Transcript of my Damien Dempsey Interview
Last summer I had a long conversation with my fellow Dubliner, Damien Dempsey, for an article I was doing on his then brand new album To Hell or Barbados.
I posted the Damo interview in audio but for those of you who don’t fancy the long listen, I’m making the transcript of that interview available now.
Before I pressed record I asked Damo if recording our conversation and posting it on the web was okay. He said yes. I pressed the button. And hearing my Dublin accent he asked me a question:
Damien Dempsey: Where are you from yourself?
Irsh KC: From just by your old Rock School. I’m a Palmerstown man.
DD: Ah Palmerstown, I know it well.
IKC: Well speaking of the Rock School, it’s been a long time since you were there. Does it still mean anything to you after all this time?
[This is a long interview so the transcript is continued below the fold]
DD: I learned a lot from the Rock School. I still meet kids who are going out there. I helped to get a young fella in there now, so I met him to go to a sing-songwriter’s night there, and there was loads of kids at it who were going there now. They were singing all these songs, they were very good they were, but I could hear my influence coming through on them now.
They were singing songs of what’s going on around Ireland now, and they were all keeping their own accents when they were singing. It was nice to hear.
IKC: That’s cool, yeah. What do you hear of the course, of the various courses? I know they do traditional courses in there as well. Is it going quite well, and going from strength to strength?
DD: I think it is, yeah. It’s hard to get onto, you know. There’s a big waiting list to get onto it.
IKC: I see they single out there, that course is the one – you can apply late for any other one in Senior College (or whatever it is called now) but you can’t get in to that one.
DD: Yeah. I know what you mean. Yeah
IKC: You’ve just brought out To Hell Or Barbados, or you’re bringing it out, over here in the US – I’m not sure of the release dates in Ireland and the UK. Are you playing all the songs live at the moment?
DD: We done a gig in Vicar Street there – we done about 5 songs off it.
IKC: Five?
DD: Some of them are tricky to do, you know like the one called Serious and the other The City, They’d be a little bit tricky to do.
IKC: Exhausting for you vocally – a lot of words coming out there?
DD: Yeah. But I’m going to get them together over the summer. There’s a big gig, the Electric Picnic is a big festival here in Ireland. I think the fans might be a bit upset if I don’t give them at least a bash. They mightn’t be as they are on the record but I’ll give them a lash somehow.
IKC: I’m sure they’re expecting them because they’re both such powerful pieces. I’ve been playing the album non-stop since I got it 2 weeks ago, and
DD: Well, great
IKC: And I don’t want to be too sycophantic but I think it’s fantastic
DD: Thanks very much. Thanks a lot.
IKC: It’s quite a mixed bag, but it works. It all works, it’s all you, whether you want to call it folk, or electronica or reggae, which it obviously has all them things in it, it’s still you and I just think it’s a very, very strong thing. It’s more – comparing it with Shots the last studio release – it’s more, it strikes me as more understated. The lyrics are as strong as ever, but it doesn’t come across as angry in a very vocal way, but the lyrics say what they say, so it’s just quieter. The title track for example, the title of the album To Hell or Barbados is if you like a sequel or an appendix to Colony in a way, but it has a quiet fire.
DD: Yeah. I know what you mean. There’s a few I suppose little influences in the history of Ireland that I was never taught about in the history books, like the Choctaw Nation, and these guys who were sent to Barbados. I was a bit angry, I felt these things should have been included in Irish history books so that’s why I stuck them down.
IKC: It’s quite a story, and your way of telling it is – because the song, it’s a lament the way you sing it and it’s quite beautifully done. It’s a beautiful song if you don’t listen to the words. I can almost hear Christy Moore singing that song actually, with the same seriousness that you do.
DD: I’d love to hear him singing it. I’d love to hear him singing it, I would.
IKC: That answers my next question. Who would you like to hear sing some of your stuff. Because you’ve done stuff by, you’ve covered Shane’s Fairytale of New York, and you’ve done stuff from Morrissey on that album, you’ve collaborated with Sinead – who would you like to hear sing your songs?
DD: That’s hard to say. I wouldn’t mind hearing Pavarotti doing one of them, for the crack. Who else? I don’t know, Sinead O Connor has covered a song called It’s All Good, which is great. I’d love to hear Christy doing a song of mine, some day, if I could try and write a song for him, I’d love to hear that. I wouldn’t mind hearing Morrissey do one either.
IKC: He was here, Morrissey was here in Kansas City a couple of weeks ago. You were in Chicago then, is that right?
DD: That’s right, yeah.
IKC: You were in Chicago at pretty much the same time he was here.
