between his father’s handling of last year’s Copyright and Related Rights Bill, and David’s signing of a four album deal with Warner Music.

Heavy on innuendo, and apparently unaware that David Kitt’s star had been in the ascendant long before negotiations for the bill commenced, after reading the article it’s clear to see why onstage he claimed that: “Today’s been one of those days when you lose faith in humanity”.

How do you feel now?

“It was just bollocks really,” he says in a voice too low to register as angry. “And I think anyone that knows anything about me, my dad and even just the way the record industry operates realised that. What’s been encouraging is that none of the respectable press has really bothered covering it and that people across the political divide or whatever were coming up to my dad and saying ‘That was just a pile of shite’. I just think it was incredibly spurious to suggest that he’d use his position like that. Like the idea that an Irish politician would have any sway whatsoever when it comes to signing an international record deal is pretty ridiculous anyway, plus the fact that I actually signed my deal through Geoff Travis (of Rough Trade records) wasn’t even mentioned. And the copyright legislation when it emerged even turned out to be fuckin’ way more artist friendly than label friendly. There were so many flaws to the whole thing. I was just sick that day and when I saw it I just… cringed because it was such grimy fuckin’ mud-slinging journalism.”

But it is an indication that, publicity-wise, you’re now in a different category than you were before the record came out. Is that disturbing?

“To be honest I feel strong enough about what I do and confident enough about what I do not to take anything personal from it. But I just felt bad about my family. My mum and dad knew a bit about it over the weekend and were aware of it on the Friday night at The Olympia. It really soured what should have been a beautiful night for everyone – a brilliant gig, an amazing crowd, a really good performance. Afterwards I could see from my mum and dad’s faces that they’d been losing sleep and worrying about it, and that was just shit.

“Having grown up with my dad I’ve had that feeling several times, where something was printed in the papers that was so far from the truth that you just want a right to reply, and to be able to go up there and say ‘Fuck you, you’ve just no idea what you’re talking about’. I just think it showed a complete ignorance of how the whole industry works.”

Would you say that it’s soured your success in anyway?

“That’s the thing, you take a night like that (the Belfast gig) and, for whatever reason, you really need the songs again. It’s like you’re singing them for the first time. One of the most rewarding things about me making records has been the way it’s brought the whole family closer together. It’s kinda like when my younger brother was born. It’s almost as if my mum and dad have been given a new lease of life. They’re going to gigs, buying records, my mum reads fuckin’ Mojo… So, while we were all really upset, we’ll get over it.”

That’s not in doubt, because behind the amiable-stoner demeanour, there’s a wide streak of creative resourcefulness to Kitt that goes some way to explaining how 2000’s introductory mini-LP Small Moments – a collection of songs that were, remember, recorded in his bedroom – found a home for itself on the same label as The Strokes. Likewise, if, as he confesses, one of this year’s biggest drags has been the exhausting series of shows he has been playing and “the frustration of not being able to write and record – that goes with just being on the road all the time”, rest assured that he’s taking measures to remedy the situation.

“I’ve just got this small lap-top studio together,” he says. “And I really can’t wait to get home tonight to start recording on it. I’ll probably be up until six in the morning messing around. It means I can go anywhere I want and make really high-quality recordings, so I think it’s going to help push things on. Like there’s always a gaping hole there when you don’t get to express what you want to. When you think ‘Fuck, if I was at home I could have got that’. And the next day it’s just totally gone. There are some great rewards from going out on tour, but there are a lot of drawbacks as well. It’s lovely to see people getting joy from your music, but ultimately for me I’m doing it for the expression and fulfilment of actually writing.”

Which means that when the next chapter of the romance is written, chances are that it’ll be indelibly marked by the circumstances of its creation. Small Moments and The Big Romance were the early-morning records, still warm from the bed-sheets and in love with the bleary-eyed new

day. Next up, it seems, are songs from the rush hour.

“Everything I did with the first two records was based around the reality of being in the one place all the time. It’s almost as if I’ve to try to translate the fact that I’m moving around so much more now into a different type of song-writing. It’s like I’ve to find a new way of expressing that that other people can relate to. It’s trying to find a new way of working within the kind of life I now have. Now the intention is to put myself in situations where I’ll have a lot more freedom and scope to make as much noise as I want. I think the next record, as it’s shaping up at the

moment, is going to be much, much louder and much, much quieter. I just think it’s going to be far more dynamic. To be honest what’s really making my blood flow at the moment is the idea of wanting to get the kind of stuff I have in my head down, just so I can start pricking around with it.”

Anyone chasing a quick fling, then, should probably gather up their things now and close the door behind them. Up ahead, it seems, are the beguiling nuances of reinvention and all those unexpected rewards that come with watching how a rapport evolves over time. 2001 may well have been the year of flushed introductions but from here on in The Big Romance looks set to go long-term.