I had arranged to meet Daragh before the start of the
world cup qualifier between Ireland and Germany. Once we got talking the
conversation flowed and I missed the match which in fairness was just as well
as the Germans thrashed us six goals to one on the night.
Tom; So,
thanks Darragh for coming along, can I just ask you about your album “On the
Turn” it has just been re-released. So,
how does it feel second time around?
Darragh; Yeah, it feels like a complete
surprise because I only found out a couple of weeks ago. I own a record store
as well and it was only from a guy that Willie at the record store deals with
that told us this and he said you must be delighted about the album coming out
and I was there saying, what are you talking about? The live album, you mean? Because we have recorded a live album and he
was there no, the two albums and I said like this is the first I have heard of
it and I said you know your bullshitting. I don’t think that’s possible and we
had tried to buy the album, both albums from Mercury and we had just spent about a half a million on it, so we were kind
of at the time up to our neck in it as a band.
Tom; That must have been difficult?
Darragh; There
were two labels that wanted to sign us at the time and came to see us
supporting Placebo who, the first night, we blew away and the second night they
wouldn’t give us the PA in Belfast but
anyway they came to see us but they couldn’t afford the album. They wanted the
album and had Mercury sold that album we would have kept functioning as a band
and moved straight to the States, everything was pretty much in place to do
that, so I would be curious to see how much it was sold for now.
Tom; Would you hazard a guess?
Darragh; I
think it was about a hundred grand sterling put on the table for the album but
I presume the record label, maybe wrote it off and perhaps there is a fifteen
year thing or twenty year thing or something that it’s available now again. I
don’t know, but Battle rang the guy the other day and no he emailed the guy and
he said no this is way too complicated for an email, give me a call and I will
go through the whole thing with you. He didn’t get to call yet because he is as
busy as I am and has had a new baby and he is on the radio, so we don’t have a
clue of the background to it just talking to Willie in the record store. They
seem to be a decent enough label like the work they do on back catalogue stuff
it’s not like just kind of cashing in label, they do still push it so I don’t
know, it’s a bit of a weird one.
Tom; Yeah, because it was a very influential album at the time.
Darragh; It was
yeah, there was a big build up to it and even touring wise we would have sold
out maybe five, six hundred seat capacity in every town in England on the last
tour before everything and everyone cracked up.
It didn’t get any kind of promotion from ourselves or the label it
literally just was put on the shelf to fulfil the contract and the plug was
pulled and we spent so much time. We spent two years writing the album and
between partying in a house in Wexford that we rented and going to LA and
everything else then we came back and it was the wrong time of year and we had
to wait another six months so it took about two years by the time it got to be
released. All the people that had been with us five years previous, working on
the album “Kerbdog” had kind of moved on or been fired or just basically the
background of people in the label for us wasn’t there anymore.
Tom; So the album suffered as a result?
Darragh; It was
a bit of a casualty and accountants just looked at the bottom line and that was
it you know so it was a bit of a weird one. It was a bit disappointing to say
the least but I think a lot of it is like Thin Lizzy, that we were just talking
about if people still want more and it can’t be got you do get a real hardcore
fan base which is why I think we can still come out of the blue and we can go
to London and sell out “The Garage” and do whatever we do, I mean you wouldn’t
do it every night of the week but we can still do it, which is great. And it’s a good kind of indication as well of
the hard work you know but there is definitely that album was just cut short
from a tour that had eighteen months of touring left in it or two years of us
to tour it which never happened and then it was just pulled and that was that
you know. One of those things!
Tom; Yeah, definitely. So Daragh,
I want to go back to the beginning and how did you get started in
drumming? Where did it all begin?
Darragh; It
began one day when I was listening to Back in Black my brother’s AC/ DC album
and this is the absolute truth, I was listening to Hells Bells and it just
sounded like a ride cymbal coming in. I was obsessed with music anyway, the
likes of Talking Heads and stuff and the rhythm in Talking Heads and what I
thought at the time was drums but it was a full separate percussionist at the
side. So I was obsessed with bands like
that, I mean The Ants and Talking Heads would have gotten me into drums and got
a rhythm first but then The Police as
well. The Police, I think got the whole world nearly into drums. But how it started, how it actually
physically started was I was listening to Hells Bells and I was listening to
the ride cymbal coming in and I was thinking I could actually do that and it
sounds massive and it’s probably a lesson that I should have learned then that
as in less is more and that it took me about ten years until I met Garret
Richardson to have that drilled into my head that less is more and it really is
when it comes to drums. But anyway so I
was listening to Hells Bells and I went outside of my house in Sycamores where
Cormac and myself would have grown up and I found a purse with sixty euro or
sixty pounds in it and Billy the guitarist, his brother was selling a drum kit
for sixty pounds so I just asked my neighbour did anyone own the purse and I
stopped there. I didn’t bother with the local shop or the priest or whatever
and I just went up to Billy’s brother and went, there you go so I just had a
new drum kit in the space of about an hour.
Tom; Wow, that was fate.
Darragh; Ah, it
was just a weird thing I probably shouldn’t have bothered with the fucken
thing!
Tom; I’m glad you did. So ok, that’s how you got started. What was your
first band?
Darragh; I
played a gig about three weeks later in April I think the fourteenth, I think
it was in Henderson’s Bar in Kilkenny which would have been a kind of an
earlier version of the New Park Inn where Kerbdog would have started and Therapy? and all the
really good gigs that were here. The crowd that went to the Newpark used to go
to Henderson’s till the owner got pissed off one day and kind of shut us down
but the first gig would have been about three weeks later playing mostly Rory
Gallagher, Thin Lizzy mostly Irish stuff actually because the lead guitarist
was a very Celtic type chap, you know.
