Alternative Energy

The Pop Singer: Ruth-Anne Cunningham

"I think that Ireland needs to start breaking more domestic acts. I'm not saying this because it was a pop song and everything, but I have to say I was very much supported by radio. However, I do meet a lot of people who are struggling, and can't get their songs played. Sometimes we're so conscious of getting the bigger Irish acts on the TV shows that we forget about the artists who are starting out. You look at a group like The Script and you think, 'We should be breaking more Irish acts before they go global.'
"I've also started my own label in Ireland. We released a single last year because I was like, 'Let's just do it.' We wanted to see what we could do independently, without an established label, and we went top ten. It was a really good experience, but operating a label is very stressful. As a songwriter and performer, sometimes you want to be creative. But when you're forced to be the business mind behind the whole project as well, and to think about the marketing and so on, that can get quite confusing – you just want the music to speak for itself.
"Still, I learned loads, and we're showcasing to other labels around the world with my new band now. I'm also working on a lot of different projects in the UK, including the new albums by Leona Lewis, Alexandra Burke and Toni Braxton. After I won the 2FM Jacob's songwriting contest in 2004, I spent some time in America, and probably the songwriter I learned the most from was Billy Steinberg, who wrote 'Like A Virgin', 'Eternal Flame' and countless other hits.
"I notice when I'm at sessions with other writers that I'm almost passing on the information – it's a good thing for writers to do."
www.myspace.com/ruthannemusic

The Bedroom Boffin: Chequerboard (aka John Lambert)
"The path of art versus commerce is an age old problem, it goes back centuries. It's pretty tough: I think everybody's chasing their tails financially at the moment. I have a nice studio to work in out in the countryside here in Sligo, but I also do freelance graphic design, so ironically I find I spend a lot of the time doing web work to pay for the studio that I'm supposed to be using for music. But it's still worth it, because there are times when I'll have a bit of space and feel inspired, and at least that space is there for me to use when there are gaps between the clouds. For me I do need the right time and place to create.
"I've never been very good at the hard sell. I admire people who are able to do all that: you need that combination of a good business head and a bit of bravado. The high point of my career so far was the response to the album (Penny Black) last year, it was fantastic, I was really flummoxed by that. A lot of people have been finding it by themselves. I set up a Last.fm account about three years back and it sat there for a long time, and I just checked it again and it's starting to bloom, lots of American fans chatting about the work, and obviously it's available digitally and you can order it through the website www.chequerboard.com. There have been a couple of really special moments. Donal Dineen came along to one of my shows about three years back and encouraged me and we did a show together where he did the visuals and I did the music and that was really special and gave me great confidence to move forward."
www.myspace.com/chequerboardmusic

The Trad Merchants: Cathy Jordan (Dervish)
"There's a ready-made audience for traditional music all over the world, so you have an advantage over independent singer-songwriters or rock musicians. Classical musicians are in a similar situation: they can rely on an established circuit of gigs, a network of agents. All you have to do is prove that you can play and are willing to travel.
"In the original stages of Dervish we were looking for a record deal. But nobody wanted to know about trad in the early '80s, so that's how we got into the independent business. However, as the years rolled on we learned the advantages of being in charge of our own destiny – creatively we could make whatever decisions we wanted. We didn't have to come up with an album every single year. We could take our time and bring out the album we wanted to make rather than had to make.
"But we didn't have the money or the clout that a big record company would have in terms of their networking and distribution, and getting big gigs. There would be a glass ceiling above which we couldn't rise. We still find doors are closed 'cos we're not represented by one of the big guns. That said, we've been very lucky that the network of people we've worked with throughout the years is very trustworthy. When we started we knew we were in for the long haul. Dervish are 20-years-old and still working with the same people around the world. The longer we play the more we enjoy it. We were just in Seville last weekend, at an amazing festival. We'll be going to Honolulu later on in the year, then Kenya. There are always different territories that keep the excitement. We'll boldly go where no traditional band has gone before!"
www.myspace.com/dervishfromireland