DD: Right
IKC: Speaking of Choctaw Nation, how does the likes of Choctaw Nation go down in America? How do Americans react, or how do you think they react to an Irish man singing about the Choctaw nation?
DD: Oh very good. It’s gone down well anywhere I’ve played it. In Chicago it went down very well. And on the tour last year in America it seemed to go down – all the people were asking for it, all the Americans were asking for it. They thought it was a great thing for someone to write a song about that, and thanked them and apologized for some of the Irish-Americans who, and some of the Irish around the world who I apologize for, who were tyrants.
IKC: Yeah, they tend to get overlooked a lot in history here, and it’s good to mention them as well.
DD: Yeah we weren’t all great.
IKC: No
DD: There’s good and bad in every race
IKC: There certainly is
DD: The Irish-Americans seemed to love the historical nature of some of the songs that I sing. The Colony and Choctaw Nation seemed to go down best with the Irish-Americans. So that’s a good thing to know.
IKC: In Chicago, that festival, did you – I know you were up there with Solas and Gaelic Storm and all the big bands that play all the festivals in North America, would you have met these people before, like last year? Would you mingle with these much, I’m trying to think of who was there, I mean Black 47
DD: Yeah I knew Black 47 from years ago
IKC: I think you’d have a lot in common probably with Larry Kirwan, You could certainly talk to him
DD: Ah Larry, yeah he’s a good fella. He got me on his radio show there a while ago, last year
IKC: Oh that thing on the Sirius thing, yeah. He was in town about a week ago doing something with Malachy McCourt, chatting away and causing some fun. He was wearing his other hat as a writer of books as opposed to a writer of songs. I do like Larry a lot.
DD: Yeah, he’s a great lyricist
IKC: I wanted to ask you – I’m looking through the small print, because I’m a sad person, and I see in the credits the name of Marco Pironi. I presume that came through Sinead or through John, John Reynolds?
DD: That came through John Reynolds yeah. Marco was just knocking around and John thought this song was perfect for Marco.
IKC: Which song is he on?
DD: He’s on I Don’t Care. It’s the last song on the album
IKC: I Don’t Care? Have you got a different version, the Irish release?
DD: Oh be jaysus, is that the crack yeah? I Don’t Care isn’t on the American one, is it not?
IKC: No
DD: It’s not on the English version, I know that. I think it’s only on the Irish version.
IKC: This finishes up with The City. It’s a strong finish, the last 2 songs are To Hell or Barbados and The City, two big epic ones
DD: The Irish version has a song called I Don’t Care on it and that’s the song he played on. Actually, you know what he played – he played on Serious as well.
IKC: Oh he does play on Serious, all right. That’s good because then I have heard him (on your album). He’s got some pedigree going back in time, hasn’t he? He’s a very interesting character.
DD: Yeah he has, the people he was telling me he’s played with. I think he done some of Masai (track 1) now as well, come to think of it. He done little bits but he done most on I Don’t Care because that’s the song that John got him in to play on. But I think he done other little bits on other songs
IKC: Now see when I got Shots, I haven’t got the American version, on the American version you put 3 tracks from the live one on it, but I haven’t got that I’ve got the Irish one because that was sent over to me, so I’m getting diddled both times here – I keep getting the shorter versions.
DD: Right. Ha Ha.
IKC: I’ll ask a friend at home and I’ll look out for that one. Or maybe it will appear on MySpace. Do you ever bother going on your own MySpace page?
DD: I don’t have a computer but I’m thinking of getting one. I’m a bit of a technophobe, but I’m thinking I may as well get one and just stick with the times just to see what people are saying, how they’re feeling about the music and that. When I’m over in England I do be on the computer a lot, in John’s house. I find it great for finding out any information, if I’m writing a song about something. It’s brilliant. The information is just there so quick
IKC: It’s better than heading off to the library
DD: Yeah, so maybe I’m thinking about investing in one. 6 years it took me to get a mobile phone. I wouldn’t get one.
IKC: Yeah I can relate to that, I haven’t got one myself. I’m talking to you on a computer because I have to for me job, but otherwise I know what you’re talking about
DD: Yeah, I’m sort of simple – books and I love the old fashioned ways, say the 50s in Dublin, writing on a typewriter, they go to a pub and they have the conversation, it was a good bit more simple wasn’t it?
IKC: It was of course. And it was a bit mischievous me asking you about MySpace because I don’t know where you’d find the time. Just having a glance at what you’ve done in the last few years I think it’s amazing that since Shots you’ve managed to pull out the live album and then another studio album because you just seem to be constantly gigging, and big things, and you’re zipping from continent to continent but you’re keeping going – you’re not exhausted?