Tom; So what happened after that?
Darragh; I
played with a few dodgy school bands for a while and then got into a cover band
with Battle and Fennelly and another guy
Declan Meehan who would be Willies brother that I own the record shop with. It’s
all very incestuous down here you know .
But the four of us would have done a lot of Sonic Youth, Basement
3, Ride, really Indie shoe-gazing stuff
but I would have been leathering the shit out of the drums because I came from
a rock band and the kind of low production of the indie stuff, that never did
it for me so we used to get kind of a little bit pissed and I was trying to get off with chicks you
know yourself. Then Battle and myself were getting into heavier music and then
he rang me one night, we were going out to the rugby club and disco or club at
the time and we used stack up on a few flagons of cider and get blind drunk and
go out to this place and never even remember coming back, but that was our kind
of weekly thing when you are seventeen, eighteen. We were going out one night
and Battle called me up and he says you have to listen to this album and we
have to just start fresh and make a new band that is based around this album
and it was Fudgetunnel, which are full of these mad offbeat’s and I was blown
away by it and of I went that’s where all those offbeat, base-rift stuff
started from. That came from Fudgetunnel.
And then ironically we ended up recording the first album with Jack and
Dino in Rockfield in Wales and Sepeltura were in the other studio and he was
another. probably the best drummer out there but Sepeltura’s manager was a girl
what was her name?, something Newport but anyway it was Alex Newports mother,
Alex Newport was the singer in Fudgetunnel so Fudgetunnel were down at the
studio a good bit when we were recording and I was completely star struck and
kind of had the fears as well because they were going to suspect some of the
off beats and because they were literally in and we were going on about yeah
yeah about Fudgetunnel and next thing they arrived because we were telling
Sepeltura about this band Fudgetunnel and it turns out Max was going out with
his mother and it was just so anyway, they ended up in the studio and the
drummer was like, nice offbeat man and I was like yeah I know it’s yours, so
that was a really funny moment of starting to play drums and kind of first
recordings and kind of not only meeting your absolute direct peer that you
robbed stuff off but him sitting in the studio while you are listening back to
it, so it was all very bizarre.
Tom; Wow that’s excellent.
Darragh; It was
great times you know.
Tom; So Darragh, who else would have been an influence around that time?
Darragh; Well,
if I was to rewind back to when I started I would have had just the headphones
on and a mixture of The Police and Iron Maiden, a lot of Rolling Stones on my
headphones and Thin Lizzy as well so they would have been who I would have
drawn early influences from but once I got into really heavy rock like that,
probably my biggest influence as a drummer would have been John Stanier, from
Helmet. He is just unbelievable, another band that we got the pleasure to tour
with. We toured Europe with them and every single night like Battle was as
obsessed with them as I was so the two of us used to stand behind him every
night, looking at him, he was just phenomenal, he is like a robot you know, but
really nice guys as well.
Tom; So, starting out what kit were you using?
Darragh; Drum
kit? I can’t remember what it was
called, it was orange and it was so ganky that I took off all the lugs with a
view to actually doing something with it, spraying it black or doing something
with it because it was horrible. It was a bit jazzplug, showband and I was
obviously a cool heavy metaller at the time and it didn’t wash with me at all,
so when I took off the outer coating there was a silver at the other side of
the orange and I said feck it I will just reverse it so then I had a pretty
cool silver kit. So that was class but
then I got a set of paralett sports, that was my first kit so that was my first
proper kit. Then I got a Tama Granstar which is a birch kit with loads of attack
on it. That was the kit when we got signed and it’s the kit I still use because
I love the deep shallows. Its only good live, its crap in the studio but I
would have had a Yamaha kit a Yamaha maple custom I got during the Wilt days.
It sounded so good and when we finished I kind of thought I would never drum
again because I had enough of everything and I gave it away for a nominal fee
to a chap who could have really done with it, put it that way and I kind of got
it under an endorsement anyway just kind of like, you know, so I said I would
keep the other kit out of sentimental value while the Yamaha kit sounded an
awful lot better.
Tom; When recording what drum-kit did you use?
Darragh; I used
the Tama kit to record the first album and then I’m endorsed by Zildjian so
they do phenomenally good cymbals so thankfully I used them before I was
endorsed by them. It was actually Fyfe from Therapy? that got me that
endorsement.
Tom; That must have been brilliant?
Darragh; Yeah, we were supporting them in Brixton
academy and he said make sure you get down early and see Darragh, he is just one
of those lads who will look out for you.
So the second album we had a vintage Gretch kit which was just gorgeous,
yeah, we rented it out in Los Angeles. Just the sound of it was ridiculous and
it was really after playing that kit that when I came back I had to get a maple
kit you know because it was just and even the lads would notice. Though just
they wouldn’t really care you know, but Jack and Dino, on the first album we were
talking about kits and we said no it doesn’t matter as long as you hit any drum
hard enough, it will sound good enough and that was his theory. It kind of
works you know but it was still probably early days for me with recording. I
probably should have spent more time on checking out different skins and tuning
and all that kind of stuff. I was a little bit green going into do that album
you know with the finer details we knew what we wanted to do musically but just
there are a lot of the things we could have prepared for more including drums
that would have maybe saved time.
Tom; Stick wise what were you using?
Darragh; Stick
wise, I can’t remember at the start I had Zildjian sticks maybe 2b or 5bs, I
can’t remember and I basically got my own stick made based on them but a bit
longer and where it tapers off to the plastic bit at the top, a bit thicker so
there is more swing in it. My drum tech JJ used to laugh at me or if like my
drumsticks weren’t around he would go, “did anyone see Darragh's poles”, you know? Because they were friggen massive, they were
absolutely huge, but they were deadly. They were deadly fun like you know you
would get some craic out of them. But
for me it was all about not being loud enough. I could not be fucken loud
enough. I used go through three to four cymbals a week.