The Metallers: John Murphy (For Ruin)
"A lot of people would describe our sound as 'melodic metal' – call it what you want, it's heavy metal with dirty vocals.
"For Ruin signed with Sentinel Records in 2007 and we released our debut album December that same year. Unfortunately it suffered from bad production – one of the limitations of being with an independent label is that the budget wasn't there. But it was still really well received and it got us some nice support slots. Last month we played in Belfast with Paradise Lost and we've recently played with Amon Amarth, one of the biggest-selling Swedish metal bands at the moment.
"Going indie's been good to us in that Brian (Taube, at Sentinal Records) is a great guy to deal with. We were never asked to include this song or that song, no one was looking over our shoulder and we had complete creative control. The personal touch helps a lot – I was able to get through to the label boss every time I wanted! But the downsides are obviously the smaller budgets, smaller distribution and minimal promotion.
"The metal community in Ireland isn't all that big – I'd guess there's 500 people in the underground. That said, there's a really, really active online community on metalireland.com, even in the UK there's nothing that compares to it. It's run by a guy called Kieran Tracy and he's done a fabulous job. There's also a really good promoter in Dublin, Fergal Holmes, who runs dublinmetalevents.com and he's done amazing work in Ireland.
"Sentinel is pretty much the only metal label in Ireland, so I certainly don't regret signing with an indie label. You've got to take that first step and we could never have afforded to release the album ourselves – we needed the help and we still do. While we're one of the better known acts in Ireland we're still very small fish and we're still very humble and aware of that."
www.myspace.com/forruinband

The Promoter: Mark Murphy (Choice Cuts)
"It's very hard to operate as an independent promoter in Ireland. There's as much going on in Dublin as there is in London or New York, and everyone's doing really good stuff. Also, with the way the climate is now, it's just really tough.
"I put on quite big productions with funk orchestras and so on – so you've got, like, 10 flights, extra baggage fines, people missing their plane, equipment that you've got to keep an eye on… it's a lot more intricate than putting on a DJ – which we do as well – as there are a lot of elements in the mix that can go wrong. You've got to be a very quick troubleshooter.
"I started out DJ-ing and fell into promoting. Myself and the other people that I work with, we just promote music that we're feeling; if we're playing their records, we want to book them and bring them to Ireland. I used to live in America, and all the music I was into was never addressed in the media over here. And it still isn't. So we have a kind of punk attitude – let's do it ourselves.
"We just had Hypnotic Brass Ensemble over for a couple of gigs at the end of May, and they're regarded as probably one of the top five bands to see in the world at the moment. We've been behind that band for the past two or three years. A lot of artists in the States come to me because I've been reaching out to them by email, and they'll use me as a platform to get them gigs around Europe. We're not specific to Ireland – a lot of our work is facilitating tours and bookings for bands in France, Germany and the UK.
"Damon Albarn signed Hypnotic Brass Ensemble to his label and they'll be supporting Blur at Hyde Park. I was over in London with them a couple of weeks ago and we met Damon – he played with them onstage. They're going to be the new Gorillaz band – them, Mos Def, Tony Allen and Damon Albarn. Being around Hypnotic's development over the last few years has been great."
www.choicecuts.ie

The Veteran: Nick Kelly (solo artist, ex-Fat Lady Sings)
"The actual process of making music is now quite cheap, but it's helpful to have money to do a lot of the things around making records, like poster campaigns and tour support and that kind of stuff. As an independent artist you need to keep your own morale up and actually get the work made and out into the world. If there's a huge organisation around you, it does mean you actually make records, and reasonably frequently. When the Fat Lady Sings were signed to a major, nobody bought any houses or anything, but we didn't have to have a day-job. We paid ourselves a small wage, but you could do your work.
"Because I do other things to make a living and have competing pressures in my life, I don't really get to make records as often as I would on a major label. But I always felt that everything I learned about music when we put out an independent single before the Fat Lady Sings got signed, that stayed with me always, the thing about relying on your fanbase.
"It's become more democratised now. So it's much easier to be independent, but the quid pro quo is it's much harder to stick out from the crowd. So what that requires of independent artists is to be much more businesslike, in the sense of having business ideas and marketing strategies, and do all these things that theoretically record company execs are supposed to do for you. You have to be very good with iconography and visual stuff. Branding, for want of a better word. So even for somebody as obscure as myself, the fact that I have some history is a really big advantage."
www.myspace.com/nickkellymusic

