Who the fuck is Alice?

An Irish woman, a Scottish woman and an American woman walk into a bar. They have a few drinks and then they form The Alice Band, BOOM BOOM! Thankfully, Charity Hair (from Florida), Amy Lindhop (from Glasgow) and Audrey Nugent (from Dublin) are better at making music and singing than I am at making jokes.

Still though, it’s not far from the truth. They all met up in a bar and clicked over a few pints and thus The Alice Band was born. “It was a great meeting of minds after a few drinks as you can imagine,” says Audrey after I had asked her how the band formed. I chicken out of telling my new joke.

On hearing that there are three women in a band who can play and sing, a lot of people will already have their minds made up: female angst. You wont find much of that here though. If The Alice Band want to kill their boyfriends (Ash would loose a lead vocalist for a start), they are keeping it to themselves.

“We’re not pure pop and we’re not pure country, we are a mish-mash of lots of other things. Some tracks are dark and some are rockier. But obviously people are going to say ‘three girls, they are like this or so and so,’ but that is where the comparison ends.”

“Charity brings an American country influence which you can hear on quite a few of the songs. It’s diverse, the whole thing is different,” says Audrey. “A melting pot,” I suggest. Audrey laughs: “Yeah. Why not. A cultural melting pot.”

The band’s debut single, a neat and infectious song that combines 12 string guitars and harmonies, is called One Day At A Time. Is this like a band philosophy or no? “Doing music, it’s hard to persevere and keep going. It is difficult to get started, and the lyrics in that song are about where we are coming from, we’ve been really lucky. So that’s how we take things at the moment.”

And things are set to get busier. Soon to be sharing the same stage as Bob Dylan at the Kilkenny Festival, I ask Audrey what she will say to Bob if she bumps into the man himself. “I don’t really

get overawed, but I don’t want to say

something crap.” Always willing to help, I suggest that she says something like “Hello Bob, how’s it going.”

“That’s it, that’s what I’ll say, how’s it hanging!” she says laughing. Glad to be of assistance.

I never did tell that joke, but The Alice Band have good tunes, good attitude and are good- humoured. Seems to me like the chances of them doing well are, well, quite good.

The Alice Band’s first single, ‘One Day At A Time’ is out on June 11th. The band performs as special guests with Bob Dylan at Smithwick’s Source at Kilkenny Festival on July 15th.