Behind The Music: John D’Arcy

July 16, 2010 No Comments

John D’Arcy’s a one man band with a plan – His ‘More Like Me’ E.P, released just last year, was met with critical acclaim – a mix of heartfelt, melodic folk with a quirky punk twist. He talks to MLNI about his songwriting journey, his new band ‘The Great Bunch of Lads’ and beginning work on his debut album with renowned 70′s punk producer, Terri Hooley…

Words By: Matt Wheavil

So how are you today?

Good good, you’re very formal, I like it!

You started playing guitar when you were 14, is that right?

Umm… 13, 14 yeah. Around my 2nd year of school and it was basically just, my friends started playing and I thought, that looks good!

Peer pressure?

Not pressure, more like wanting to be part of this music thing because we were all starting to get into the same music – pop punk, like Green Day and Blink 182.  So they were playing all these songs and I was getting the albums and I just thought, I want to play this too.  I played violin and I was playing piano a bit, but guitar was just way cooler.  My Dad taught me a few chords and I ended up getting lessons in along with my friends.

So now you’re 21, it’s taken about 6 years to get this far?

I think I was actually at my best technically playing guitar when I was about 16, because around that age I was playing a lot of metal, eddie van Halen and Metallica solos.  I was really good and then one day I just thought, this isn’t what it’s all about.  What it’s all a about is writing songs and making music that people actually get emotional about rather than just playing as many notes as you can in a minute.  So I just took a total turn and started playing acoustic guitar and playing solo gigs.

So that was a total shift for you?

It was more gradual than I make it sound, but really it was a total shift in mindset from “I have to be really good at guitar” to “I just have to be good enough to play my own songs”.   Nowadays I only have to practice enough to get good at what I want to play from what I hear in my head.

Your E.P. Title track, More Like Me, I listened to it quite a bit and find the lyrics are the most striking thing – it’s definitely the stand out song and I find that it’s very self-reflective… does it reflect your personal life a lot?

The song is about the realisation that you can’t make somebody something they’re not.  People are who they are and as much as you want them to be more like you or to think from your point of view, you just can’t. So that song’s about accepting it and just living with it; or trying to anyway… and realising it’s your own fault for trying to make someone different, that’s your fault, not theirs.

So in a nutshell, it’s about being yourself?

It’s about accepting other people for being themselves.

That kind of reflects you as a musician – you said I’m going to be myself, I’m not going to play this Eddie van halen stuff…

Yeah maybe, haha!  There could be a parallel in there somewhere.

The metaphors in the song are very strong…

What metaphors??

Buildings falling, leaks in your love life – things like that, really strong imagery, there’s a lot of imagery in the song, quite poetic…

Yeah I tried to get that across in the video that I made…

I was just about to ask you about the video, it’s something else, so original, like an animation?

It’s stop motion animation, it’s all photos of me drawing and moving about with the CD and stuff.  Some of it is derived from the lyrics and some of it is abstract things.

How long did all that process take?

Well the making of the CD was a few months.  When you make it yourself you can come back to it, you have a bit of breathing space.  It’s not like three days in the studio and you’re paying so much amount of money for that amount of time.  When you’re doing it at home you don’t have that pressure, so it rolls on a bit longer.

I also had more songs but two of these songs were taken off because I put on an event in Oh Yeah called ‘Scratch My Demo’ – they have a series now but this was the first in the series.   I brought in my CD and said, “Here’s the tracks, tell me what you think of every track. What’s your favourite? What’s your least favourite? What’s should be on the cover?”  I had everything, basically asking what people thought the CD should be we could make it, together….

And it came out of that that everyone liked all the songs to varying degrees but everyone agreed that there was two different John D’Arcys on the CD. There was this kind of quirky John D’Arcy and then there’s this reflective John D’Arcy.  Then there was this other John D’Arcy that didn’t fit with all that – it was like a rock, experimental John D’Arcy.  So I cut that off the CD and made it more ‘bouncy and quirky’ verses ‘reflective and soft’.

