Groev - Irish Artist Of The Week

0:00So the Grove, I suppose, first off, tell us a little bit about who's in the band and how did you become a band? So my name is Joe. Anyway, Joe Sweeney, I'm from Leetrum. This is Rory. I'm a region from Convara in Galway. This is Jack Lennon from Dunigal Town. And then we've got three other lads from La Cray that come in and out of the band as they please. And I got two Ford brothers and then Mike Glenn. And I guess the band really started in first year of college for myself and Rory met in first year. Really wanted to play music, but didn't really have the first idea of how to get into it. So we just kind of met up in class on student accommodation, which is the student accommodation for ATU. And we'd play music before we go out. We did that for about three months. And then just left it. After COVID, we left it five years now pretty much. And then just over a year ago now, I'd say nearly two probably. We started playing boggigs and we haven't really stopped since. We've just picked up people

1:03on the way. I suppose how did you get into music growing up individually? Was there somebody that inspired you or was there someone else within your family that did music? My dad is a musician, so I kind of surrounded by it. And they really have a choice about playing music for the kid. I'd picked up the guitar myself when I was 15, 16, and T.Y. And yeah, that's kind of my athletic music. Yeah, same for me. It was a kind of family thing. I had a very musical family. They all sang in the choir in the church down below. So I started singing in the choir first. And then I went from that to doing like musicals and then school musicals. And then I really wanted to learn guitar. My parents said, well, let's learn guitar if you do keyboard first. So the keyboard for notes, they're like, right, we get your guitar lessons. And I did two. And I think the guy I was doing it with went on tour then. And that was it. So then I had to finish my keyboard, which I didn't enjoy. And wasn't like learning guitar up until COVID happened. And then that's when I picked the backup and just started playing, joined a few bands and then

2:03ended up here. I don't really know. Like there was no real music in my family. I don't really know if there is. But I used to live in Kildare and every weekend we'd drive up the country to my mom and dad's respective family homes. Just that journey, I think we would always listen to mom and dad's music on the radio. So I think that was probably my first real taste of kind of the music that I now listen to all the time. So I think that would probably be my end into music. It was no real music around the family, but it was just listening to it all the time. That got me into it, I suppose. Who do you guys look up to now when writing and performing? And give us a little bit of a sense of your style of music as well. I think individually, I think there's a lot of people that I look up to. A lot of Irish musicians and then non-Irish musicians like Paul Brady, Van Morrison, lots of bands as well. Like the Eagles dive straights and then obviously there's newer faces around as well. Like I always

3:04I'd love Paolo Nutini and I think Rory would agree that like in it like people that kind of inspired us to do it right now. Like is seeing people like Amble and King Fisher and like just like Norville Fellows just kind of give it a go. When you've taught maybe it wasn't possible just kind of seeing other lads in similar situations as you just kind of say, you know what? Why not? Like, you know. Yeah, I think those would definitely be mine. Because you live near enough where Robbie from Amble is from. I know he's from. Yeah, I'm a leachroom fella and he is as well and I think like seeing someone from out the road just kind of like give it their best shot and do it so well is just like very inspiring. So yeah, definitely say at the moment there are massive inspiration close. With writing songs, how does it work with the three of you? Is there someone in specific that writes the songs or do you all come together? We've never actually written like a full song together. So we kind of bring songs to each other or else we'd have like parts of a song

4:06and then we bring it and then we kind of work on the part that we have and then you might finish it there, you might go and finish it yourself. We've never actually written a full song together. So it's kind of something we're going to try and do anyway. We've got a writing session planned in the next couple of months where the six of us or the five of us are going to try to get together and try to do that. We'll see how that works. We could go off. We could end up hating each other like ever since again. Definitely the way that we've been doing it so far is that like you might have an idea like begin that idea that could be the first like two lines and then you take down me. Yeah, you could sit on it for months. One day you'll come back into like a practice just we're like, oh, remember that idea. Here's a couple more words to it. How do we feel? It's going and then when you have that kind of initial idea, it's way easier to then just bounce things off. I think that's that's how it's been going so far. Not even for sort of like that was a long enough time in the making. We wrote the first verse of the new song in a studio in Linnrich in the very early hours of the morning after a nice knee divides. The voice recording actually

5:11makes zero sense. Oh yeah. I can tell you. It sounds so nice. The idea sounds lovely but it made no sense. So I was sitting left like three or four months and then we were going on tour. We to write a few more songs from the session. I think Joe had a few ideas and I had that idea and went away and did them and then brought them out to the group. And I was talking about your track subtle. It's one of the reasons we're chatting and tell us a little bit more about it. Is there a story behind it for one of you? I didn't write it. Yeah, but looking in at like the way the lads write songs and I'm not a songwriter. I understand music. I don't know how to write a song but looking in at way Rory wrote it. It is like the first breach into a love song. Maybe he did. I don't think he had a specific person in mind. It's very much capturing like a really innocent feeling which I think it's a really nice first kind of love song to write. In the same way, like we've all the tracks Ben and Jerry's is like a love song for like you know, it's like grief but this one's very much like the opposite and like it's the birth of a kind of love and I think musically it's

