Hermitage Green: "To be honest, whatever happens with the album, we love it"

There isn’t a fleck of jetlag on Hermitage Green’s two Darraghs – Griffin and Graham – as they answer the Zoom call from their Kansas hotel. It’s no surprise. As anyone lucky enough to have caught the Limerick outfit live over the summer can attest, their music is all about energy, often mixing eclectic apparatus like didgeridoos with folk instruments, to achieve a unique and forward-thinking pop-rock sound.

Never a band to stagnate, they’ve embraced a new, electro-influenced direction on their third album, Connection.

“We were wondering how we could transfer from being a band that’s on at nine p.m. at a festival to one that’s closing it down at eleven p.m.,” Griffin explains, “We always had a synth-rave section at the end of our set, which we all love, so we thought, ‘Why not lean into that a bit further?’

“We’ve obviously been around for a long time and done what, I suppose, people might expect of us, so we just decided to push the boat out and push ourselves. It’s been really enjoyable. To be honest, whatever happens with the album, we love it.”
The band credit their longtime friend and collaborator Cillian King for helping tie it all together.

“He’s just a musical wizard, a complete music nerd,” Griffin says. “We put a lot of faith in him because we knew him well, and we knew what he was capable of. I wanted to co-produce some of the tracks, and he was amazingly open to ideas I had, even though he’s a much more accomplished producer than I would be. I couldn’t recommend him enough.”

The record’s title reflects the band’s deep-rooted friendship, which has endured since their first impromptu jam session back in 2010.

“I felt like connection was a word that suited us,” Griffin continues. “We’re five best friends who are strongly connected to each other through the music, but that being said, if the band was finished tomorrow we’d stay friends for life.”

Staying connected has had its challenges as the years have gone by, with members of the group scattered around Munster and singer Dan living in London.

“It’s definitely a challenge,” Griffin admits. “It’s no secret in the music industry these days that unless you’re an absolutely enormous act, everyone is doing something on the side. It’s harder for practising, but on the flip side, there’s a lot more organisation within the group.”

Life on the road whilst having a family to rear also brings its complications.

“It changes dramatically when you have kids,” he adds. “It’s extremely hard on partners at home trying to juggle multiple children, and it’s obviously hard to be away from them for extended periods. It’s a new way of navigating it.”

The title of the record has taken on an even greater meaning for Graham. Growing up an adopted child in Wicklow, he’s spent the last couple of years embarking on a globe-trotting quest in search of his birth parents.

“It was beautiful and very fulfilling,” he says of meeting his biological mother for the first time. “When I met her, she explained to me that my birth father didn’t know I existed, which was shocking news to me because I had always assumed he did.”

The journey to find his father took unexpected turns, involving a genealogist in Trinidad who finally helped him make the connection.

“We had just finished soundcheck for a gig in Killarney when he rang to say that he found him,” Graham recalls. “I flew out to Trinidad a week later with my family and went to my birth father’s house. He has a little bar, so I went and basically just announced myself to him and told him who I was.

“He was completely in shock. I spent a week in Trinidad and saw him again before we left, and that second time was really very fulfilling and heart-warming. It was really nice for me to tell him my story, see him and talk. The title of the album is Connection, and there’s a few songs in there, like ‘Flutes’, that I’d very much attach to that story.”

• Connection is out now.