That’s odd. That was exactly my reading of it, not in those words, but there are two John D’Arcys on the record… A blend of meaningful, reflective songs and teen attitude…

Teen attitude! I guess…

So maybe the two John D’arcy’s… one’s grown up and one’s still growing up?

Yeah one still wants to be at school and the other is realizing all these things are going on and trying to be a bit more thoughtful about it.

Do you feel a bit schizophrenic as an artist then?

*laughs* No! I don’t until people mention it. Sometimes… You know, it only really happens when you put a CD together and you realise, flip these songs are all different. I just write a song how it comes and let it become it’s own song.

Diversity’s good though, it makes for a stronger album…

This is my problem – it’s too diverse. An album should be cohesive… You should be able to think of John D’Arcy and conjure up a sound in your head and at this stage John D’Arcy is too many things.  I don’t think people have an idea of what I really am yet.

I think you’re drawing your own line, a sort of folk punk fusion…

That sounds ok!  I mean if you google folk punk, you come up with a lot of acts that are very different from me but at the same time folk and punk are two of my influences, I don’t even know exactly what you could call it at the moment.

Yeah, cos if you mix the two, you get ‘funk’, so I guess you have to for have to go for Polk instead, which still sounds weird!

*laughs* You could call me Polk Funk maybe…  Do you want to invent a new genre?  I’m just gonna Facebook that right now  *John proceeds to Facebook this genre defining moment in his career via i-phone*

There’s two songs on your record called Scotty and Gentleman Jim, so that says to me, you write about people?

I do write about people.

Do they just inspire you?

Everyone has to write about what they know.  And what I knew when I was writing Scotty was that my friend was going out with this guy and we always laughed at him because he took photos of himself in the mirror.  You now, those photos where the camera’s way above your head and it’s looking down and you’re pulling this big pout and your hairs all over your face.

MySpace photo?

MySpace photo!  So that’s where the song grew out of, this imagined story about him, where he hates people thinking he looks the same as all the other people with Myspace photos.

Maybe this is quite strange but there’s one line that sticks out in the song for me, “he bumps into a pack of spides”

A lot of people laugh at that line.

It’s great cos it’s so Northern Irish. That’s what I like about it.

It’s a bit silly but it gets a laugh.  It’s like when Duke Special says Belfast and everyone goes ‘yeo’!

Do you think you should fit ‘yeo’ into one of your songs?

Definitely not.

You could call your next album ‘yeo…’

I could… ‘Yeo!’, ‘Mon’ the lads!’ or something like that. Though ‘The Great Bunch Of Lads’ is the name of my band.

How’s The Great Bunch of Lads going?

Well we’ve only played a couple of gigs, well a lot of gigs but just a few under that name, The Great Bunch of Lads.

So what’s next for John D’Arcy?

Right now… you know what annoys me about this question? I always feel like I have to tart it up. This is probably the answer right here, I always feel like I have to make it seem more exciting, like “Coming up with John D’arcy is all these exciting things…” Whereas in reality over the next few weeks I’m just finishing up some songs for an album.  I’m going to be pushing The Great Bunch of Lads more as well.

Your degree is in Music Technology isn’t it, so the production on your next album should be class! Is it a practical degree?

It can be practical but you get the most practice doing things in your own time.  I mixed and mastered the More Than Conquerors E.P.  so I’m kind of doing a bit of studio work at the minute… But with my record I’m going to get someone else to produce it this time.  This is going to be proper this time, not just done in a living room.

Independent record label, or still yourself?

It’s going to be on Good Vibrations which was the label that brought out all the punk stuff in the 70s. Terri (Hooley) is really keen to put out our album.

Does that mean it’s going to be quite punk?

No it doesn’t at all. Terri really loves my stuff and wants to get involved.  It’s a good opportunity to get stuff out there in an album format, rather than the E.P.s I’ve been doing.  Maybe get a few more copies made up than usual too!

Full album, nice. Can’t wait to hear it, thanks for your time and good luck!

Cheers, pleasure.

You can catch John D’Arcy live at the Oh Yeah Centre tonight in Belfast (16th July) supporting Mojo Fury

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