Tom; Wow, that’s impressive.
Darragh; I remember we were doing the Sally
video or down in Camden Lough and we had been touring a good bit so I had
stacks of cymbals coming and going the whole time because I kept breaking them
all the time, smashing the place with cymbals and Battle, (we were set up doing
this video) kind of went to jump back with his guitar so he fell over the high
hat stand and the high hat stand hit a cobble stone on the ground which put an
impression of like the incredible hulk had played so there was this perfect
dent on the two cymbals so I sent them back and then Zildjian sent me out a
diagram of how to hit a cymbal because that was just the straw that broke the
camel’s back. I had gone through so much stuff that they eventually just said
ah fuck this, send this idiot a sheet of paper on how to hit a cymbal” because
I was probably breaking more than anyone else at the time you know but I do
love my cymbal. It was all like a twenty four inch crash ride it was such a
part of our sound and I can’t get one now I can’t get it, it’s only twenty two
and I have a twenty two and it’s just every time I play it I end up going back
to the actual ride and playing that harder just to get the same buzz of it yeah. And again it was seeing the likes of Fyfe and
John Stanier and seeing the size of what they were using because sometimes you
don’t really pick up sizes when you see a music video when you actually stand
beside the kit and you see this twenty four inch and then like your sixteen or
eighteen sounds like a little slash you know because these big cymbals just
fill the room.
Tom; Ok, very good; When you were recording songs or playing live, did
you have 100% control over what you played?
Darragh; Absolutely 100%, I would have wrote a
lot of music with Cormac anyway. A
lot of the nicer grooves would come from Battle’s rifts anyway because we would
work out timing together and then Fennelly would add the bass after that,
that’s the way songs were constructed, so it was always an intricate part of
it, it was always kind of a drum driven kind of a thing, I think probably
Battles favourite bands were the same, they were the likes of Therapy?, Helmet,
Fudge Tunnel they were all driven by strong drummers with offbeat’s and all that
kind of stuff..
Tom; When you were recording did you feel you had something special?
Darragh; The
first album, like every single, Kerbdog was kind of ahead of its time. We
probably recorded the first album too soon and we were probably signed too
soon. The album especially the second album was ahead of its time when it was
released. I mean it would do really well
now you know like fifteen years later and there is a lot of people like even
including the likes of Biffy Clyro that would have cited us as an
influence. But no, I mean the first album
bizarrely we went to record it and I would say we recorded it too early we went
to record it with no lyrics so there is a lot of parts where rolls come in and they shouldn’t and
Cormac starts singing you know and there was a lot of times when he was writing
the lyrics and we were actually recording and he was coming up with a melody
that we would kind of come back and say oh no fuck we can’t put that there
because that has got to go there and we are like oh right yeah. Yeah, so there are a few little bits and you
would probably notice if you listen back to the album where there just
shouldn’t be a roll and there is but we went in with no vocals or melody or
anything and it was just backing tracks, which is again why maybe we shouldn’t
be signing so soon.
Tom; Ok,so you got signed very early?
Darragh; We
got signed on six songs. Battle played a few rifts and kind of convinced that
we would have another four or five songs but even at practise when it came out
and he came to see a gig in Kilkenny and we prasticed so loud that he had to
stand outside the house that we practised in and look in the window you know
that’s how loud we were. We just couldn’t hit stuff hard enough.
Tom; Darragh, if you were putting
together a time capsule and had to enclose three of your own favourite songs
that best represent your style of
drumming, what would they be?
Darragh; “On
the Turn”,” Severed” and” Inseminator” I think the demo version of “The
Inseminator” is an awful lot better.
Tom; Anything else?
Darragh; Yeah,
on the first album I like Cleaver, I like Cleaver yeah because that’s a song
that I kind of, my approach to drums at the time was do the opposite to what
you think you should do, so the beats are all back to front and everything.
Tom; When you are playing songs now,
do you approach them differently?
Darragh; Exactly
the same way, because we hadn’t played in a long time after we split and Battle
came up with a few little changes for different things and we were there like
why the fuck are you doing that? And, he is like oh I just thought I would
change it and we were there like why would you change it that’s random and like
we won’t know what you’re doing and we just kind of agreed we wouldn’t and just
kind of left it as it is mostly because we only get an hour or two, like we are
practising for an hour and that’s for all the upcoming shows and like we try
to. We practised last week and the usual thing is we go in and look how broken
Fennelly's amp is for like a half of the hour and then try a few things and so
then we would have two hours in total to practice so that’s why you don’t
really get the time.
Tom; To change things around?
Darragh; Yeah,
yeah I would have to say that mentally I would approach it differently and like
I would approach it a lot more relaxed. I used to be very wound up when I was
practicing before like you know there was a lot of pressure on us so you’re
getting up on stage and your kind of stiff where now, I would just get on stage
and fuck it, just go for it.
Tom; Do you still enjoy it?
Darragh; Enjoy
it, yeah which I suppose is a thing that comes with age but when you’re a
teenager, teenagers are wound up anyway and early twenty something’s are wound
up and you think every gig is pivotal and you know that kind of stuff. I don’t know we were all probably a little
bit stressed and tight so like the best gig we ever did was probably the first
and am the first kind of return gig I suppose for want of a better word and we
went in and we just blew the place apart because we were doing it for the same
reason we did the earlier gigs, like in the Pumphouse here or in the Newark Inn
just to have fun and blow everyone away like that was our main thing, that is
all we wanted to do. That’s all we wanted
to do like was blow other bands away and blow our friends away like and maybe
get a cheque if you were lucky like.
