SUNDAY TRIBUNE

2 april 2006
ROCK NEIL DUNPHY
MAN OF A THOUSAND SONGS
From scavenging for food to turning down major record label offers, the story behind Declan de Barra’s new album is as incredible as the music.
Here in the Paul Auster School of music journalism nothing gets us like a bonefide hand-to- mouth story. Suffering rocks. So when Waterford’s Declan de Barra innocently tells us that things got so bad after returning from exile in Australia he and his band resorted to scavenging for food in Dublin skips we were suitably hooked. De Barra was trying to scrape a living while using Ireland as a base for his bands European tour but it just wasn’t working out. Something had to give so the seven band members went their separate ways and it struck de Barra that he should record his own album by himself. The only problem was that, as a singer, he couldn’t play any instruments. It’s getting even more interesting, isn’t it?
The resulting album, Song of a Thousand Birds, is a beautiful piece of work, its haunting chimes echo like a coffin ship being tossed across a worrisome ocean. Without going into full review mode, for a self-produced, self-financed, self-recorded debut, it is outstanding.
So what’s this about the skips and never having played an instrument in his life until two years ago? Let’s start at the beginning. ‘ I emigrated to Australia n the late 80s and used to be a singer in a punk band [called non intentional lifeform]. We toured with the likes of Marilyn Manson, korn and Kiss. The racism in Australia was blatant and it was so accepted – racisms against Asians, Africans whoever. That made me even more angry and I got very disillusioned [with punk music] and started listening to artists like john Coltrane when I realized that there was more than one way to skin a cat. You could get across intensity in different ways, with a single violin for example.’ That’s what he did on the next band Clann Zú’s two albums.
The problem with touring the Melbourne collective was one of logistics and de Barra had to turn down tours due to lack of funds. “I’m not kidding but we were eating out of bins and the guards would come along and ask what we were doing…I don’t mind sleeping face down in a hedge but with seven people I could see the writing on the wall. So I asked myself what could I do by myself so I thought about the piano but obviously I couldn’t carry that on my back so the obvious choice was the guitar. I was very wary of the whole singer songwriter thing but I thought fuck it just make music and don’t give a shit about what people think one way or the other. So I picked up the guitar and the result is this album’.
De Barra wrote all but two of the 11 songs himself once he had learned the instruments. “ This was completely new to me. I’m extremely confident about my voice and I know what I can and can’t do but the instruments were terrifying and astonishing. Some of the things I thought were complex were simple and vice versa”
Once he had layed it all down he got some musicians that he had become friends with to help out. Richie Egan from Jape/Redneck Manifesto came in to play bass. “I wanted Ronán Ó Snodaigh from Kíla to play bodhrán and percussion and there was a guitar there and he picked it up and played it. So I got he world’s best percussionist playing guitar on the album. Maybe next time I’ll get Eric Clapton to play bodhrán!” Cion O’Callaghan from Paddy Casey’s band also came in on drums.
I was wondering how on earth he conceived of the songs without any knowledge of the instruments. “ There is no distinction between painting, music and lyric writing. If I see little vignettes, stories or visuals or paintings for songs I just translate those into words or melody and while I’m laying it down I might hear a note that would suggest a whole lyric. Other times I might be watching the TV and get really angry and just want to put my foot through it [and a song might come from that].”
In addition to the aforementioned instruments there is cello, fiddle and a Pakistani instrument called a shruti box/ “I heard Rónán playing it and I thought it was Uileann pipes and when I saw it I thought it looked like a concertina. I call it cheap mans Uileann Pipes.”
Mostly recorded in derelict houses across the city, Song of a Thousand Birds was inadvertently funded by the Irish film Board for whom de Barra was working on a series of animation projects. “I just locked myself away in abandoned rooms all over Dublin. This resulted in some pretty hilarious situations where I ended up recording on St Stephens Day, trying to plug microphones into flooded rooms and hoping not to get electrocuted.”
Lyrically de Barra is informed by the plight of the emigrant/immigrant. ‘A lot of my music is based on the experience of being an immigrant and being forced into a different way of thinking. I fully identified with the people of Kurdistan or whoever who had no idea (of the country they arrived in). There are a lot of similarities between all cultures that have been displaced. Then I started listening to the music of these cultures whether it was Arabic music or Sean Nós and something clicked with me. It all fell into place.”
That place may or may not be the radio. He doesn’t seem to think he’ll get much exposure but at least three tracks are digestible for general consumption. “With radio over here, the rock stations here think it’s too trad or world and the world people think its too trad. It’s all about intensity and communication. I like it that way because I have control over it. I have been involved with major record labels and I know how it works and how much bullshit there is. They can spend a small amount on something and it doesn’t sell. Then $100,000 on it and it still doesn’t sell and then they spend $500,000 on it and it sells. Why bother in the first place?”
Even now he is indifferent to the record company interest since the launch of his debut. A few years ago he turned down a big deal in Australia “because it didn’t feel right…I’m usually pretty good at reading people. Everything looked good on paper and it turned out that the guy was a complete fruit loop. He disappeared after the only band that had had a big hit and made him a lot of money. It doesn’t phase me. I have bruises from the amounts of pats I’ve had on the back. I have had interest from every single major record company and with some it has been three times in a row- and with completely different people. Now there is big interest. If it’s the right thing then great. Some of my favorite artists are on major labels.”
Having sung all his life de Barra readily admits not having the language of formal training “I can learn. People say it’s too late to learn. That’s horseshit, you can train your mind to do anything. If you can hear it in your head and find a way of translating it. It’s like painting. Anybody can paint. It might not be an accurate representation or considered hip or cool but everybody has that innate ability to communicate whether it is visually or orally.
‘ Shane Mc Gowan is one of my favorite singers in the world but he can’t really sing at all. Or Henry Rollins, he is amazing. Then there are other people I admire that are absolutely natural like Lisa Gerrard. She is absolutely unholy.”
De Barra believes touring till he drops dead is the best way to crack it. “Right now I want to play 340 shows a year with as many people as possible. That’s the way it works for me. Radio I will never be able to count on. I’ve also got most of the next album written and a lot of other projects on the go. It’s going to take a bit of time for people to cop what I do because although it is melodious it is still a little left of what is currently popular.
‘ Song of a Thousand Birds’
Is out now on Rogue Goat