DD: Ah I do get a bit knackered now and again all right, but if I get a week off I’ll just go to the – if there’s a sea anywhere near me I’ll go swimming and do a bit of training
IKC: Swimming with the rats?
DD: Swimming with the rats, yeah, ha ha. I go out to Howth there a lot, swimming. I’ll been trying to get somebody to go out with me now this evening. It’s a beautiful evening here in Dublin, and I go diving off the cliffs out there.
IKC: Now you said it’s beautiful but I was just talking to me Ma 5 minutes ago and she said it’s horrible.
DD: Is she serious, yeah? Over in Palmerstown? Is it raining over there?
IKC: I don’t know. I’m sure it is horrible; there’s a black cloud sitting over it, over me Ma’s house.
DD: No it’s beautiful here – the sun is splitting the trees here in Donaghmede.
IKC: Ha Ha
DD: That’s mad. That’s Ireland for ya, though, isn’t it?
IKC: It is.
There’s one thing – I guess it goes back to the likes of MySpace and technology, where everyone these days they play whether they play CDs on whatever they’re playing them on, they’re putting them on iPods and the rest of it, they’re on shuffle, so I’m wondering if you put a lot of thought into laying down the order of the tracks the way somebody might have done 20 years ago when it was on vinyl and people didn’t have much choice, because when you play it – I’ve only played it, I haven’t shuffled it around, because, whatever reason, he put them in that order so I played them in that order, and that’s how I’ve played them repeatedly. And it’s a very dramatic moment when you go from Your Pretty Smile, this wonderful, unabashed love song, a reggae, joyous thing, and you’ve got a smile on your own face listening to it, and then you go straight into Serious which is this horribly serious Dublin drug-pushing conversation. You did that deliberately, didn’t you?
DD: I did, yeah. I put a lot, an awful lot, a month trying different line-ups of the songs. I wanted to have an antidote to something that happy, that poppy, like Pretty Smile. I wanted to have an antidote straight after it, so the more hardcore crowd wouldn’t think that I was selling out, ha ha. They’d probably think, ah, Damo is going soft, did ya hear that Pretty Smile? And then Serious would come in and they go, Whoa, he’s not. Ha, ha.
IKC: But then no sooner is that over and you take us back into a happy reggae one with Teachers again and we’re kind of reeling. The album is, there’s just some lovely, lovely stuff on it – and I’m not saying you’re not a hard man – and then you’ve got these big punching epics as well.
Are you very happy with the electronica as used in Serious, and of course at the end – in the American version – in what is, well The City is a love song to Dublin, but it’s a realistic love song I would say, it’s not a romantic one. So to that end whether it’s an updated version of Raglan Road or dare I say it even Bagatelle, it’s very much a Dublin song. And I’d like to hear more Dublin songs, but you’re happy with the choice of electronica for that – I know there’s a strong electronica in Ireland at the moment, and in Dublin?
DD: Yeah, I suppose it just relates to the time I grew up in. There was a big mad House scene and ecstasy and all that came onto the scene and that was the music that a lot of the kids were listening to. All this rave music was wafting out from houses and out of cars. I just wanted to document that, That was a lot of the kind of music that I was hearing going around Dublin in the 90s so I wanted to experiment with that and just stick it in there so it wouldn’t be just another acoustic driven song with drums around it like a lot of my last albums.
And I suppose I used Teachers on the other side, I need to surround Serious with a couple of happy songs.
IKC: It is fascinating going through that, going up and down, well up and down is a bit simple way of putting it but it is fascinating to listen to them in that order, so I’m not sure I’ll ever press Shuffle because God knows what it will do to me. I’m very happy with the order.
DD: Yeah I worked a lot on the order, I definitely did. I just think with a lot of iPods now, I remember as you would have done yourself I’m sure, saving up for an album, going into town on a Saturday and buying a big vinyl album, and you’d be proud as punch of it, bring it home, and you’d play that album again and again and again for bleeding ages and ages, and you’d know every solo on it, every…
IKC: The thing about doing that was if there was a song you didn’t warm to at first, because it wasn’t the digital era you didn’t skip over it – you kept playing it, and you could grow into it; it could become your favourite song.
DD: I know. Even if it was one of the worst songs you’d find something good about it, wouldn’t you?
IKC: You would. You’d give it a go, whereas nowadays if you hit something on a album that’s very accessible, people tend to just, Oh I don’t want to listen to tracks 2, 4 and 7 and just dump them and they never get a chance.
DD: I know. I think that’s a shame. You need to hear the artist’s worst along with their best, or their not-so-good along with their great.
