It’s the morning after the night before. Dundalk punks, The Gurriers are all partied out. They’ve been celebrating. Celebrating another successful Whelan’s show, another crowd wowed and another ex-girlfriend escorted out of a gig.
“This is happening too often,” jokes bassist and vocalist Alan Markey as he points towards the group’s cowering drummer. “Ex-girlfriends of this boy seem to be popping up all over the place.”
Colin Berrill, the casanova in question, is sitting in the corner of a booth in Eddie Rockets. His hat is pulled down over his face to disguise the redness bubbling under his cheeks.
“Basically,” he explains, “one of my exes showed up last night and started hurling abuse at me and the band. I mean, she’d paid her money, but spent the best part of the gig threatening to kill me and to throw bottles at me while I was playing the drums.”
The ex in question was chucked out, but found a way back in.
“She managed to somehow get herself thrown out twice,” says Berrill. “Good work on her part, and to answer your question, yeah she’s a bit crazy!”
Berrill, it seems, is a man in demand, and not just by the ladies. Last May, he was flown over to LA for a month of session work with Californian band, The Mercy Killers.
There, he put down drums on their forthcoming album and will return to LA in October for a string of gigs with the band.
“That was all just drunken luck,” he recalls. “Craig Fairbaugh, who used to be in The Forgotten and has been doing stuff with Rancid’s Lars Freidrikson and The Bastards, was in Temple Bar Music Centre for a gig with The Transplants.”
Swimming in alcohol, Berrill asked him for a job.
“Because I’d had a few drinks on me,” he recalls. “I went up to him and he mentioned he was looking for a drummer for this new band. So I drunkenly said ‘pick me, pick me’ and gave him my email. The next morning, before I’d even woken up, he mailed me and I was in.”
Markey smiles as Berrill recounts the meeting with Fairbaugh. “Ask him how his sister helped seal the deal,” he whispers.
This is The Gurriers through and through. They’re a fun bunch, serious about what they do but are equally up for having a laugh along the way.
“We’ve been playing together for years now. Too long really,” jokes singer and guitarist Declan Lawless. “It’s really only been in the last year and a half that we’ve started to take things seriously and things have begun to happen for us.”
The last year has indeed brought the group some notable success. Their well received Kamikaze EP, generated pockets of airplay and almost universal critical acclaim.
It’s a record which aptly displays the diversity of the band. Certainly, they’re punks at their core, but there’s also an element of power pop and ska thrown into the mix, making for an interesting listen.
Perhaps their biggest success though, came earlier this summer. In July, the trio managed to attract well over 600 people into the New Band Tent on the opening day of Oxegen.
“That was a crazy day, just brilliant,” says Lawless. “There were people up the front in Gurriers t-shirts and loads shouting for more.”
No one was more shocked than the band.
"We were on at half past mid-day on the Saturday and the gates had only opened so it was a big achievement to pack a crowd into the tent. We had a great day and Colin even managed to get Tre Cool’s (Green Day) drum sticks – so score!”
Oxegen hasn’t been their only notable gig of late. In the past year, The Gurriers have successfully toured Germany whilst bagging support slots with Good Charlotte and The Used, though not with Bad Religion.
“We were down to support Bad Religion in The Ambassador,” laughs Markey, “but nobody bothered to tell us. Basically I get a call late on the afternoon of the gig going ‘what time will you be in The Ambassador?’ I’m thinking it’s a wrong number before whoever it was from MCD goes ‘you’re The Gurriers right, do you not know you’re supporting tonight!’ I don’t know what happened but basically no one mentioned anything to us. We were prepared to drop everything and head down to Dublin but it turned out they needed someone straight away. We were kicking ourselves afterwards but it all worked out.”
Work out it has. When Berrill returns from LA towards the end of October, the trio will begin recording the forthcoming album. They hope also to follow up Kamikaze with a new EP before the close of the year. More live shows are also planned.
“Touring is really what we do. We love recording and that, but we’re primarily a live band,” says Lawless. “If you really want to get what The Gurriers are about then come and see us live. That’s where we’ve really honed our sound, if you like. Our manager, though, is always giving out to us for talking too much on stage.”
Quick as lightening, Markey interjects. “Most of the time we’re in negotiations. We’re trying to talk a certain person's ex-girlfriends out of bottling us. Drummers, what can you with them?”