Last word time is right for brendan

Having just released his new album To Where I Begin, BRENDAN MCCAHEY talks to DAMIAN MCCARNEY in The Abbey Bar, Cavan, about the importance of timing, calling cards and the less glamorous side of being a pop star...

Damian McCarney

Time’s ticking for Brendan McCahey. He knows it too.
His natty clothes, grey-free quiff and cherubic complexion may suggest otherwise, but the Shercock man’s actually thirty-eight; a ripe old age for a musician emerging from the shadows of obscurity, just like the cover of his new album. But it’s not Brendan’s biological clock that ticks loudest.
Put aside whatever jaundiced views of talent shows you may harbour - even the most cynical music snob must concede that winning the RTÉ contest is an impressive feat. And it did open the Universal studio doors for him. Having laid down a cover of Bo Diddley’s You Can’t Judge a Book by the Cover, Universal Music were persuaded to record his own material and this debut album followed. So Brendan’s reluctance to put ‘The Voice’ winner calling card back in his wallet is understandable.
If ‘The Voice’ is a calling card, with a new series coming up a new winner will be enthroned, so this album must be Brendan’s departure point.
Brendan agrees: “I’m still in the same year that I won The Voice, I’m still in 2014. Next year won’t be that; next year I won’t be the guy who won The Voice. But it’s still fresh in people’s mind, it does help in a lot of ways too. But absolutely, truly it’s time to move on and I’m ascending already.”
Hopefully it’s a heavenly ascension. The Voice of Ireland is in its third series; only a pub-quiz nerd could stab a guess at Brendan’s fellow winners (and no, Kelly Mongan isn’t one of them).
Brendan has just converted a clutch of patrons in The Abbey Bar with a brace of tunes recorded for the Celt website. After strapping on 1974 Gibson acoustic and giving a fabulous performance of one of his favourite self-penned songs, Missed Your Turn, he was coaxed behind the bar to serenade the pint-pulling pair of Martin and Peggy with a sped up version of Nat King Cole’s On the Street Where You Live.
In what could only be taken as a compliment in Cavan, above the applause that greeted the falsetto climax, one good-natured gent quipped: “And we thought you were a bluffer!”
Nestled in amongst the plate of Ginger Nuts, milk jug and coffee mug on the bar is a copy of the album To Where I Begin. The album’s doing well for an Irish artist, but he’s eager to cajole it into the Top Ten. On weekends he’s gigging galore, and during the week he’s cheerfully getting on with the less glamorous side of the job - ‘in-stores’. For example he’s got a show in Cavan Tesco pencilled in.
“You need to do stores to generate the sales, to get the album up the charts,” he explains. “Doing gigs are all well and good but you need people buying that album. I did an in-store in Drogheda last week and 130 albums sold in the space of two hours, so that’s kind of what you want. I realise in-stores are so important - you probably wouldn’t do it [as many album sales] in a gig.”

http://youtu.be/NFNwrwsj24E

For the uninitiated, how would Brendan describe To Where I Begin?
“Eh, um-u-um-u-um,” he melodically descends the scale in humming consideration. “Kind of heartfelt songs with a kind of a classic sound; classic acoustic sound I would say, more than rock sound. Influences are there from Simon and Garfunkel, Richard Hawley, but really from the ’50s, and bits of twangy guitar as well.”
Comparisons with the ’50s crooning throwback Richard Hawley are unavoidable. During a work trip to Leeds three years ago, Brendan made a pilgrimage of sorts by train, due south to Hawley’s Yellow Arch Studios in Sheffield, so he doesn’t mind the comparison one bit.
“Not at all,” he says. “It’s always worse if you are compared with someone who is crap.”
“You take influence from all places, at the end of the day it’s got to be yourself, and that’s maybe the secret anyway, the music has got to be me. It can’t be grabbing a bit of this and a bit of that album - or it’s not believable.”
And is it you?
“Yeah it definitely is. I suppose I know now what I want in production terms. I’ve been producing for a long time. I definitely think it is me.
“The only thing is Sweet Love sticks out in the album, but it was the song that Universal wanted to choose as a single, they really felt strongly about it, so I wasn’t going to argue with that at all.”

Song choice has been a big issue for Brendan. From a field of 35-40 of his own compositions he picked and carefully arranged a bouquet of 10 album tracks. He’d have liked Missed Your Turn as his first single; but it missed its turn. Given the generous airplay 2FM has given ‘The Otherside’, it has muscled its way into contention as his next single. It was inspired by the character of Darren in Love/Hate. 

“He’s trying to be really good, trying to be the poster boy for everybody and he’s given up the drugs and working for Nidge, but... he’s caused so much damage on the way, it came back and haunted him - it’s that journey about trying to get to the other side but inherently it was never going to be him anyway.”
Brendan has a surprisingly eclectic, bordering on nerdish, taste in music. He’s into Krautrock, such as Can and Neu! (“I know it’s the weirdest thing”), and The King of Limbs era Radiohead when they shunned pop convention (“A lot of people hated it when they went a bit experimental, but I just loved it”), Tim Hardin (a Google-search reveals he’s a Woodstock veteran), and he has “always been a huge fan” of Morrissey, proving it by reverentially reciting his back catalogue like it’s the Apostle’s Creed.
Whilst he admires these artists pushing back boundaries, he’s divining a safer route.
“The most important thing, and I more than anybody understand, is with this album - get an audience first. With that, take them on a journey, if you don’t have them, there’s no point recording anything at all.
“From there you can make the journey and take them with you, but that’s why it is important to start off on the right foot and not blow people’s minds too far out.”
It’s the sensible approach to a man who has been shaped by growing up on a dairy farm, one of 13 kids, and a less than glamorous worklife.

Backstory
Upon leaving school, he worked as a panel beater before drawing a wage from Rye Valley Foods in Carrickmacross and eventually working in ‘Beat It Music’ in Drogheda. All the while he was recording MiniDiscs and CDs to send to record companies, and requesting interviews from reluctant journalists, and ultimately getting nowhere. It’s not your typical showbiz backstory. Maybe cruelly, the Celt observes that Brendan McCahey isn’t a particularly showbiz name either - had he considered following others like Dylan or Bowie and performing under a different moniker?
“Well I did,” he says unperturbed by the question. “I released an album called The Making, and I was called The Making more as a person than as a band. It came out, but once it didn’t have that push behind it, it really didn’t go anywhere. It couldn’t - it was just impossible.”
“And from that - if that doesn’t work, you try something else, you-try-something-else, you-try-something-else,” he intones.
That something else turned out was his wife Marion prompting him to enter The Voice.
“You just never know what’s going to work at a time, and sometimes what I’ve realised too, when the time isn’t right, it’s just not right. When the time is right, then it will happen - in everything, I think.”
Whilst time may be ticking for Brendan, just maybe it’s finally the right time.