The Zine: Sarah Bracken (Baby Beef Founder)
"Baby Beef started about three years ago when I was on a trip to New York, where I first discovered 'zines. From seeing all the different types of 'zines and after talking to my friend Andrea, we decided to start a fanzine together. And because we're both from an art background, we decided to make an art 'zine.
"The first two issues were free so we arranged gigs as fundraisers. Then we started selling it, so it's kind of paying for itself now – we're not making a profit on it, we're just trying to pay for the costs.
"Now, we've started accepting submissions from writers too – we've had screenplays, stories and poetry. We've started a MySpace, so we've been able to accept submissions from around the world as well as local stuff. We've had art from Japan, New Zealand, Australia, England and all over America.
"Unfortunately, being an independent artist means you don't always have the money to do the things that you want to do and it's a struggle not to compromise your creative vision. As well, there's not really that many places in Dublin that will sell your zines for you.
"On the plus side, we have complete creative freedom. We can say what we want and we don't have to censor anyone's work. Also, we don’t have to put ads in which is great because I think you can grab people's attention more when you're not trying to sell them something.
"We started Baby Beef because art college was so restrictive – you have to explain every brush stroke! The 'zine was an outlet for us to be creatively free and bring back the fun in making art. I think that’s what really makes people love 'zines; it's something real you can hold and you know that someone really, really cared about it enough to make it."
www.myspace.com/babybeefheart

The DJ: Gerry Molumby
"I started DJ-ing 14 years ago, and I currently run a weekly club called Space – The Vinyl Frontier in Ri Ra. I've been running the BeatFinder record store nearly five years, and the reason I started was because I couldn't get the records I wanted in this town. I'd order records from different high street chain-stores, and found that they wouldn't get the music in for me, or I had to wait too long. So I thought, 'If I can’t get it anywhere else, I'll open my own place.'
"At the moment, it's very up and down – some weeks are good and some weeks aren't. It's hard to compete with high street shops that are selling records below cost, and more and more people are downloading. However, on the good side, there's still a core community of DJs and record collectors who come in every week.
"Also, over the past couple of weeks, we've teamed up with another record shop, and now have more stock. So we have more customers than we had before because there’s more to choose from.
"Only a couple of weeks ago, I sold a record for €1,500 to a customer in Belgium. It was a numbered edition of 'Out Of Control' by U2. There were only 500 copies pressed, and the names of each band member were etched on one side. It was originally bought in, I think, Golden Discs for £1.40, so it was like moving the decimal point a few places. That was a real kick, because I’ve never sold a record that expensive before.
"One of the services we provide – and the reason it's called BeatFinder Records – is that we’ll find any piece of music on any format. Whether it be a soundtrack, jazz, country and western or contemporary dance, we'll do the best that we can to find it."
www.beatfinderrecords.com

The Blogger: Padraig Halpin (Ragged Words)
"Ragged Words is a website I set up almost three-and-a-half years ago as a university project while I was in London. It went into hibernation slightly after I finished college, and over the past year-and-a-half it's grown into what it is now. Along the way it picked up about 12 or 15 contributors, to the point where it was significantly re-designed last month.
"We just want to cover interesting music, and it's totally a hobby thing – everyone does it in their spare time. There are barristers, accountants and a couple of fellow journalists doing it as well. I'm obviously biased, but I think the standard of writing is pretty exceptional.
"There's another project I'm involved in, Bandstand Busking, which we started about a year ago. We basically get groups to play on bandstands around London. I guess it's our sister site, and that's picked up a load of interest from places like Pitchfork and The Guardian. We've done about 30 or 40 sessions, and we've had some great bands like Of Montreal, Frightened Rabbit and Wild Beasts.
"With Ragged Words, the aim is to have a comprehensive website for Ireland and the UK. I think we're going to try and put on some gigs as well, which has been a long-term goal. One of the best things about it is that a lot of the bands we interview are massively appreciative, which in a sense makes it all worthwhile.
"When I left Dublin in 2006, I don't think I was terribly enthusiastic about the bands who were around. But there's been a noticeable shift since then, with artists like Super Extra Bonus Party, Villagers and R.S.A.G. It's definitely grown in the last two or three years."
www.raggedwords.com

The Siblings: Chris Coffey (The Holy Roman Army)
"I've been writing music for about 12 years, which was when I first got a computer at home. When we were younger, myself and Laura, my sister, used to mess around with stuff on acoustic guitar. But we finally got around to doing something properly over the last year or so.
"I've been working on the tracks on our new album over the last two years – some of them would have started as instrumentally hip hop-y kind of things. But since Laura began working with me they've morphed into fully-fledged songs. In the studio, we fleshed things out an awful lot and Laura came up with loads of ideas. When we perform live, I do the backing tracks and play synthesisers and Laura plays guitar and keyboards. But over the last month or so we've got a live bass-player, a live drummer and a trumpet-player – so there's more of a fully-fledged band sound to it now.
"Working with a sibling, the good thing is that you know that the band can't break up. We've had arguments but we're always going to get over it because we've had a million other fights about other things. Laura's doing a PhD at the moment and I'm a GP, working full-time in Arklow. So it’s been difficult taking the days off to play gigs. But it's just a matter of making a sacrifice.
"The nice things about being an indie artist are that we've been able to take our time with it and no one's been hurrying us along. The disadvantages would be the five crates of CDs I've got in my apartment! Still, at least any money we lose is ours to lose. The experience is the one thing that would be handy from a label. I wouldn't completely dismiss the idea of being on a label, but still, it's nice to keep things to yourself."
www.myspace.com/theholyromanarmy

