David Geraghty - Irish Artist Of The Week

0:00So David Garrity first of tell us a little bit about you. Oh my god, you want me to talk about me? My favorite subject. Well, where do I start? I'm about to release my fifth solo album, which is probably the reason why I have good fortune to be talking to you today. First album came out in 2007 and then 2009, album 2, both under my own name and then I decided to release albums under Join Me and the Pines. Subsequent to that. In 2014, I put out an album called Inherit under Join Me and the Pines and in 2019 Monomania came out. For this fifth album, I've decided to revert to using my own name. I don't know, I just think the connection is just more immediately made for people rather than hiding behind this Artsy Farsi cinematic name. But it was, I speak to cinematic actually, it was after the 2008 album that I actually started to do a little bit of film score work, coincidentally. That was part, part of the reason

1:02for me to choose a name that was a little bit more evocative than just my own given name after spending a long time. Great pains to come up with the right in the version, come as a title. I landed in Join Me and the Pines, but yeah, I thought for this album it was time to just go back and more explicitly point to who the person is behind the album, which is David Garrity. Tell us how you first got into music growing up. If people don't know who exactly you were, tell us a little bit about that. People might more readily know me as a member of Balex 1, been there since the very beginning of Balex 1 actually even before that when we were juniper, with Damien Rice in the group. He left and we became Balex 1. So that's how people might be able to more immediately make the connection with who I am. I work at Inter Music, I think I was always much to the annoyance, well probably not annoyance, my parents were always unbelievably supportive. I was constantly much to the annoyance, annoyance of my parents, I was always

2:04banging things and making noise. With that wrote out little chord charts for me so that I could learn the guitar chords and then my mom would do things like write it lyrics of songs and then so it's kind of figure out a million and one or two, a million or one or two songs that have your three chord trick, you know, chord 1, chord 4, chord 5 and then there'd be the minor chord thrown in there as well, the realm of minor. I just started learning songs from kind of a listen to my parents record collection, it was very much a kind of a foky background, a lot of harmony-led music. As a big fan of, oh as a stalama, a big fan of melody and strong melody and polarizing lyrics really, that paint a very vivid picture. I think they just call a good songwriting. I was just always into it from a very early age. I didn't have that really focused academic brain when I was younger, so sending me to piano lessons, I must have had undiagnosed

3:08ADHD or something. Not naughty but wild, you know what I mean? Just couldn't sit still. Grandparents would see me come and, well on one side anyway, after family, would see me come and they'd hide behind the couch, a lot of certain height under the bed and hope that we'd just go away. But they just weren't built for a crazy kid. But unfortunately the piano lessons that my parents sent me to for years didn't really amount to anything because I think academia and learning stuff and being open to becoming a better learner or a person who more readily absorbs information and new skills and to be that school or you know known how to, I suppose it was then to just understanding I need to knock down and focus on this. That in itself is a realization which is a kind of a life skill and I just didn't really have that from a young age. The piano lessons didn't really amount to anything. So, which, look on back there, I'm kicking and screaming frustration that I was that kind of kid because I actually went back to college there a few years

4:12ago, just graduated from doing a four-year undergraduate in music education in Trinity where I actually majored in, I took on the challenge of piano as my main instrument in the college. Kind of advised that maybe I should use my voice as the main instrument, not piano because they weren't in my entrance audition, they weren't quite seeing enough example of classical technique etc. And I was like well there's a reason for that. So, I kind of like I was saying a minute ago, I think people come to these kind of challenges at different times in their life and for the kids that like me that come to it later on in life, school can be a real challenge and now I know it's not the case so much nowadays because there's no kid left behind. In my day it was like you just kind of got bumped down or it was just more easy to kind of slap on there. Oh he's not in the kind of the clever bracket of students in the class so but it wasn't that it was just completely distracted so it can be school, I don't know why I've entered on to this. I was obviously some deep-rooted

5:16trauma in the next album be the mis-miss education. So, so school was kind of where you found the love for music, I suppose? As a kid, yeah. And in school I found like-minded people who I could form bands with, which allowed me to be part of a tribe. You've been releasing your own music for for quite some time as well as being part of a band but what was the drive to release your own stuff? It's still the same drive when you're part of a band especially not this singer and as a more importantly as a creative artist in your own right, you have so much output to get on with curating and nurturing and exploring and it's always been fun to be part of a group but it's really important for me to exercise creativity on my own terms to explore how far I can push it and express my own my own ideas. There's also the thing of it like I don't get to- I don't be on my deathbed and go

6:18what if or why didn't I or I think the wonderful thing about doing things like making music that when you when you produce something that hopefully will touch other people and could be the exact thing that somebody might need to hear on a given day, that's the currency you're dealing in and even if the song has nothing got to do with certain people in the audience, think it's about that's fine, that's the wonderful thing about art, it's the difference between painting a ball of fruit and it's like that's a ball of fruit but if you do a version of a ball of fruit that it's not explicitly saying this is a ball of fruit but it's open to interpretation you know and that's supposed to me is what the definition of art is is to create something that actually asks questions rather than supplies answers. This is a great little segue actually to my next question your track, your brand new track, Miss Manhattan is one of the reasons we're chatting. Tell us a little bit about it, is there a story behind it for you or can people look at it in different ways? This is an example of where it is explicitly about a woman called Audrey Munson, she was born