Tom; Just enjoy yourself!
Darragh; Yeah, Just enjoy it – exactly yeah.
Now we all have partners, wives so we don’t need to go, we are just going for
the fun now but now it is a good catch up for us for a great buzz just to catch
up on everyone’s lives and like I mean
Cormac and myself would have seen each other every day since we were nine years
of age up to and all the way through college and Kerbdog everything then we all
just split to different parts of the
country so its ah it’s something we miss so it’s a great catch up and then we
would see some of our crew as well. We are probably turning into UB40 or
something I don’t know at this stage but
we just do it for the craic.
Tom; That’s excellent Darragh, apart
from the live album is there any possibility of another album in the works?
Darragh; If it
was down to me there would be yeah and I know the boys will come around and am
I know yeah there will be something sometime I am convinced of it. But am, I
don’t know like we had a discussion about it and we kind of felt at the time
that we don’t really have anything to
say anymore so we will probably be shit like you know and we don’t want that to
happen you know because I think it would be very good. I think if you could get
the time you know, the amount of time that was put into those albums’ like the
first album was Battle and myself out in Billy’s farmyard house, out the back
for four months and Billy would come in, in the evenings and Fennelly would
come also after work for like four months all day every day and like we can’t
get an hour these days to practice. So,
I have kind of a cunning plan with the boys because you know I wanted to release
a live album, like a live acoustic album and am with a second live plugged in
album so I booked a venue here, The Set which is a fantastic venue and we were
going to have to set up acoustic gear and then a full set up behind and ah we
were going to do a new song at that which was kind of my ploy with the guys for
them to get feedback from people to make
them realise that people would actually really like it. So we went to talk about this and again we
got an hour’s practice and we were looking at Fennelly's broken amp for half an
hour so we said we better not try any of this or we will fuck it up so we went
and we just did a gig and we had a great night and that was it you know.
Tom; Excellent and after that?
Darragh; So
then am, when we were in Bristol this guy kind of emailed me before hand and
said can I record you and I just thought you know, mentalist but I just said
grand whatever, but he turns up anyway with all his extremely expensive gear
and his assistant engineer and hardly even spoke he was so professional and the
job he did on it was just phenomenal you know. It blew me away. I heard three
of the tracks mixed so far. It was
absolutely massive and it was one of those gigs because we did a festival in
Sligo in the Summer and it was shit. It was just absolutely shit, it was just
disjointed and we were kind of half pissed. We were all far away from each
other there was no one at the festival anyway so it was just crap we kind of
had the fear and then we did this gig in Bristol through a friend of mine and
it was just one of those gigs. It just erupted and it just went off. It sold
out in a day to start with so the people really wanted to enjoy themselves.
Tom; So they were there to listen to
yeah!
Darragh; You
could see, you could feel it in the venue you know. You can feel it if someone
touches the guitar, to tune the guitar and the whole place cheers and you just
know it’s going to go off and so we just busted into On the Turn and we played
the best gig of our entire lives. It was phenomenal and that was the one we
recorded. They weren’t always like that,
they would be about fifty- fifty and some nights we would be really
sloppy and some nights we wouldn’t you know, we weren’t a meticulously tight
band but when it clicked it was usually pretty good and so that’s about it on
the recording front, that’s about all we have done but I think that will get
people kind of thinking as well you know but it’s just a time thing you know
Cormac is on the radio, he has a new baby I have got my own kids and business
and Fennelly's in Helsinki two weeks of the month you know he comes back then,
he has to do the family thing so it’s just hard.
Tom; Do you find it difficult to get
time for everything now?
Darragh; I think it’s when we went from having
no kids, to like three of us having babies in about three years. So it’s just like all we talk about is babies
and you know it’s not Fudgetunnel or heavy metal, you know what I mean. So I think when all of that settles down and
it will, I think we will be freed up a little bit. I would say something will
happen then you know if it’s down to me. I will try and make it happen
anyway.
Tom; And what about the other band
members?
Darragh; I
know Cormac has the fear about it because what’s there is quite good so you don’t
want to taint it. It would be awful to do a shit album, but if it was shit you
know, we wouldn’t release it but we have been asked. There are a bunch of
records labels that have asked us
Tom; Wow, that’s great!
Darragh; Yeah,
like there is nearly a label that has asked us every year just to do stuff but
I suppose Kerbdog ended so badly. Anyway, it ended so bad that you wouldn’t
just jump in the band you know like you really would just do it piecemeal, at
your own time..
Tom; Exactly, just to be sure?
Darragh; Yeah,
yeah
Tom; Excellent, can I just ask Darragh
if someone is starting out playing drums what advice do you give them, what are
the important things?
Darragh; Playing
drums, I don’t know. I am a bad person to ask that because I never got lessons
and I never did any of that kind of stuff and later on I kind of well, It was
kind of my attitude at the time anyway it was kind of fuck everything, I am
seventeen and I know everything you know. But there were a few things after
like, how to balance a stick and stuff like that you know that would have made
life easier so there are some basics. The bit of advice I would give is that
less is more, less is definitely more. Don’t bother with a million rolls, do
maybe one and they will be far bigger.
Tom; Yeah, anything else?
