Conversations on Song

Posted on 31st Oct 06 by Contributor | 0

Artist: Fionn Regan"""Interview
Author: Jason Golden

Just one listen to Fionn Regans debut album The End of History and its clear you have just experienced something special. An album of magical beauty" gorgeous vocals and stunning guitar playing" this album is one of the most exciting debuts I have heard in a long long time. The album is folk based and is primarily just Regan and a deftly picked acoustic guitar with touches of electric guitar and piano. The album was released last month to a fanfare from the broadsheets both at home and abroad and tours throughout the UK and Europe have boosted Fionns standing no end. I couldn"t even begin to do the album any justice through my own words so I caught up with Fionn to hear his thoughts on his album and the songs.

How do you feel now that the album is finally out there"

It felt as important as a first book or play but without any external pressure. I took myself away and detached from the machine to make this record so it"s very much a wild flower in that sense.

Did it take much time to record"

Well I kept really busy when I decided to record the album. I was averaging 70 gigs a year so It was over about a year and a half from the start to the recording. It took time you know" scrapping some songs and trying to find the right way of doing it but in terms of days it took seven days to record when you count them up. It seems wild when you think of the amount of time put into the album and you can count on your fingers how long it actually took to record. Everything had to be captured in a certain way so I was hard on myself. I didn"t want to use any gimmicks or pull any rabbits out of hats" I never wanted to dazzle anybody with anything. I just wanted it to be very real" I wanted a carbon copy of what was going on in my head and to turn that into something external.

It does come across as a personal album seeing as its pretty much just you and your guitar.

Ya" well all my favourite albums are like that. When you listen to something and you connect with what they are saying you don"t actually know what the pictures that person is seeing but it conjures up images and evokes a series of feelings towards what you are hearing. The music I"ve loved down through the years that made me feel like that" you can only hope that your songs can somehow capture that feeling. Really they are just conversations and little stories that explain the journey you take" the songs are a way of explaining this journey.

Did the album turn out like you had imagined"

Well my main concern was to finish it and make sure all the songs sat beside each other. It was a very natural process really. It was like being at a party and a certain bunch of people end up in the kitchen and a certain bunch of people end up out in the garden. So the songs I wanted ended up in the garden and I was left with another bunch of songs that weren"t for this album.

Had those songs been knocking around your head for a long time"

Well it"s hard to say how long those songs had been knocking around really. I tend to write very fast but on a deeper level I"m thinking about things and putting the pieces together. I don"t tend to do things in a practical way and haven"t got a set formula for writing. A chain of events lead to a number of different particles coming together and when the time comes to write a song it seems to happen really fast. All the songs on this album happened really quickly some a couple of hours" some took a couple of minutes. Put a penny in the slot was written really quickly like that. It just flowed out.

So would you need certain conditions to write"

To be honest I"ve never had the luxury of being able to write songs any time I wanted. I"ve always had enough coins in the jam jar to buy a loaf of bread and keep a roof over my head and that has been my priority and writing songs is what happens in between. The songs document the things that have been happening in between the stations" it"s what you see when you"re on a train and look out the window. I"ve never done that kind of sit in a room and force myself to write thing. I"m almost suspicious of that but maybe I will find that further on down the line that will be the process I might use. I know there are a lot of people who write this way but god knows what I"d come up with if I did things this way.

What do you make of the comparisons to Nick Drake" Bert Jansch and early Dylan"

Well comparisons are just a tool to try and make people understand what the sounds are like. It"s like throwing a net out" you know" if you throw out the red net or the blue net you catch something different. These people are legends and I"m just beginning so I can"t believe any of that talk. You would want to be a fool or an egomaniac to believe that talk.

Would they have been artists you would have listened to"

Well Nick Drake no. I only know two of his songs. That comparison has been happening to me for a long time and I"ve refused to listen to it because it was happening to me long before I even knew who he was. First and foremost people would say that I looked like him and I actually thought they were on about Nick Cave" Since then though I"ve heard "Black eyed dog" and "Riverman" and can see what people mean but there are people who understand things in great detail and there are others who understand things in great big boxes. All these great artists are very individual and I would like to think the record I"ve made is very individual. So I think it"s quite hard to compare. Say there was a block of houses on singer Songwriter Street" who"s to say that the atmosphere is going to be the same in each house. The interiors are going to be completely different. Some people think if you come from this area then you have this way of looking at things or your opinions are a certain way but everybody knows that your next"door neighbour has a completely different way of looking at the world and a different way of writing about it.

So who would have been people you would have listened to"

Well I would definitely listen to a lot of Bob Dylan and Woody Guthrie. I grew up listening to lots of music at home" my dad was a musician so there were always musical characters playing in my house. There were traditional music sessions" poets would hang around" and people would tell stories. That was the early stages of what brought me here.

Did you do the artwork for the album yourself"

Ya I actually painted the artwork on my wall at home and then stood in front of it and had my picture taken. It took me seven days to paint. It ties together well with the songs on the album. The images in the artwork relate to different objects in the songs. There is some cutlery from "Put a penny in the slot"" a lighthouse from "Black water child"" the cowshed from"Cowshed"" so it all ties together nicely.

How did the launch night in Crawdaddy go"

It went really well. It was like a big celebration with everybody singing along. It was an amazing night. I"ve been getting a great reaction at all the gigs lately. It"s like a big ship of merry supporters. It"s all a bit overwhelming really but the reaction of the crowd really lifts the spirits of me and the band onstage. I suppose that"s the difference when you have the album released. I"m amazed that within a few weeks the crowds know the lyrics to all the songs" sometimes better than me.

The End of History is out now in all good record stores. Go out now and get it" it"s as simple as that.

To find out more check out these sites. www.fionnregan.com and www.myspace.com/fionnregan.