'The land holds the history'

Joey's reformed reggae band set for Electric Picnic gig

Joey Burns is a man of many talents. Best known as a wood sculptor of amazing ability, the Celt had phoned Joey about his latest creation, a carving in Ballyhaise. It shouldn't surprise that he has a wealth of other projects, from teaching, to creating a laser stringed harp, to releasing a solo music album all simmering along nicely behind the scenes - and one other - the revival of his old reggae band 'Slump' that’s positively on the boil as they prepare to play Electric Picnic.

The sculpture that prompts this interview by the banks of the Annalee, melds a horse, a cow, a sheep and a pig in one large ash pillar. Which animal you see depends upon the angle from which the viewer approaches.

It's, to put simply, a stunner.

The subject matter is fitting too, given the site's within a pig's grunt from the village's Ag College - from where the ash was sourced.

More importantly however is it's location, in the townland of Drumcrow, or in Irish 'Drum Cró' meaning 'the ridge of the animal enclosure'.

It's one of the first public sculptures Joey's done since Covid halted his work. Another of his sculptures, a boar from the same piece of ash, was installed at Bailieborough's Town Lake last week. Again, in reference to the old Irish for 'The Fort of the Boar'.

Mission

“My mission is to preserve Irish folklore and placenames for future generations,” he says of his sculptures, created with chainsaws. “The land holds the history, culture and the heritage and that's part of my mission - to keep that going - reminding and educating people about the land. We're only passing through - we're only custodians.”

A name like Drum Cró, would have been given by the first farmers - “its an ancient name,” says Joey.

In organising the interview Joey sends on a couple of audio files of rock tracks - pretty accomplished, raucous affairs, not adverse to melody, but rhythmically driven.

It's a hint to what he spent much of lockdown doing. Yes, he put down his chainsaw and picked up an axe.

“During Covid I wrote 44 pieces of music like that,” he says matter of factly. He used Youtube to learn how to command a home recording studio for his solo project titled ‘Angry Fox’.

His youngest son, Fiachna's blossoming as a soccer player for Longford Town also afforded Joey much time as he ferried him to training.

“I found myself in a carpark for three hours at a time. There's only so much chat you can have with other parents about your son's footballing ability, so I decided to bring a guitar and use Youtube to teach myself how to play lead guitar,” says Joey, who toured as bassist with the legendary band 'The Dead Can Dance' in 1990.

Other voices

One of the tracks the Celt hears features his eldest son Aran on vocals. The second sees Joey himself taking mic duties.

He recruited 12 different vocalists in total, including Cavan musicians Mike Paterson, Peter Denton, Ferdia O'Brien and Michael O'Brien. He also called in a favour from his buddy Rónán Ó Snodaigh of Kila fame.

He knew it was outside the Kila frontman's comfort zone, but still managed to coax him regardless. “I said, it's has a folk rock, sort of metal vibe to it - I said, take the distortion off the guitars and it's a folk song. That won him over.”

Finished a year and a half, Joey expects to release Angry Fox's debut in December.

He has other projects to prioritise first however.

Chief among them is a plan to revisit a harp he designed that sits between the library and courthouse, which President Michael D Higgins unveiled during the Fleadh of 2012.

Joey invested the harp with Cavan significance by basing it on Cathal 'Bui' Mac Giolla Ghunna's poem 'An Bonnán Buí', the ‘Yellow Bittern’. The Arts Office decided to put it in the newly revamped Ramor Theatre.

For this second iteration Joey has reimagined it as an interactive piece.

“We're going to have lasers for strings and hook it up to a computer so it can play electronic music,” he recalls of his pitch to the local Arts Office. With interest suitably piqued, Joey enlisted the help of his cousin, James Condron, professor of electronic engineering at Purdue University in Indianna.

“For two years we had eight pre-Grad students and two professors working on the technology to retrofit it into the wooden sculpture.”

Joey was demanding. The students needed to deliver, in his words, a finished piece that “will be a thing of great wonder”.

More specifically it needed to have “zero latency”.

The “engineering challenge” was ensuring the time it takes between plucking the futuristic stringed instrument and hearing was a mere “nano-second”.

A video demonstrating the finished piece working confirms how the Purdue team excelled.

It was then over to Joey's brother Ollie, to adapt the technology into the sculpture.

“He is a different standard of workman to me altogether,” Joey praises.

Muscle memory

Having commenced four years ago, the sculpture will get its grand unveiling in the Ramor Theatre on Culture Night this September.

Joey has come up with a suitably eye catching performance to mark the occasion, which he wants to keep under wraps for now.

He hopes it will create a wow factor, particularly for young people.

“It might inspire them to take up electronic music, it might inspire them to take up traditional harp - but more importantly, it might inspire them to take up electronics,” he suggests.

The inspirational aspect of Joey’s work is important to him. Having taught a variety of art subjects through Cavan Monaghan ETB and elsewhere over the years, he observes that everyone has the ability to create.

“Creativity is universal, no matter what anybody says. People give up. That's the thing. They get to the 'I can't stage' - and everybody gets to that stage, but you really have to persevere to get beyond that. It's like the wall in the marathon, it's painful but you have to get through it to finish.”

One project Joey thought he had finished with was a Kells’ based reggae band he played with many moons ago.

Preparation

An impromptu jam session, just for their own entertainment at the start of the year, led to an impromptu conversation between Slump's frontman Patrick Morris and an industry insider. Now a date at Ireland's premiere music festival, Electric Picnic, looms.

“It's all original songs, so we are not trying to sound like anybody - in fact we are trying to sound different from everybody else,” he says, true to his usual form.

Given it's been 15 years since Slump last played a gig, they had to relearn many of the tracks from a hissing audio tape recorded live in 1995.

“It stands up really good , really good. Now we're older, we're not playing as fast, but the groove is still there.”

The band have a pre-festival gig planned for Kells later this month, July 27- “just as a warm-up”.

He says: “We're jokingly calling it the Muscle Memory Tour.”

Is he looking forward to Electric Picnic?

“It's a gig,” replies Joey. “The gig in Kells, I'm a little bit more nervous about that, because everybody knows us.

“But Electric Picnic - the thing I learned about playing with The Dead Can Dance is, when you are playing in front of 5,000 people who don't know you, all you have to do is concentrate on what you're doing.”