Darragh; If you have got a million drums, get
rid of most of them, just leave one of two toms you know. Don’t get carried away with gear, just try
and listen to the song and try and step out of your actual task at hand. Try and
fit in with the song which I only learned to do maybe after the second album
and if you are listening to the song the rest will happen under you and even
more will happen under you and you are always going to be prepared a few bars
earlier than if you weren’t listening to your song, you were just doing your
beat, you know what I mean. Probably there is a bit more advice like, practice
a good bit which is something I never ever did, also get a few Police albums or
you know albums that are hard to play and just put on the headphones and just play them start to finish. Then put
something different on, a completely different band and you know whatever you
get a buzz off you know, go see Metallica and Therapy? and bands like that
actually go and see as many good live
bands. That would probably be the best advice. I suppose if you are a signed up
and kind of a small band that is going to get big try and think about how stuff
is going to sound like through a PA. You know I learned from Helmet like you
know a subtle stop maybe on snare and a snare tom can sound like enormous,
where as if you just did it in a shed it
wouldn’t really translate but with the right PA and the right sub you have to
account for that as you go along. That’s
why bigger bands get so much better when they get bigger a lot of the time and
you know drummers get a lot better because you can feel the stuff a lot more.
But I think it’s just practice away.
Tom; Ok. I mentioned before that there
was such a scene here in Kilkenny. There would have been yourselves, My little
Funhouse, Engine Alley.
Darragh; Yeah, it was brilliant.
Tom; How did that come about?
Darragh; It
was all just random. I won’t brag, but eh like Kerbdog would have been the
scene, we would have been the buzz. There was another bunch of bands around the
same size then but we had a group and kind of everyone supported each
other. It’s not like now, I just look at
Kilkenny and I just cringe.
Tom; What do you mean?
Darragh; You know there are bands and they are
all just fucken light weights and half arsed. They put up a thing on face book
and get their friends to pat them on the back all that it’s horrible, it’s
scary that they don’t actually get out and create a scene and fill venues and
get a buzz going and have people wrecking the place. You know that’s what rock music is about you
know it’s all gone a bit safe, I don’t know back then it was am we probably
came from the Therapy? school of thought, of kind of having as good a live show
as possible and have it rammed and just have it kind of electric and like
people going fucken nuts and a lot of alcohol involved and just mayhem. Mayhem,
just teenage mayhem which is what it’s all about, you know. That was our angle. Engine Alley, they kind
of did their own thing. We never kind of crossed paths, they lived in Dublin I
would have been in school with Canice and Eamonn but the band themselves lived
in Dublin and kind of came about in Dublin and everything else. My Little
Funhouse, kind were just a non entity they were a few kids from down the road
who in our opinion were shite and same with everyone else in the town they
couldn’t fill two or three people in a pub like. I remember like ah and I like them all I get
on really well with them and I spent a lot of good times with them but if I was
to be really honest about that time I just thought they were just this shit
glam band that you know this glam rock group we used just call them glam. I
don’t know what it was, it wasn’t edgy enough it wasn’t Fudge Tunnel. It wasn’t
hardcore, it just kind of bored me anyway.
And ah I remember I was doing some poxy project and where it was my
first year in college and I was doing some marketing project and the computer
just fecken crashed and I had done about three days of this fucken thing and
anyway I just lost it all so I was just sitting there looking at the screen and
I was utterly depressed and I turned on Nighthawks, do you remember Nighthawks?
Tom; I do. Yeah!
Darragh; And
Tom Zutaut was on and he was saying that he was signing this band from Kilkenny
called My Little Funhouse and I’m there like, “am I fucken hearing this shit
like? Because they couldn’t get two
people in a pub like and here’s us stuffing places out and so next thing Battle
is on the phone and he said, “did you hear this shit?” and I said yeah for fuck sake what’s going on
like and that following Saturday night they had their showcase for Tom Zutaut in a pub in town and
like no one went and the entire town was over in the Newtown Park Inn watching
us you know so it kind of then I don’t know what happened after that but we
just sent off a load of demos on Fyfe from Therapy?’s advice and we got a huge
response. We had twenty two labels
after us or at least interested in us so what we did was we split them. We did
two gigs in The Pump House we split them into two because we literally wouldn’t have been able
to deal with that many labels which it’s ridiculous like looking back and the
guy actually Tom Zutaut came to the gig
the guy he signed bands for Geffen at the time he signed Guns & Roses and
all this but just regarding the limo, the limo is screaming up outside The Pump
House and we were just utterly embarrassed
because that is what we would have been against, all this shite and next
thing he came in anyway and one of our friends Ciaran Scott, he is out in
Australia now . He staged the guy, now
if you picture this gig and there were peoples’ feet on the ceiling and there
were lights coming down and it would hold two hundred and there was about four
hundred in there and everyone was going mental and Tom Zutaut arrived in anyway
and my big friend just stage dived on top of him and he got taken, headed off
and he goes “nah who needs another Nirvana anyway” and he just stormed out and
he screamed up town in his limo. But you know a lot of the other bands or a lot
of the other labels started bidding on us and wanted us to do stuff and that
kind of thing.
Tom; Wow, that’s excellent!
Darragh; Yeah so it was a really buzzy thing
but then I mean fast forward till another five years until we were doing the
“On the Turn” album we ended up living in Los Angeles and living in the same
apartment as My little Funhouse which is where I got to know Graham (Hopkins)
because Graham and myself had finished our drums in whatever it was, five days
and we just bonded and got on really well and we used to just drive around LA
the whole time and party for the next three or four months you know.
Tom; Jesus, yeah?
Darragh; So,
it was a phenomenally good time but that’s how I got to know My Little Funhouse over there even though I
grew up about a hundred yards away from the singer but we would never have had
anything in common even though there was
only a year in the difference but they were just Guns & Roses and we were
Metallica and that was it. We just had
no interest in the music and you know we used to just play some of the songs at
practice just to have a laugh, you know to take the piss. There was another band that got signed as
well Kaydee which were kind of a pop band. Yeah there is a girl, do you know
Tara Blaise?