The Career Musician: Camille O'Sullivan
"To be honest, performing the kind of music that I do, it's been difficult enough to forge a career in Ireland. We live in the country of singer-songwriters. It was a hard slog for about two years – in that you're trying to convince people it's okay that you don't write your own songs. Also, it kind of got the label of cabaret, which I borrow from, but it's not necessarily that. And of course audiences are smaller here and so on.
"The first few years I did little cafés like Bewley's, and those people were life savers in a way. You're not really something that record companies want to go near, though what was kind of interesting was that programmes like the Late Late Show and Tubridy Tonight invited me on. They would have seen the performer in me, and that suited TV.
"So, in one sense, when you don't write your own songs you have an advantage in that you can play in theatres as well music venues. In addition, you can work with other performers, like Shane MacGowan or Duke Special, because you perform in a certain way. It's not necessarily dramatic – but you're chameleon-like and you can adapt. It was blooming hard the first few years, but now it's getting easier.
"A recent highlight for me was performing as part of A Tribute To Nick Drake, which was a Barbican production. It was an amazing gig – there were artists there like Martha Wainwright, Beth Orton, Graham Coxon and Harper Simon, Paul Simon's son. The original string arranger, producer and bass-player on the Nick Drake albums were involved, so I was about to collapse at that one.
"The Live At The Olympia album is out at the moment, and I'm trying to get my act together to do a studio album. We're only doing one date in July, so that might be the time do it."
www.myspace.com/camilleosullivan

The Synth Merchant: Sarah Carroll (Baby Beef)
"I've always been doing creative things. My background originally is in visual art. I've always done something that involved editing or mixing – so the type of music I do isn’t that much of a stretch.
"I was in a band when I was about 16. Then, I got sick of being in the audience and thought I might give this a go again. I started off trying stuff out with old samplers. I used to play guitar in a traditional sense but I knew nothing about keyboards, so I bought a few and sort of jumped in at the deep end. Because I'm a solo artist, I can't do everything myself. I'm actually using real guitars, real bass, real keyboards – some of the songs have five layers of keyboards on them. Some of the stuff that I do could be a bit like LCD Soundsystem and then other stuff could be a bit like Meatloaf. I played with Cap Pas Cap at the launch of their We Are Men album and with RSAG and You're Only Massive in Andrew's Lane so they were really good gigs to start off with.
"Being independent sometimes is great and sometimes it's tough. Not only am I independent but I'm solo as well. In that way there's nobody to argue with over the direction the music goes in and I can work at the speed I like. It's completely up me as to what works and what doesn't.
"The downsides are that you've to do everything yourself and can get a bit knackered. Also, you have to put up your own money to get the stuff made – but it's really, really cheap to get your CDs pressed. I do all the artwork myself and a couple of friends are going to shoot the music video for me. You really do have to rely on your mates."
www.myspace.com/babybeefmusic

The Record Shop: Plugd (Jim Horgan)
"Downloading has definitely affected us to some extent – particularly among younger people who've grown up with the internet. I guess people are less willing to buy something unless they consider it essential, especially if it's available for free. With illegal downloading, people are always going to want something for nothing. Simple as that. Whether or not it's valued as much after is another question. That said, I don't think it affects independent shops like ours as much as it does the high street chains.
"The resurgence of vinyl has been a good thing for us. It comes back to people wanting a physical copy of a record, complete with artwork. Also, the ritual of taking a record out of its sleeve and putting it on a record player is something that people are drawn to – and it's something that MP3s, or even CDs, can’t replicate. The superior sound quality from vinyl is another factor. There are so many albums being re-issued every week. A lot of the time they come with a code, with which you can download a copy of the album for your iPod or whatever. Even with house/techno/dubstep etc things have definitely picked up."
www.myspace.com/plugdrecords

WORDS: PAUL NOLAN, PETER MURPHY, MICHAEL CARR & CELINA MURPHY