7:25in the state of New York but way way up the north part of New York state which is all the way up even north of Buffalo, anyway she was born in 1891 and while I was shopping with her mother in Manhattan she was spotted by photographer as a teenager and she began then posing forward as photographer and then this photographer sent a letter of recommendation to his friend, sculptor, a theater or county, he was a very famous sculptor and the next thing you know she is she is the model for all of counties, sculptures and all of the sculpting friends so basically she became kind of America's first supermodel because she was everywhere she was she ended up featuring in sculptures be that marble or granite or any kind of medium she was all over New York central station central park and I heard a podcast about her a couple years ago and her life story is fascinating like so she was born in 1991 she only died in 1996 at the age of 104 and I just

8:26loved the idea of honoring her like a tribute I suppose to her life and all she went through not to discuss everything in the song but I'm talking about Audrey Munson aka Miss Manhattan, wonderful many monitors that's kind of what the song the song is about and there's a lyric in a shem that refers to what Michael Angelo used to say in his when he was sculpting he would he would say I don't sculpt a piece of stone I release the figure from it and I just thought that's that's amazing you know so he's basically rescuing the figure from the lump of rock or the lump of marble so I can run with that idea as well you compose for film and TV as well as your own music as well but what has been your biggest achievement in the film and TV world? it's a lovely gift to always work with a new director and I've been really lucky thus almost everybody has been a darling to work with yeah it's nice when you feel like you're working with somebody rather than for somebody and it's a very first project that worked on was for a brilliant

9:28little short called Crush by director a writer director called Michael Cray and it was actually Oscar nominated didn't quite win the the Gung I thought this is great the first short I work on it's getting Oscar nominated yeah so no that was that that was really great it's fantastic little short the brilliant concept as for it for a short and since work done two or possibly even three more shorts for Michael we're talking about making a music video for the closing song on my album which is called Make Love by Enemy I love composing scores for for picture I was really nervous about going into it but it was like I was a duck taken to water it was it was really it was lovely that to discover that oh yeah without the pressure of having to have words and lyrics yeah actually just completely emoted through the power of music and then underpin what what it is that's going on on screen you have played some incredible venues and festivals and gigs over many many years but has there been as was a standout moment for you or a standout gig that you

10:33vividly remember a couple of years ago I got to open for Holland out in Ivy Gardens and then down in the cork marquee which is which is really cool the same run actually opened for for David Gray down in the marquee and cork that was really great just to to see how what I was doing sonically aligned or that it that it matched well to the music of say Holland notes who I was huge a huge fan of three years their music is soundtrack my youth you know so that was pretty pretty cool to you know to have the opportunity to share the stage with them and John Oats was really sound I didn't really see Hall what John Oats was really really sound kind of asking questions about our setup and the music and he seemed genuinely into into what we were doing so that was cherry on the cake you know you have a brand new album on the way very very soon an album that I don't want to butcher the name of so I'm going to let you say it um so tell us a little bit about the album and the story behind the album was up so the album is called komo reby it's a Japanese

11:36poetic word it's spelled k o m o or e b i komo reby I love how different cultures have they have specific words for certain things and in the case of my album the Japanese have the word komo reby specifically for to describe the shafts of light that descend through the canopy of trees and I just thought that's that's really lovely so I just know maybe to summon in Japan recent releasing an album with you know an Irishism as the album title yeah we nice we should tour together big in Japan and tell us a little bit about the the story of the album is there a story behind the songs it's um kind of like well the part part the reason for choosing the name komo reby which again shafts of light through the canopy of trees is that that idea of hope it is it it is an album of for me getting off my chest which is basically what songwriters do to get things after chest and boats it's talking about heavy stuff for me but which in in the case of this album it isn't singer songwriter it isn't like totes emotion the album is is produced in such a way that if you want to engage

12:41with the lyrics great if you don't will then just sing along to these these melodic words it's a sister album to my previous album which I released under joining the pines in 2019 that album's called monomania but this album has I've allowed a little bit more emotion through with the 2019 album there's literally no acoustic guitar on it and that was it was like a creative decision to reduce the palette and see what would happen if I set certain restrictions creative restrictions to myself but this album it's more some some some emotion is is allowed to shine through more on this which I'm I'm glad for you know I mean each album is like you set it to to do certain things or to avoid certain things creatively but always at the center that there's there it just depends on how you're putting it across the album is is stress in such a way you know production wise with you know guitars and beats and electronic stuff that's the listener can engage with the the heaviness or not but I always try in the lyrics I tried to be a little bit humorous or a time

13:43suspicious about the heaviness others what does the rest of the year look like for you regarding music more music and gigs I suppose I'm coming to count to Claire actually under 26th of September I'm playing the christened community center actually supporting on the night is very talented subrena dinan amazing I'm looking forward to that yeah I'm going to I'm doing an in-store in limerick today after the album is released in steenboat records on sunday the 19th at lunchtime so if anybody fancies popping along to that and then a couple of weeks later I'll play in limerick city but so yeah so looking forward to playing christened community center I haven't haven't played there before a tour of September into october getting all over country getting to some place I haven't played before supporting the harrows flowers and warfers and the second of october couple more in stores up the bell fast the back end of october very busy