Tom; I know the name,
yeah.
Darragh; She would have been the singer on it,
so there were actually four local bands that got signed within a relatively
short period you know, which is a lot for a town of twenty thousand people.
Tom; It is
yeah because I mean there was a kind of a scene happening at that stage?
Darragh; There was yeah and I would say a lot
of people were kind of looking here just because some other bands got signed
you know.
Tom; So how did Kerbdog
get signed?
Darragh;
As it turns out the guy who signed us a guy called Paul Flanagan from
Mercury or Phonogram. At the time he was
down in Cork and he came up here because everyone else was coming up here. He had a kind of an Irish scout and he asked
the scout was there anything going on in Ireland and the scout said well the
world and their dog is up in Kilkenny looking at this band Kerbdog, so he said
fuck it he would just spin up and see he was looking at some band the night
before in Cork and he came in and he went fuck!
He said if ye can replicate this stuff anywhere else then ye are
laughing because you know he walked into that gig with the feet on the ceiling
and the lights coming down and you know he was just blown away like.
Tom; Excellent, I just
want to ask, in your opinion, British drummers, American drummers what’s the
differences that makes Irish drummers so unique?
Darragh;
Ah, I don’t know? I have a few theories.
American drummers anyway are much better because they have to try an
awful lot harder because they have a bigger pool of talent to get out of and
Americans really appreciate that big fat type of metal when it comes to rock
that’s lost especially in England. They
are only really getting around to the fact that of getting a type of metal now
they never really got it and we just had to have American producers because
they got that type of thing, that type of rock music and Irish drummers, I just
don’t know why they are so unique? You
know a lot of them are very different to each other but I suppose because there
is no major scene, it’s very cyclical here and there is no major big scene all
the time you know. But I don’t know,
English drummers don’t really do it for
me – not many of them anyway you know.
I couldn’t answer that to be honest. I don’t know what makes us unique
probably because we get away with murder .
Like, I have played at some festivals and you know and I have looked at
guys and gone you know oh for fuck sake what am I doing here like you know as
time went on I didn’t feel it as much but at the start like we are all like
what the fuck are we doing here? At the
start we did feel a bit like what the fuck. It did feel a bit alien because the
level of bands was but then at the time it wasn’t we should have appreciated that
a bit more. It was more about the vibe with the band and the songs rather than
the technical and perfections or whatever and all, but as we went on it got
better and better you know.
Tom; Was Kerbdog a bit
naive in the beginning?
Darragh;
Probably a little bit. We got signed a little bit early you know because the
first album we did. We kind of had to slog it out you know.
Tom; Darragh, the Irish
drummers you mentioned, the likes of Fyfe Ewing and Graham Hopkins, would there
be anyone else that would have been an influence to you?
Darragh;
Not an influence I suppose. Fyfe would have been a huge influence for me,
absolutely huge, and Brian Downey would have been a massive influence. I would have watched his videos. I suppose
the closest thing there was to live. I played the Rainbow gig over and over
until the tape stretched. I was kind of, I loved the band anyway and we toured
with “The Almighty”, Ricky Warwick. Now
he is singing with Thin Lizzy so it’s amazing how things come around and Fyfe
definitely, when I saw Fyfe I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. I think the
last time I saw him was in the New Park Inn. It was a long skinny venue kind of
like where we are here maybe about twenty foot by about forty or fifty foot
long and there was just a tunnel of people and that’s all you could see like a
tunnel of bodies and heads and arms and people standing on each other just to
try and see him so I think he was just doing his thing and it was so fucken
cool and left handed drummers are always better I don’t know why they are they
just are. They are always just that little bit better.
Tom; Is there any reason
for that?
Darragh;
I don’t know?
Tom; Is it just balance
or something?
Darragh;
I don’t know, but they are just better and he was so much better. He blew me
out of my boots straight off and then it was the like listening to Fudge Tunnel
and stuff after that but Irish drummers it was like definitely Fyfe. Fyfe is the man, but there is a guy called
Harvey from Wexford who I think is probably the better probably the best in the
country you know. Probably, would give Brian Downey a run for his money you
know. He is a proper hard hitter and he played in a band called Imodium and
they have since split but they probably I thought, they were much better than
Kerbdog and doing a similar kind of thing.
Like, I remember seeing him one night and just being blown out of my
boots and they kind of split then, so I asked Doireann the singer to come and
play the guitar with Wilt you know and I kind of stayed in touch with him for a
long time. I actually play with another band at the moment” Souls” its very,
very like Kerbdog really and really, really heavy. I asked him to join but just he couldn’t. He
was working in Dublin and with night
time practices and he doesn’t drive and all that kind of stuff so he couldn’t
do that, but no as regards Irish drummers, Fyfe is the man.
Tom; Ok,really!
Darragh; Yeah definitely, Fyfe and Brian Downey
you would probably hear the same from every drummer you interview as well.
Larry Mullins I like as well, but I never liked him really much so I never
really appreciated him until the making of one of the albums and it was just
him doing a drum pattern on his own and I thought, Jesus ok I get it now,
because I always thought it was basic enough stuff but he is a class act and yeah,
he is deadly. There is a guy actually,
there is one guy who was a huge influence on me before any of those other guys
and it was a drummer called John Mc Cormack. He played with Belsonic Sound from
Cork.
Tom; What kind of
influence did he have on you?
He
was like I learned a lot of my early drumming from him. The band used to come
and play here in Henderson’s and I would go and I would watch him from start to
finish. I loved the band at the time
because I was listening to ‘The Police and they had a lot of reggae grooves and
that kind of stuff and he was so good.
He would probably be one of my favourite Irish drummers as well.