IKC: And I think songs have their own pace. I know in this, because Masai is probably the loudest song on the album, or it’s the rockiest one I’d say, and it’s the beginning, it probably took me longer to warm to that one than the other ones, but at the same time I’m thinking, I’d love to hear that out there, outside the window, just loud
DD: Hopefully you’ll hear it loud some day, and it’s a lot better song live than it is on an album. It goes down great live. People seem to go mad for it live, and when the band kicks in and all.
IKC: It’s got the big guitars and it’s got your big long notes hanging in there.
DD: That works very well on a big live set or outdoors at a huge venue.
IKC: As well the Electric Picnic you’re doing Glastonbury this year?
DD: That’s right. I was never there before so I’m excited about it.
IKC: Now they’re going to be very different than the likes of the Cambridge Folk Festival, aren’t they?
DD: Yeah, yeah, I think they will definitely.
IKC: Well how do they compare with the likes of, you did that Chicago thing, I don’t know what kind of crowd Gaelic Park got, but you also did that big Irish Festival up in Boston, didn’t you?
DD: Canton, yeah.
IKC: Canton, The Celtic Connections. Now they’re nothing like Oxegen or the Electric Picnic, are they?
DD: No, no, nothing like them really, no. They’re more Irish-themed, even though it’s America. The Electric Picnic is everything. From all around the world.
IKC: At the Electric Picnic now are you going to have, will it be a Damo gig – will there be as much singing as you might get at Vicar Street?
DD: I’d say there definitely will be, yeah. I’ve a feeling. There’ll be a load of people there, a good few thousand. Like there was 10,000 at Oxegen, and they stood in the worst July day I’ve ever seen. It was fuckin’ freezing, and pissing, the hardest rain, and a freezing cold wind, and 10,000 people stood there and watched and watched and sang along. I couldn’t believe they all just didn’t go into the tent and the big huge dance hall. They could’ve but they fuckin’ stood there and got pissed on just singing along. So we’re in a tent at the Electric Picnic. We’re the last act on the Sunday, the Sunday night finishing it off. I think it’s going to be a rocker. I have a feeling.
IKC: I wish I was there, but I’ll be here I’m afraid. That’s where I’ll be.
I want to put you, just bearing in mind your fans and the singing and what they’re like, I mean everybody loves their own gigs and everybody loves their own fans but I don’t care what anybody says, your gigs - and I haven’t even been to the damn things, because I‘ve been over here for a fair few years – they’re very special; it’s not a typical gig. Everybody in Ireland does not get gigs like yours. Never mind Ireland, or England, you don’t get, nobody else can bring out the live album that you brought out and what that crowd is like. A couple of years ago I was at home at a wedding in Kerry, and the father of the bride asked a friend of mine, he said,
-Now, do you like Damien Dempsey?
To which the friend said,
-Ah ya’d have ta, ya know?
It’s very simple but that sums up to me the kind of, there’s a certain kind of compulsive quality to your music and what you bring to it. It’s completely imbued with your personality, and sorry if I’m, whatever I’m doing at you, but have you any feelings or understanding as to why you and your music is so intensely liked and causes the reaction that it does in the fans like the singing. I haven’t witnessed that (anywhere) – the Republic of Loose don’t get that. It’s really just your thoughts on the Damo phenomenon as we all call it, if that’s not too embarrassing, as to why it exists?
DD: I suppose some like the lyrics. I’m never going to let your Negative Vibes and comments, stuff like that. The kids just get a great buzz out of people coming out and saying things like that, because I suppose nobody else has really – the music scene here in Ireland, that gives out them positive lyrics like love yourself today. I’ve tailor made a lot of them songs to have hooks in them that people can sing along to. I’ve written them specially.
IKC: I listen to his new album and I can – I don’t want to reduce them to anthems, they’re not anthems, they can be from time to time, but love songs, ballads whatever, I can hear crowds singing them. I kind of want to sing them myself.
How is the single doing? It has been released in Ireland, Your Pretty Smile?
DD: It is yeah. It’s getting a lot of play on certain stations, and it’s in the Top 20 in the singles chart so it’s doing good it is. And the album now at the moment – it’s only been released on Friday just gone – and it’s sort of neck and neck with Bruce Springsteen. He’s an album out and it’s for the number 1 spot. So I don’t know if we’re going to get it because Bruce will sell consistently whereas…
IKC: Is this one of his Seeger Session things, another one of those?
DD: It’s a Live in Dublin album that he done.
IKC: Is Springsteen, bearing in mind the sort of people you’ve played with, from Billy Bragg to, you’ve supported Dylan, all the people we’ve mentioned before and stuff, does Springsteen fall into that category of somebody you’re interested in or warm to?