6:13very gentle which kind of captures that feeling and it's especially like we're playing it now. We're on tour with Jamie McIntyre and we have it in like the opening set and it's just one of those that like you played and you smile and you can like pop your head too. It's definitely not like the excitement of something new and not really being sure what's going to come from us. It's kind of up for whatever you've perceived yourself. What I love about it was like I think with all like the new music that we write like you're always kind of showing the people that matter to you. And I remember playing in the car with my mom and dad for the first time. They don't obviously like criticize it to the max but like they give you know good advice and one thing my mom said was that it kind of feels like a combination of everything that we've done so far. Yeah man I think that's a really nice representative. I know you mentioned Jamie McIntyre there and you're supporting him. How how did that come about? How did that work come about with him? So then I've been now on goalway for the last like six years and worries are going man and moved up to goalway as well for college. I had kind of always known of Jamie through TikTok and then also just like

7:17through college and I think he knew that I was also a singer and we kind of just always had like a our respect for each other. The first story that he was going on I think he just seen that we were trying our best you know. He just kind of seen that we were also a couple of lads who really wanted to get into the original music scene. He was going very well for him and he was just sound enough to give us an opportunity you know. So there were three tours in the vest mates by the feel of it you know. So it's all just kind of a very one little opportunity and just kind of being open to letting other people have a bit of crack as well you know. I think it also goes back to with Jamie that we did the just after all goalway town was released. He got the support software Brad Heide and then Brad Heide had a competition for like another support I think it was two that could get us and we also went to we got it too. He and it was just me and Joe at the time and yeah ourselves were nowhere. Oh there was no bad. It was very funny but Jamie was sound to

8:18us then and he that was our first like proper time actually meeting in like a music scene and yeah he kind of just I think he liked this. Yeah just being sad. Yeah like I think you know there's a lot of ego in the music industry you know. So I think just by being a regular person you couldn't get more opportunities than you think. And I suppose talking about opportunities. What has been a a little bit of a career highlight for you guys so far? For me personally terror drove getting to the viral top 50. It's just like the first song that I property wrote when I was like oh that's mental like what happened and we were over in the UK when it happened too so it all felt very really like really crazy for that like a three or four hour visit. Yeah it just released and he isn't getting to do these shows. I don't know if I would say there's like one standout. I think it's all been like massive like accumulation of just really cool experiences like last year we went out to Inishmore and we played we played a pub gig out there and it was just the best crack I've ever had. And then in the last couple of months we've done a couple gigs in my hometown

9:23which I just like genuinely never thought I would do. I like literally was a very small place and I was always very afraid of what people would think but like going back and getting a really really good reception like it's just something I didn't think would happen. Yeah it's been a lot of accumulations of different things that make you feel good rather than just one kind of specific moment that is standard out but like yeah just being able to do this is just a crack. Yeah no I think it's literally the sold out tour was incredible. I think the best feeling is the people just singing the songs back to you and not even the songs like the guitariffs. It's like that's one of those kind of like oh this is real moments when we were in Dublin that was a really good crowd. The goal it crowds was incredible so although we're both sold out and the two other shows were just really really good fun. So being able to take the music around the place and have people singing it back to you I think is the highlight. Finally what does the rest of 2026 look like for you guys? Is there anything exciting coming up over the next couple of months that you can tell us about? I think we've recovered a couple of things lined up for

10:23the summer that we can't really sing. Yeah I think it's a little bit closer as well. Yeah that's always just such a classic thing to say and we're like we just don't want to get in trouble but you're saying some like we shouldn't be saying but yeah I think our hope is to definitely just try to guess some festival slots this year I think that one. That's a dream right here. Buy your ticket okay this is buy your festival tickets and we might see you like obviously playing solo tours like that is and a whole different thing but I think our goal even just getting into this was free festival. Yeah I'd love to play a couple of festivals. I've never been to a festival as like a sort of ponder I guess. So if the first festival I get to is on stage I'll be up to you because anybody don't have to pay for it. And I was finally one more thing where can people find you guys on social media if they're looking to stay up to date with everything and maybe catch the news that's coming out in the next couple of months. You can catch us on

11:24everything around Instagram, TikTok, Spotify, it's growth, it's about GROEV, underscoring music, just to confuse everything. Yeah just to make it really hard to find us.