Tom; Do you still keep
in touch?
Darragh;
Ah yeah bizarrely I met him recently at the back of this place, drinking
actually. He is a sound engineer now and he’s based in London and he does a lot
of really big tours like, huge tours you know but he got into being a sound
engineer after drumming .
Tom; Brilliant, I’ll see
if I can look him up or something.
Darragh; Yeah, John Mac Cormack from Belsonic
Sound. You will find him on Facebook, but Irish drummers yeah, Jesus you should
try and have a chat with him. Yeah, because he is a good lad.
Tom; Do you rather
drumming live or in the studio?
Darragh;
Live, live
Tom; Yeah and why?
Darragh;
Because you can get half pissed and no one knows the difference and personally I just get a buzz off people that
are around and I don’t get caught up in
being perfect you know. It’s about the energy, it’s all about the energy. I
don’t care if there are mistakes in there.
You know sometimes there is sometimes there’s not but you know the
energy is the absolute most important thing. To be able to wind up a crowd and
once that starts happening you know you will just get better and better and you
will play out of your boots and you will actually pull off stuff. You will go
for stuff and pull it off and you will laugh after doing it because it’s
something you couldn’t do at home do you know what I mean, but no definitely
live.
Tom; Do you like
recording?
Darragh;
We had a few good times recording actually, the very first time was funny
because we went in with Metallica ‘The Black Album’ and said to Pat Dunne up in
Sound Studios will you just make it sound like that! We had a two day session and we actually
thought what’s wrong you know and he was kind of laughing but that’s where we
got that really clicky metal sound going right, well it’s something I stuck
with. I love that sound, where it’s like really scooped you know loads of
attack and loads of bottom end.
Tom; Do you find
recording difficult?
Darragh;
The first Kerbdog album, the self titled one was hard work. It was literally
played until the songs were perfect and I personally felt that the demos as out
of time as they were, where so much better and the first album, while the
playing is kind of perfect on it, I feel maybe after say ten hours of drums
that it just feels a little bit yeah its zapped out where as it was a total
different approach with Garett Richardson.
We went over to LA and like Jack was brilliant but he is such a
perfectionist like he would be playing the drums and there would be a fucken
racket and he would come out with the drum key and would give it a tiny little
turn maybe about one percent of a turn and run back into the studio and that’s
what it was like, but that was hard.
Tom; It sounds like you
were frustrated with the process?
Darragh; You know it was frustrating like there
was a few skips that went through skins which wouldn’t be really like me and
there were arguments and there was like ah it was just so fucken tense it was
ridiculous, like it was so hard. It was the hardest thing I have ever done in
my life was record that fucken album.
But with “On the turn” I went over and I kind of had the fear again and
I kind of said to Garrett well there is a way to do it like and he goes oh no
we are going to do it my way and he said what’s that and he said four gos’,
four coffees then four gos’ in a row for each song and that’s it and I was
there but what about? Doesn’t matter and I will fix it, four gos’ and that is
it you know and they fixed it the old
school way there was a few flubs but he got it so right because the energy is
just there. There is a lot of energy on that album and they literally got out
the Stanley knife and the tape and cut the edits and made it perfect like, you
know. Yeah and everyone does it I’m not
ashamed to say it, you know four goes and you know your not going to get it a
hundred percent you know. I could have played it for ten hours and got it absolutely
perfect but it would have been you know but doing that album he set that up
like a live gig and he had an AKPA behind us and like when we were playing he
is like he is nuts anyway, when we were playing he is in jumping around and
like and having his arse out and just pretending he is a rock star to Battle
and all this stuff. It’s just, he just makes it really funny you know and he
just gets the most out of bands. But like yeah I felt that approach suited me
an awful lot better and that’s probably why
I like live music as well because you just go for it. You know you have got one
shot and if you fuck it up, you fuck it up you know.
Tom; Darragh you use an awful lot of energy
live. What do you do to keep yourself in shape and how do you approach that?
Darragh’
At the moment nothing – evidently, but I used to cycle. I used to cycle when I
was actually like a full time professional, between each tour I would just go
on my bike. Get out on the road throw on
some headphones and just cycle and I do like ah I do maybe an hour every
day. I kind of watch what I eat and when
we are on tour bizarrely we would never ever, ever drink like Battle and myself
would have a few drinks and well we would get blind drunk on the last gig of
each tour which was usually London in England anyway because the labels and
promoters will always pick the capital for the last gig because the band would
be tighter after playing for a month or two and that’s where the journalists
would be and everything else so you would have a better chance of pulling off a
good show so now I just have vodka and power bars, but I remember being back
stage at Metallica their manager wanted to manage us but unfortunately his
partner didn’t and they went with another band and he was bringing us around for
a few weeks just kind of showing off like and he brought us to Metallica. We were at Metallica three nights and ah we
met them like you remember the Snakebit tour we were in the Snakebit tour and
it was something else. We were kids like
and this was blown away but I remember saying to Peter Minch their manager, how
does Lars do it like? And he just went
Power bars and I got Power bars because I had never heard of them in my
life and I own a cycle shop as well so I
just get a bunch of Power bars whenever I am playing. Yeah and they do work, like a half an hour
before they like you don’t get that
burning in your shoulders because if you are not used to playing, you get an awful
burning.
Tom; Because of the way
you play I suppose?
Darragh;
Yeah, I play with my arms instead of my wrists.
Tom; You have a huge
amount of energy there you know.
Darragh;
Yeah, so at the moment I am not in shape at all. We have twins at home and my
metabolism is gone. I tried the cycle thing and on two hours sleep a night it’s
just not going to work. My metabolism is just shot like so I need to sort that
out you know and I went on a kind of month training thing for these gigs and it
lasted a day, so that was that. I’ll be
hoping for some kind of divine energy to come from somewhere you know.
