The ink wasn’t dry on the reviews for David Keenan’s admission anthology afore his arch was off about else, and afresh activity handed us all a two and a seven. “It’s about recalibrating, and adequate the process,” he tells Pat Carty. Portraits: Miguel Ruiz.
Just aback in Dublin afterwards aerial contour American abutment slots with Rodrigo y Gabriela – “it was abundant but it was cool as well. Allotment of me was aback actuality authoritative a blend with paint. Stepping out – aloof me and a guitar – in advanced of four thousand people? What the fuck am I doing?” – David Keenan is about to hop on the promotional carousel for anthology #2, WHAT THEN? Aback Hot Press batten to him afterwards the aboriginal almanac – A Beginner’s Guide To Bravery – he was already planning his escape, his abutting move. Immediately afterward that album’s release, our adolescent hero hightailed it to the burghal of lights for a month.
“I capital to get abroad from acceptable a burlesque on date with braces. I looked out into the army in The Olympia and there was a fella dressed like me and that was the end of that,” he says, authoritative an admirable point.
The appellation of the new anthology was the catechism he was allurement himself, What Then?
“What then? Who am I afterwards this?” he asks himself, again. “It was the end of a cycle. I had to abatement out of adulation with it to abatement in adulation with the action again, as a writer. I didn’t appetite to accomplish Beginner’s Guide, Allotment II. I capital to go to Paris because I consistently capital to go to Paris. I capital to alcohol copious bottles of wine because I consistently capital to do that. I capital to blazon on a typewriter. I capital to get athirst again. I capital to be afraid. I capital to be in a burghal area I didn’t allege the language. I capital to be nobody.”
“I didn’t appetite to be arena ‘James Dean’ for addition two years, or ‘Lawrence of Arcadia’,” he continues. “I can appear aback to that now, but in February of aftermost year the abstraction was to get abroad from it all and to be isolated. A Beginner’s Guide To Bravery was for everybody else, this record’s for me.”
It was a adventurous aesthetic gambit. The accessible move would acquire been to capitalise on what had been achieved.
“It was a kamikaze mission, activity to Paris accepting aloof appear a debut, but it was a all-important Kamikaze mission to get some crisis back.”
The new songs and the new complete were already percolating in his head.
“I consistently acquire songs animadversion about but I never had that continued aeon of isolation, a month, which is a continued time aback you’re in a room.”
We all had a lot of that, which we didn’t see coming, in the months that followed.
“Well I got broiled up in Paris for that,” he credibility out, afore alive aback to his artistic urges. “I was cerebration of this androgynous entity, this feeling, this Joe Soap, the narrator who’s activity to booty me on this journey, booty me by the duke and advance me to this record, like John Berryman’s The Dream Songs. But authority on, Joe Soap is me because I acquire no character anymore. David Keenan is that guy with the braces, he’s gone, so who the fuck are you now? Are you able of added than that?”
“Sonically, I capital it to be absolutely different. I capital a affectionate of ambient malevolence, article brewing beneath the surface, that I feel aback I’m autograph lyrics. I capital to carbon that in complete and that’s area [producer] Jonathon Mooney came in, because he was accomplishing article similar, like Ennio Morricone, with Added Lives. Aaron Steele [percussionist] is the courage of it, it was aloof the three of us in the studio.”
Kennan answers my abutting catechism afore I alike ask it.
“I said to Jonathon, I was accommodating to about-face bodies off with this record, to about-face me on. And, as a by-product of that, you can about-face added bodies on to what you’re doing. We were aggravating to actualize a landscape, ‘The Grave Of Johnny Filth’ is an abstract landscape. I went in afterwards the bandage from the aboriginal almanac or anyone complex with that record, so I could prove article to myself, that I had it in me. I bare to go in with this vision, afterwards any distraction.”
Would it acquire been accessible to accomplish A Beginner’s Guide, Allotment II, could you acquire done it?
“I could have, but it aloof would acquire been cloudburst the ice-cream and handing out the cones.”
Listening to the album, one could adapt some of the lyrics as actuality built-in out of annoyance at the treadmill. There’s allocution of “barking like a little dog” and “you say one affair and I’ll do the other.”
“Frustration at the apple about me, but annoyance at myself,” is how David sees it. “’Bark’ is an affronted song, and it’s acrimony channelled as alienation at the way things are going. But it’s me actuality self-deprecating as well, in a advantageous way because I can backpack all this $.25 about in my arch or I can get it out in a song and afresh I can scream it live. With this record, it’s aloof added honest, it’s added direct. It’s beneath romanticised. It’s the abutting apparatus of my being, spewed out.”
He says beneath romanticised but afresh there’s ‘Grogan’s Druid’, the song that closes the anthology and appearance his grandad speaking. It would assume to be abiding to the affair of ancestors again.
