Eamon Dowd has more stories than you ve had hot dinners. No sooner have I finished our half-hour interview than he turns to me and smiles, So, you don t want to hear about how our drummer got stabbed in Finland, and how he got arrested the next day?
Hmmmm, my keen journalistic instincts and probing news sense have obviously drawn these confessions from him. Or, more likely, Eamon has a knack for spinning a good yarn, as evidenced by his band, The Racketeers two albums to date, full of the kind of lovelorn balladry and beer sodden dreams that make for compelling listening. And that s before the stabbing incident.
The Racketeers have been together for about three years now, and already have two albums under their belt, 1997 s By Hook Or By Crook and Long Time Gone, released earlier this year. They have travelled the completely independent route, releasing both albums under their own steam, with Eamon admitting that he went into debt to ensure the albums release.
Long Time Gone was well received by the critics, including yours truly, but due to a distribution problem, was unavailable in record stores for some time after its release, which obviously impacted badly on sales. However, Eamon is still rather upbeat and is planning a possible Christmas EP to build up momentum. Ciaran Donnelly, who previously worked with Siniad O Connor, is making a video for the song Million Miles Away , and The Racketeers are also planning the first Irish tour in some time over the festive season.
I don t know if you can really tour here anymore, he opines. A lot of the venues are just doing clubs now, or else full-on showbands like Abbaesque or Smokey. It is a bit of a strange situation to be in, that we are doing so many gigs abroad and yet we can t get on TV here.
The Racketeers gruelling tour schedule has taken its toll on the band, whose line-up has always been somewhat fluid, as Eamon explains. The first time we went to Europe we did something like 35 dates in seven weeks and that was too hectic. That claimed the first bass player, he chuckles.
Since then, there have been many comings and goings (former Engine Alley skin-thumper Emmaline Duffy-Fallon is another who has fallen by the wayside), but the line-up now seems more solid than it has done in some time, including former Big Geranium Neil McCartney on fiddle.
Eamon s songs tend, to these ears, to be whiskey-soaked ballads, with a guitar sound reminiscent of Neil Young s finer moments, as Dowd takes on the role of the universal barfly. I said as much in my review of their second album earlier this year, and Eamon chuckles as he recalls seeing it.
We were sitting in this bar, reading it, and Alan was saying Jesus Eamon, if anyone wrote that in the fucking paper about me, I d fucking kill him. He s calling you an alcoholic. I was trying not to look at that, I was looking at the fact that we got nine out of 12 on the dice, he laughs.
Dowd admits that, yes, Neil Young is a reference point, but maintains that Dylan is a bigger influence on his work: The songs come from a folk end of things, but I didn t want it to be twee and I didn t want it to be too acoustic-based. I like Neil Young and I like the old country stuff, people like Gram Parsons and George Jones. But I was also quite conscious of having an Irish element in there, and this was pre-Corrs and all that.
The Irish element has worked well for The Racketeers in Europe, particularly in Sweden, he maintains, where all things Irish are in vogue.
In the last 10-15 years Sweden has changed. A lot of bars have opened up and many of them are run by Irish people, and they seem to have gotten into the whole Irish thing, he explains. Then you have all this crap like Riverdance that people latch onto that and think that s part of the Irish thing. I usually end up explaining when I ve a few too many pints on me that it s all shit and they should buy a Luke Kelly record instead.
It s at this point that we close the interview, before Dowd refers to Dave Clarke s rather too intimate encounter with a naked blade. Explain yourself, Eamon.
Clarky, our drummer, got stabbed in Helsinki in April, recalls Eamon. He got stabbed in the back by a lady, literally, Then, the following day a drug deal was going on in the apartment downstairs, and this guy got two bullets in the back of the head. So Clarky got questioned as to why he had a stab-wound in his back. He was fine, though, it wasn t a deep wound he could still play.
No wonder they found it difficult to get a regular line-up to go on the road. n