Tom; How are the shows
going?
Darragh; The Bristol show was fine, I was
equally as out of shape for that. I have never been as out of shape but I
suppose that is kind of a typical thing for wound out has been bands to come
back.
Tom; I suppose once you
are playing live, the energy it will carry you.
Darragh;
Yeah, it does I suppose, adrenaline kicks in you know, it gives you a boost and
the thing if you are only doing the way we do now as we can only do Saturday
nights because the guys work and everything like that, but if you’re doing like
a one off thing you can kind of overdo it and get away with it. You can bust in
the power bars and worry about the pain in your shoulders the next day, do you
know what I mean? Whereas if you are touring you just kind of watch yourself
you just kind of keep an eye on it, but Wilt was the opposite every night. With
Wilt we were blind drunk but Kerbdog we were never drunk. I was ah like everyone, like especially all
the guys in Kilkenny when we would come back to the pub, was it fucken nuts
lads like and what are you doing? And
we were like we go to a Travel Lodge and have some All Bran do you know the
way. That was the way it was for us you know. It wasn’t as raucous as you think
you know, until Wilt came and that was a different scenario.
Tom; Was that much different
to Kerbdog?
Darragh; Yeah, bored the shit out of me to be
completely honest. I’ll call a spade a
spade, drumming wise, it was just, I was bored you know it was just four fours
and it was all a bit light and just ah it just, I didn’t like it you know. I
like it, you know, hard rock and ah I don’t think anyone else really did either
like I think people respected that we did and all that but, you don’t get
people calling you about Wilt ever you know.
Tom; Do you think it’s
really Kerbdog that do it for a lot of people?
Darragh; Yeah, it is yeah and to be honest Wilt
even the song writing and everything it was always it was a different setup
like I had gotten a job between the two bands so I wasn’t as involved which is
probably what other drummers are like so I couldn’t get off work for one of
them so I had to send a drum track down on an email and they used that on a
computer thing so it was a different approach completely. Like it was different circumstances like we
weren’t bashing out the tunes for four months.
You know it was just really kind of am, none of us really kind of wanted
to run away with the rock band again. It ended so badly previously so we kind
of waited until we got play listed on the BBC and stuff to go you know we
weren’t really doing it up until then and I have a feeling that if “Wilt” had
another album it would have maybe went a bit better and a bit heavier because I
was trying to bring in that influence again. The idea to start trying to make
stuff heavy again, like proper heavy. I got this intro and then Battle was like
and then we will put this after it and I was there ok you know, but it was
clear conflict whereas before, it would have been right and then I will make this
heavier again and so on. But I remember
doing a video for a song when we were out in New York we were on a barge all
day and in a sixties car and one of the guys went out on the barge so I just
got talking to him shooting the breeze like and he was into the deftones and a
lot of the heavy stuff you know. He is
like man I thought that song was going to be really good it started off really
heavy and then just like REM and I’m like fuck yeah I know people start telling
this to me and I was like I know. I was never really comfortable with it. I had some really good parties and some good
times but I would never have any gra to play a Wilt song ever, even though we
did hear it last night. It was just like it ended up being an evening with Kerbdog
so we had Billy and Mick from Wilt and we just had everything just to make it a
bit different and but I would never have
a gra to go and do that stuff, like it wouldn’t fire me up at all.
Tom; I know yeah.
Darragh;
When I played “On the Turn” live or “Severed” and then play a Wilt song it’s
just like being some kind of rhythm keeper in just some regular band or
something, I don’t know. It just doesn’t
really float my boat you know.
Tom; I know that’s fair
enough so yeah.
Darragh;
But then again I think you know Battle in fairness to him was making a
conscious effort to make it different and there was no point you know in going
out to try and be another Kerbdog and we knew with the time constraints we
wouldn’t be able to do another album.” On The Turn” or an album that’s better
than it you know just because of the time that was another angle you know so
basically I would try and get on the radio and go at things from a different
angle.
Tom; And it worked,
yeah.
Darragh;
It did work. We got the first Wilt stuff on to Radio 1 in England which Kerbdog
could never get on and we were b listed till we were sabotaged by another band
for a playlist. They said some nasty stuff about us and Feeders radio programme
claimed we were making some racist slurs against the time Radio 1 so that was
that. They just turned off the switch like and we were all like wearing our
t-shirts in Radio 1 and it was like happy days and it was like ah and we did a
Radio 1 session with a producer, I can’t remember his name but we got on like a
house on fire and brought him out and he is like you know kind of a BBC like a
unions guy and all the rest and we convinced him to come out and we just had a
brilliant time. We really got on well with him and then we heard this stuff,
about a week later. It was just a pure
slur because they Feeder and us were up for the slot on the playlist and their
radio programme made up this so Feeder would get the slot, so that was
that. That was literally the end of Wilt
right there, career over that one, one thing which I don’t know, I hope karma
comes and gets him you know. Because it
wasn’t nice because that playlist was something we would have worked on for
probably ten years or eight years just to get on Radio 1 because in England and
I am fucken delighted that the internet has taken over that. They don’t have
that monopoly anymore that there is
decent rock radio and there is stuff out there you know and there is an
alternative now, but at the time if you don’t get on Radio 1 you don’t do
anything but if you do you do I mean look at JJ72.
What about JJ72?
Darragh;
They are just straight on to the A list and they are huge you know and we are
scratching our heads going you know what the fuck like. They were good in their
own way you know I think the bass player opened a few doors for them.
Date; Friday 12th October 2012
Location; Kilkenny, Ireland.
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