“If you breach bottomward what I’m aggravating to accomplish in the record, and this is alone axiomatic in hindsight, I’m aggravating to academy out all the shadow,” he explains. “It’s redemptive in the average with the brand of ‘Philomena’. There’s a change, it’s this affectionate advancing home, actuality in $.25 and, afterwards that, it’s a advancing home to myself, and ‘Grogan’s Druid’ is absolutely that. For me, it’s aloof a song that I’m singing to myself on the way home, to the end of this record, which was a adventure in itself. By ‘Grogan’s Druid’ I’m not activity ‘here’s a cryptic bulletin to get your arch around’. It is a beautiful, I think, afterpiece because it’s aloof me singing the song. I’ve done the assignment in the blow of the record. I’ve said aggregate that I capital to say, it’s advancing home and finishing with amusement So by the end of the process, ‘what then?’ becomes beneath of like ‘Who the fuck am I?’ and, at the end of ‘Grogan’s Druid’, it’s what then? Accord me added living. It’s an acceptable thing.”
He mentioned acrimony and it’s there in ‘Sentimental Dole’ which appears to be affronted at abounding things.
“It’s acrimony at bolloxology, at sources of trauma,” Keenan confirms. “I advertence de Valera and the Pope and that accord and the accomplished George Floyd affair was blame off. I saw it as a way of channelling systemic acrimony appropriate at that, and additionally the boloxology of politicians in this country who can’t lie beeline in bed and who haven’t got a fucking a aboveboard cartilage in their bodies. It’s spewing acrimony at that, it’s my way of venting. Sentimental dole, accord Joe Soap a brawl of yarn to accumulate them happy. Look at how our artists were advised during the pandemic. It’s apparently me actuality added complete with myself and how I access added people, calling out abuse and boloxology and political tokenism. It’s everywhere.”
There’s a bandage in ‘Hopeful Dystopia’, “We are scum, complete scum, but the butterfly appearance has begun”, which is admirable but I don’t apperceive what he means. Why the babble ‘scum’?
“Because it’s all-embracing aggregate that you are,” he says, with accoutrements spread. “All the ugliness, all the admirable anamorphosis about yourself. In a allusive accord there’s anarchy and there’s calm, and it’s additionally all-embracing the detractors, bodies who begrudge you. It’s an outcry, ‘we are scum, complete scum’, I am absolutely at one with aggregate that I am and aggregate that I was, and the butterfly appearance is advancing and that’s the ‘Hopeful Dystopia’ that I’m talking about. If you don’t acquire a acceptance that things are activity to change for the better, you’re in that fashionable fucking abnegation place, and that’s not advantageous to me.”
I ask about the abundant ‘Peter O’Toole’s Bubbler Stories’. Aboriginal of all the bandage about “tiptoeing appear immortality”, is this added about area he begin himself afterwards almanac #1?
“Tiptoeing appear immortality, bedlam into the wind is throwing off the clothing of expectation. I’m not aggravating to immortalise myself as one of the greats; it’s absolutely abating myself of that. And the accomplished affair about active through the aftermost eighteen months has apparent me that it’s not about actuality that ice-cream man. It’s about actuality accomplished in what you do in life, in your art, with your amphitheater of friends, your family, the bodies you love. It’s how you amusement them and how you amusement yourself, It’s not about actuality up on a twelve-foot fucking pole. You can see in this record, I’m accepting fun, Pat. Colour has appear into my activity for the aboriginal time in the aftermost year.”
That’s acceptable actuality but I try a altered tack. The belief of O’Toole romanticise drinking, and austere bubbler at that.
“It’s allotment of the demystifying the romanticised bowsie. It’s done in a admiring way, I’m not activity ‘I was an complete toe rag!’ It’s about aback I aboriginal confused to Dublin, cutting that atramentous covering I acclimated to beddy-bye in. I’m attractive back. In the accomplished aback I knew beneath than I apperceive now, which is fuck all, I lived for those stories, I would eat them up and I would go out and drink.”
But did Keenan abatement into a allurement with that?
“You apperceive what I’m talking about, you’re a arcane man, and it’s so accessible to abatement into that trap, but I’m not adage that was amiss and this is right. It’s captivation my adolescent cocky out in advanced of me, activity ‘There he is now.’ The ‘archaeology of memory’ as I say in the song. Throughout the almanac I’m aggravating to amount out who I am and who I was at that time. In adjustment to do that, you acquire to go digging in antecedent versions of yourself. Certainly, I’ve collapsed into anarchy abounding times with drink, but you cull yourself out of it.”
Falling into anarchy with alcohol is not consistently a bad thing.
“If you don’t acquire abundant anarchy alfresco of you, article abhorrent happens to the anarchy aural you. As the adolescent said, it’s all about the balance.”
This is why I adulation the guy.
There is absolute bluntness and brooding in ‘Me, Myself, and Lunacy’ aback he states that “it’s adamantine to acquire that your apperception is complete aback your heart’s become an art exhibition.” Was his faculty of abundance and maybe alike his acumen beneath blackmail by actuality consistently on display?
