On tour with his debut album, the Irish singer who started out busking in Dublin talks nerves, Bon Iver and the fields he grew up in.
Dermot Kennedy has a soft spot for the way touring used to work. “Back in the day if Thin Lizzy went on tour in America it would really be a case of like, alright, see you in a couple months, and no social media to keep up with where they are,” he says. “It would just be playing brilliant shows.”
He is on the road now with his debut album, Without Fear, playing to rooms full of people who bought tickets to hear him. It took him a while to believe that. Kennedy started out as a teenager busking on the streets of Dublin, where nobody had come for him and every set was a chance to experiment. “When I played in the street it was quite freeing,” he says, “but it took a bit of time to realize I’m not playing a random bar or the street and there are people here to hear these songs.”
He still has to talk himself into it. “The nerves make way for excitement,” he says. “It’s easy to get nervous. You have to remind yourself that people paid to come see you.” The line he repeats to himself is short. “They’re on your side.”
He is less sure about the business he has walked into. Streaming means a song is up against next week’s releases before it has had time to settle. “Even if someone comes out with a song that’s potentially timeless, it doesn’t necessarily mean that gets to become that,” he says. “Next week there is going to be a bunch of new music, and I’m just saying, everything is happening so fast and everybody is bringing out stuff all the time because people are terrified of losing their relevance.”
What he wants instead is to be part of something longer. “I’m inspired by anyone telling a story,” he says, and the storytellers he names are Irish: Van Morrison, and Damien Rice, whose debut album O came out in 2002. “To be able to look at a wealth of other artists and just want to be a part of that history is a lovely thing.”
The other thing Ireland gave him was the place itself. Kennedy grew up in Rathcoole, on the edge of County Dublin. “Where I grew up was fields and forests, and even in that sense I was constantly inspired,” he says.
The artist he looks to for how to keep hold of that is Justin Vernon of Bon Iver, who set up his studio, April Base, in Fall Creek, Wisconsin, a few miles from where he grew up. “Bon Iver still lives in Eau Claire, Wisconsin,” Kennedy says. “That guy can really be anywhere in the whole world but that is his place to be.”
For now, Kennedy’s place is wherever the next show is, and being, as he puts it, “known for a body of work” means a lot of time away. He has a line for that too. “Do your best to remind yourself you’ll be home before long.”
Words by Sam Farrell. Photography by Lucy Foster. From the LYFSTYL series On the Road.
