Heathers, Blazing

With a widely acclaimed debut album, Here Not There and a 30-date US tour behind them, 18-year-old twins Louise and Ellie Macnamara – aka Heathers – don’t believe in hanging around waiting for things to happen. From Blackrock in south Dublin, the pair completed the Leaving Cert earlier this year and have both recently started college. Despite this hectic schedule they’re still managing to find time to lay the groundwork of a music career.

Ellie explains: “We’re taking a little bit of time off to settle into college at moment but we’re playing some gigs at Christmas and we’ve just come back from the CMJ festival in New York which we did with the Blizzards and a few other Irish bands.”
With a moniker inspired by the 1989 Winona Ryder black comedy of the same name, the sisters have been making music together for less than two years. “We grew up listening to everything from Simon and Garfunkel to Bruce Springsteen but we only started around April 2007," says Ellie. "We’ve always been playing instruments and singing in choirs but we never did anything together as a group. Getting together just happened out of the blue – I think it was one day when Louise wrote a song and asked me to put some harmonies to it. It worked out better than we expected and we started writing some more songs and playing gigs around the place.”
Their sound which is just two voices and one guitar is an exuberant, energetic blend of acoustic indie folk with lyrics that connect with their own generation – a sort of Avril Lavigne unplugged meets the Indigo Girls. “People compare us a lot to Tegan and Sara, which is okay because we like their music, but to be honest the comparison is probably more because we’re twins.
“We’ve had some people mentioning the Indigo Girls to us as well, though we weren’t familiar with them. If someone asks us what would we compare ourselves to, we find it really hard to explain. People think our music is different, whatever that means.
We kind of write the songs together but generally Louise comes up with something on guitar and we work on the lyrics. We really do have the same tastes in music and we have a high standard as to how the music should sound. It has to be something I’d like personally.”
Their big Stateside break came when they were offered the chance to tour with Indiana punk-folksters and now label mates, Ghost Mice. How did that come about?
“The summer before last, they were doing a European tour and we got a chance to play with them in when they came to Ireland,” says Ellie. “Chris from the band said he liked our music so he suggested a split release between his DIY label, Plan It X and our own label [Hide Away]. We thought it was a great idea and we went ahead with the joint release. A couple of weeks later he emailed and asked us if we’d like to tour with them – in America.”
It's impressive stuff for a band still taking baby steps but how on earth did their parents feel about letting them loose in US at such a young and presumably still impressionable age?
Ellie laughs: “They were a little bit worried but mainly because they wanted us to concentrate on the Leaving Cert. But we got through it and it was pretty much straight out of the exam hall and out onto the road across America.
“We’d been there before on a few family holidays but nothing on this scale. We flew out to Chicago and we drove around in a van. It was well organised and the dates were planned out in advance – we did 34 gigs in 30 days, starting in Chicago and taking in everywhere from Arizona to Washington. The reaction was great – a lot of the venues were small including record shops, art galleries even a few gigs in people’s houses. But everyone was very supportive and we made lots of contacts in other bands.”
While a record deal isn’t entirely out of the question, they prefer to retain as much of their indie status for as long as possible. Says Ellie: “Our album pretty much was done on a shoestring through the help of friends, and a friend owns the record label. It’s important for us to do as much ourselves as we can but it comes to a point where you can’t do everything.”
Meanwhile, the game plan is to combine higher education with music. Ellie: “It’s working out fine so far. I’m in Trinity and Louise is in Maynooth and we both have Fridays off which gives us a long weekend to work on music. She’s doing music technology which will come in handy and she’s always fiddling about with keyboards so that might come into the music at some stage.
“We’d love to go back to America soon but we’d like to play in the UK and the Continent too. The most important thing is to keep playing. Last week we supported Jack L and we got a great reaction, so some more support slots would be ideal for us.