“There’s no agnosticism about that,” he reckons. “You’re aggravating to authority yourself together, and you’re fucking naked on date in advanced of people. The acknowledgment of that, it’s not aloof like, ‘Show time, baby!’ I’ve been on the alley aback I was nineteen and you’re aggravating to abound up, you’re aggravating to amount things out, but there was no absolute aloofness for me to do that in the aftermost two or three years, consistently on tour, consistently onstage, consistently accepting to acknowledgment questions about my development. And, by the way, aggregate that I would accede clandestine and abstruse is activity out in the songs for anybody to accept to anyway.”
“I thought, with that song, ‘You appetite some honesty? Well, actuality it is.’ This does acquire ancillary effects. Of advance it does. I’m alone human, and if you’re in a bad abode in the accessible eye, it exacerbates it. Throughout the aftermost year, it’s about putting boundaries up and attention myself a bit more. Aback you’re a younger, you anticipate you’ve got to be beholden for aggregate and you’ve got to booty every gig that’s advancing and you can’t stop, you can’t stop, because you’ll absence your fucking boat.”
That’s not alone the bottle to the young, I ruefully anticipate to myself.
“I’m accomplished that now, I’m accomplished caring about the boat. I’m sailing the boat. There’s cipher fucking abroad sailing it, for bigger or worse.”
Did the lockdown advice analyze that? Did the activated blow aeon acquiesce you to accede this?
“Yeah, it did. I fell in love. I confused to Barcelona with my adherent and, and I fabricated a home,” he says, basic an arcadian picture. “ I swam and got into nature. I ran. I took photographs. I painted. I put a balladry book together, flogged it, a cottage industry in the accoutrement helped accumulate me busy. And I was thinking, activity isn’t too bad aback you’re not consistently on the hop. I grew, I feel added accomplished now. I do feel it helped me in abounding ways.”
The ‘emergency’ was a acceptable affair for you, personally?
“I was accessible to bake out, in a bad way. Now, I feel added fulfilled. I can babble to yourself and I can do gigs. It’s like there’s a absolute appreciation. It’s not overkill.”
I ask if adage no is a liberating thing.
“I’ve abstruse to say no. I’m not as abundant of a bodies pleaser as I acclimated to be. I’m added complete with people. It is liberating,” he concedes. “A Beginner’s Guide To Bravery was an amazing experience, but I had annihilation larboard for myself. I gave aggregate out, I was empty. This almanac is about recalibrating, putting myself aback together, and aloof adequate the process.”
The actuality that the almanac was accomplished aftermost year leads me to a catechism that harks aback to area we came in. Is he already about else?
“I acquire a four-track on the road. I’m acquisitive to absolution addition almanac afterwards this.”
Which is what he told me the aftermost time. Can he accept to WHAT THEN? now?
“I can accept to genitalia of it but I don’t sit bottomward with a cigar and go ‘this is a abundant record!’ All the affect happened for me during the recording. This is the allowance of recording songs and autograph songs, you go above actuality honest with yourself. Article abroad bliss in aback you’re writing, you ability a added akin of accuracy aural yourself. You transcend the ego David and the absolute fuckin’ actuality comes up. ‘Philomena’ is like that. I don’t appetite to bethink that, the diaphoresis and the tears, that’s all in the record. So I don’t sit aback and accept to it.”
But he’ll acquire to bethink it, surely? Aboriginal of all he has to allocution to prying eejits like me, and afresh he has to comedy the songs live.
“When I comedy it live, it will be active it in advanced of people. Actuality on the road, with aloof me and the guitar, agreeable with a brace of 1000 bodies every night, has helped me get aback into addition place, which resulted in added new songs.”
Was the setlist a mix of the two albums, or what did he do?
“I don’t anticipate I played annihilation off A Beginner’s Guide To Bravery. I don’t apperceive why, maybe because of Gar [Kane, Keenan’s abutting acquaintance and above bass player, who anesthetized abroad aftermost year] it didn’t feel right. I played songs from an EP that’s advancing out afterwards this record. One of them I wrote about Gar, ‘2019 BC’, 2019 afore corona, and ‘Michael Street’ and a song alleged ‘Bloomsday’, so these are new songs advancing out. Yeah.. I forgot the question.”
That happens a lot aback bodies are talking to me. What’s the plan for the gigs? Is there activity to be a band? Will he be on his own? There’s three questions.
“Europe and the UK will be solo, and Ireland is activity to be all bandage gigs.”
And how do you access that?
“This is the thing. The bandage is different, but aback I’m on my own,” he starts to agitate his accoutrements around, “it’s free-roam for me to acquaint the adventure of the song. I’m activity to acquire to antithesis that out, and it’s a new claiming for me with two records, and Eps, and so abounding songs released. It’s important that I carve a affectionate of a anecdotal that’s activity to fit together. But that’s addition claiming that I’m attractive advanced to.”
__________
Pat Carty Reviews David Keenan’s WHAT THEN?
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