“Competitions don’t really appeal to me because music is not a competition. It’s preference. People like it or they don’t like it.”

So says Gerry Fleming, ironically, the winner of the Smithwick’s Songwriters’ Sessions, organised in conjunction with Sun Studios and Hot Press, and with the support of IMRO and the co-operation of Mick Hanly.

“I did a competition before with Hot Press and we got as far as second place with a band called Fantasy Garden,” says Gerry, deepening the irony. “We had a good following. It was going places. Our last gig was at The Olympia. But the bubble burst and people just got disillusioned. But as regards the competition I just said never again. Not because we came second but because there was a lot of shit involved between ourselves. You kind of lose sight of the original goal you set out to achieve and you start heading towards something else. Then when that’s over what do you do next?”

Nevertheless, after Fantasy Garden disbanded Gerry kept writing songs. As he says himself once you’ve started writing you can’t stop really. Even though there were lots of encouraging noises from publishers no concrete offers materialised. With his back to the wall he decided to throw his lot into a competition one more time.

From taped submissions consisting of three songs, ten songwriters were selected to appear with Mick Hanly, each on a different night of his nationwide tour. The winner was then selected from a recording of those performances. Opportunity knocked for Gerry at Whelan’s. It was an unforgettable experience, a night that he can still unroll in his mind, scene by scene, like a movie.

“It was a traumatic experience because it was the first time I’d ever stood up, on my swiss, despite all the gigging I’d done with other bands before,” he remembers, “especially under that kind of pressure. But it was also the most rewarding experience I’ve ever had. Apart from winning the competition. The thing was that I got such a buzz from doing the live show that I didn’t care after that whether I won the competition or not.

But back to the beginning . . .

“When I walked in to the sound check first I began to feel myself chickening out,” he recalls. “I thought, ‘This isn’t going to work, it’s going to die’. A couple of times I really believed I was going to run out of the place. I’ve been with bands before where the show just dies and it’s not a nice feeling. Anyhow, about five-to-nine I was standing at the front door going ‘Naw, it’s not going to work’. And then I was going ‘Yeah it will, it will, it will’. And then ‘Naw, it’s not going to work’. So I said I’ll get the first line of each song in my head and just go for it.

“I walked up the pub. Mick Hanly was at the door looking at his watch wondering if I’d legged it! I saw a stool, a guitar and a spotlight and went ‘It’s not going to work’ (laughs). Then I said ‘Fuck it, three steps to the stage. One, two, three. Get on and play’. I’d taken two steps when a big hand grabbed me and said ‘Come back here!’. It was Mick Hanly. He had to get up and introduce me first. So he went on and gave me this incredible build up. Fair play to him. He didn’t know what he was doing to me, though, you know? I was dying. Oh Jesus. I suppose it kinda spurred me on a little.

“Four bars into the first song it went flying. The place was stuffed and it really went down a bomb. The whole thing seemed to last about four seconds. At the end of it when I walked off the stage I thought ‘Fuck it. That’s brilliant. If I don’t win it I don’t care. All the songs worked. That’s the important thing.’ Mick Hanly came up to me after it and said ‘Great stuff, hope you win’ and all the rest. Nerves can be a healthy or unhealthy thing I suppose. If they cause you to chicken out then they’re unhealthy but if they charge you up then providing you can channel that energy it’s a good thing. Some performers would probably miss them if they didn’t feel nervous before a gig. I learned a lot that night. I really did.”

Attention has also come Gerry’s way from Philip Dargan at 98 FM. Dargan was mad about the tape and featured ‘Blindness’ on his Guaranteed Irish show. Furthermore, out of winning the competition has come a backing band made up of Robbie Kelly and Martin Ryan called The Breakfast of Champions, after the Kurt Vonnegut novel – simply because Gerry happened to be reading the book at the time all of this was happening.

Part of the prize involved two days’ recording time at Sun Studios. One of the songs from that session ‘This Is Love’ is genuinely as good a tune as I heard anywhere in 1994, while another, ‘The Great Transparent Man’ would be the envy of many more established acts. Gerry Fleming has the added attraction that his music is also refreshingly free of superficial posturing and empty gestures.

“I suppose my songs are preoccupied with human relationships but more so a person’s relationship with him or herself,” he reflects. “It would be trying to write down that introversion really.

“The lyrics also come from the fact that I’m probably concerned with how people feel about themselves. Everybody goes through their own sort of horribleness. I’m old enough. I’ve gone through a lot of things but it still gets back to how you feel about yourself. It’s a bit like ‘This Is Love’ where in the first part there’s this chemical attraction, in the second part the reality and the third part of it is the end of it where one drops the other because the magic is gone.

“But, really, it isn’t gone. It’s simply the initial shock of getting out of the chemical side of things. It’s just changed shape. Everything relates to that. Ultimately, I think you have to straighten yourself out and not have someone beating you over the head with a bible. You develop yourself. Then it’ll be okay. If someone comes through that sort of thing then they’ll respect other people more. That’s what the songs are about. They’re little snippets of that.

Gerry admits to not being too impressed with what’s going on in music at the moment. However, those from the past who would have inspired him are Magazine’s The Correct Use Of Soap album, Paddy McAloon and early Lloyd Cole, as well as the work of Frank Sinatra and Cole Porter.

“The central core of the idea for me is the song,” concludes Gerry. “A song for me, apart from the lyrics, is the actual feel of the thing. That takes time to create, especially in a studio. The sound, the vocal and the words should be a perfect match. You should really, if you could perfectly do it, have nothing but a voice. It’s almost like Zen or something. I like that kind of minimal thing. Only necessary music. My problem is that there’s far too much in my songs. It’s trying to cover up holes where there should be no holes. If I was doing it right then it should sound as if everything just fell there perfectly into place.

“I might be a hundred-and-five but I’m determined I’ll get to that level eventually.”