DD: Yeah, he does I have to say. A lot of his songs, just the lyrical content, it’s like a motion picture. A lot of his songs really paint a picture of New Jersey, New York life. I love that. His early stuff like Darkness on the Edge of Town and them albums, Born To Run and that. I love them.
IKC: Yeah, I have them, they’re, as you say, big cinematic songs. Very visual stuff.
DD: And he would have influenced songs like Factories, Trains and Houses, the way he was writing. And I think he influenced Philo as well. And some of Philo’s stuff is like that, and that would have influenced my songs, like Factories, and Spraypaint Backalley.
IKC: So with this new electric guitar of yours, are you aping Philo or what’s going on? Are you happy with it?
DD: I’m just trying to get to grips with it. I just have to do more practice on it for the live gigs. I’m going to be going out for the next four nights I’ll be playing it, from tomorrow.
IKC: Cork tomorrow, is that what I saw?
DD: Cork tomorrow, yeah that’s right. So I should be fairly handy by the end of the week. Hopefully.
IKC: Now, in the preprinted stuff that Monica (Damien’s agent) sent me, there was a reference to you, in one of the songs, there’s several themes running through the songs, not just individual songs but they cross over, so respecting your elders and listening to people who might be older and wiser, is certainly one of them – and you mention bumping into Shane McGowan at the airport and him saying. Get an electric guitar. Now you know Shane going back, you’ve collaborated with him.
DD: That’s right.
IKC: So what was the actual story of the bumping into? Was it just a very brief thing and he just said, Hey, get a guitar?
DD: I was sitting there in a pair of basketball shorts – it was warm out – he was sitting there in a bleedin’ sort of Brendan Behan get up and a top hat. He was just looking at me saying, Man, you don’t look like a rock star, you want to get an electric guitar and a leather jacket so you don’t get lumped in with all the bland brigade, all these singer-songwriters of the moment, all these sensitive types. Get some balls, that was the vibe I was getting off him, get some attitude or something. So I took his advice, I think it was good advice.
IKC: I think so, listening to the album, yeah.
DD: I got a good few new songs from the electric.
IKC: It’s good stuff. And speaking of Shane, it’s his old stomping ground that you were in when you were writing a lot of these songs, isn’t it, you were over in Kilburn and the Irish part of London?
DD: That’s right.
IKC: I would have been there back in the 80s, I was part of that wave of emigration that went over, and it was a very weird and unique place culturally. All of Ireland in one little spot. 32 accents, you didn’t even see that in Ireland anywhere. What’s it like now, is it full of the ghost of Shane McGowan and Irish people that have left?
DD: It is yeah. There’s a lot of old boys there now who are bollixed, who have sent money back here, and stabilized the country to create the Celtic Tiger and now they’re just abandoned over there. I’m doing a gig for them in a couple of weeks on the Kilburn High Road. They’re inviting all the very wealthy Irish people in London to come down – it’s 300 pound a ticket and they’re going to make donations. It’s for a homeless center in Cricklewood. So I’m trying to highlight that to some of the people here.
IKC: Did you like being there? How long were you in Kilburn for the writing, because I read a couple of interviews with you about a year ago…?
DD: About 2 years. It influenced me over there. I got a few songs out of it.
IKC: Yeah, the “Kilburn Stroll” is a beautiful song
DD: Thanks very much.
IKC: I’m conscious of keeping you, because I’m aware that we set up a time that’s dinnertime for you, isn’t it? I keep thinking I going to hear in the background, Damien, your dinner’s ready
DD: I’ve just a couple of more interviews I have to do
IKC: God love ya. Well then I should probably let you go then. Thanks a million for all your time.
DD: It’s nice to talk to you
IKC: It’s been great to talk to you. I’m thrilled and it’s a great privilege, and I’m thrilled that I’ve got the CD in my hand, and I’m going to keep on listening to it. And we’ll give it a good plug here all over the Midwest. You’ve been in to it because you’ve been to Chicago but we can get word around the surrounding 10 states and so forth, and I’ll do whatever I can.
DD: Brilliant!
IKC: The album will do the real work. You’re talking about coming over in August?
DD: I think so, a tour of somewhere around there. Milwaukee and places like that.
IKC: All right, we’ll keep an eye out for them, and thanks a million
DD: Great stuff, thanks a lot
IKC: Okay, good luck with it.
DD: Thanks. Take care now, see ya.
IKC. See ya. Bye.
See Also:
• Article on Damien Dempsey and To Hell or Barbados
• Damien Dempsey Videos
• Damien Dempsey Audio Interview
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