A Country Practice | Interview with Catherine McGrath

One pm and there's space enough in the Black Door cafe for all of Dublin's finest journalists, DJs, radio presenters and broadcasters to get a good look at Catherine McGrath performing on the small stage.

'The next big thing' is a phrase that we've all been forewarned against using in this business - the sense of eyerolling exaggeration that comes with it means it's better left in the Handbook of Cliches. But everyone watching Catherine McGrath showcasing tracks from her debut album is whispering the words to each other anyway.

For the 21-year old Co. Down country-pop singer, this isn't her first rodeo (sorry). Catherine's been plugging her music persistently in London for two years now and has gotten very, very good at making herself heard (when Elton John leaves you a personal voice message saying he loves your music, you must be doing something right).

Her intimate Dublin show precedes the release of her debut album Talk Of The Town, which will be on the shelves around the same as this is posted. The early-Taylor Swift influence is everywhere on this 13-song LP, but the album also encompasses Kacey Musgraves (currently doing incredible things in country music in her own way), Brad Paisley, and Hunter Hayes, who features on stand-out track 'Don't Let Me Forget'. Festival audiences throughout the UK have had a chance to enjoyed Catherine's music (she went down a storm at the more mainstream British Summertime Festival as much as she did at Country 2 Country), and if our neighbours across the Atlantic have any sense, Catherine will be booked for a major American tour before the summer's out.

It's all enough to make any interviewer feel excited about getting the chance to meet with her.

Town & City

Half-an-hour before showtime at the Black Door, and Hot Press sits down for a chat with the star. First on the agenda, how does someone who lives in the small town of Rostrevor, Co. Down, become a major country music success?

"People always wonder what the link is between the country music and where you come from," says McGrath. "And although I discovered American country from Taylor Swift and her talking about Brad Paisley and all those American artists, I also found that type of music relatable for where I grew up. I was surrounded by fields, by the outdoors. I suppose a lot of what they were singing resonated with me."

For Catherine, country music was the logical result of someone growing up, well, living in the country. If the genre returns to themes of smalltown living and idyllic settings time and time again, then Rostrevor - with a population of a 2,000 people and a location at the foot of Mourne Mountains - is about as appropriate as you can get.

But it also made sense on more levels than one. Catherine was growing up in a country which clearly had a monumental appetite for this type of music (as evidenced by two Taylor Swift concerts at Croke Park and the Garth Brooks fiasco), even if it felt like hometown country-pop success stories could only happen somewhere else. It took Catherine moving away from London for things to really fall into place.

"When I moved to London two-and-a-half years ago, my main thoughts were, 'Lets' see what I can do with music, let's see like if anyone will listen to me'. I didn't really have an end goal. I wasn't thinking, 'I want to get a record deal.' I was just writing songs. Then the next thing I knew, I was meeting Warner Brothers and from that I was actually releasing the songs that I was writing. But that was never really planned from the start. I think that's a good thing, because it means that everything that I've written and everything that I've done so far has been natural."

This allowed Catherine to work in London with a purer focus. Simply put, she wanted to marry her love for the genre with the stories she wanted to tell in her songs. The album title track, 'Talk Of The Town', is a joyous statement of intent that casts off every doubter and hater from Catherine's past (there were a few who laughed at her when she first packed up and left Northern Ireland, she smirks with hindsight), while 'Wild' documents a sort-of first date that led to disappoint. Each of Catherine's songs is as vividly drawn as it is honest.

"It's just a collection of my stories and everything that's happened to me over the last two years," she admits. "To me, country music is just what I use to tell these stories. Regardless of production or what instruments you use or what artist you're compared to, the common ground with all country is that it's honest story-telling - that's what comes first for me."

Was it difficult moving away and living in London? "It definitely didn't feel like it was a difficult choice initially," she says. "I knew that I wanted to do music. In school I was told, 'No you've got to do a course in university and if you don't want to study music as a subject there's no point aspiring to do it anywhere else.' It was all about what grades you got. I felt like I couldn't just be a singer unless I moved away. So whenever I got a call from my manager saying, 'Do you want move to London?', there was just no doubt that I'd leave."

"But it wasn't an easy thing to adapt to. I didn't really know anyone at all in London. I moved in with a family I'd never met - who were actually really nice and helpful and everything - but it was stressful at the start. There were definitely times early on when I'd be calling mum and saying, 'I just need to go home for a bit and eat normal food and not just Sainsbury's sandwiches all the time!' But now, I think back to all the shows I got to play and the people I've gotten to support, and how I was listening to their music in my bedroom three years ago and couldn't even imagine what meeting them would be like."

Was there a moment when it hit - that being a successful country musician could become a reality?

"I think that when I got my record deal, that was a moment where I was like, 'This could be the real thing.' Up until that point, I just knew that I loved this music and that nobody else around me really understood it - country music was definitely not a cool thing, at least in my friend group."

"I remember just before meeting Warner Brothers, I got a call from Jon Maguire (One Direction, The Kooks), who I wrote a lot of my first songs with and who was the guy I normally called for advice about anything. He called me and said, 'This meeting is a big deal but don't worry if nothing comes of it. It's just nice that they even wanted to listen to you.' So I was thinking, 'Okay, nothing's going to come of it.' And then I had that meeting and Phil Christie (President of Warner Bros in the UK) said, 'Listen, I love it, I love the songs, I love that it's country, I love that you know exactly what you wanna do.' For me, having someone believe in me and say, 'You can do this' - that was a huge moment."

Nashville Skyline

In the midst of all this, Catherine made several pilgrimages to the home of country music. It was in Nashville that she worked on her songwriting style with some of the best in the business.

"As I discovered country music and realised that Nashville was the place that it was all coming from, I was set on going there," she states. "I first went out with my aunt, just for a holiday before my 18th birthday, with no plans to write songs, only to see live music. Then my manager was like, "How would you feel about working with songwriters out there? We know it's a holiday but we could arrange something.' In my head I was like, 'Are you serious? That is my dream, to write a song in Nashville is a holiday for me.' And so they set up a session with Liz Rose (Taylor Swift, Tim McGraw), who turned out to be one of my favourite songwriters of all time. Ever since then, I've been back seven times and I wrote so many songs that made the album from my time there."

Despite the high-level record label meetings, the cross-continental excursions and the two-and-a-half years living in one of the most notoriously cold cities in the world, Catherine McGrath's songs capture the kind of warmth that makes country music so universally listenable (it's one of the most appealing genres of music that there is, even if naysayers refuse to admit it). Now that she's released a fantastic LP, what's the next step? "I don't really think too far ahead about anything," she considers. "I focus on what I know is happening in the now and try to appreciate that. In my head, I think, 'Right, I'm going to get this album out, play my headline shows in September, and then I'll see where that takes me and if people like it or not.'

"I'm always going to play music - whether I'm doing it professionally or not, whether I get to play in front of people or if it's in my bedroom. I'll get the album out, then we'll see what happens from there."

Talk of The Town is out now, via Warner Bros.