Irish indie rock quartet The Plea from Ballyliffin have been creating a bit of hype for themselves following the release of their ‘Nothing But Trouble EP’. Our man David Dooley talked to one of the band to get the low down. It took a question or two to get him talking but once he got going it was impossible to stop him.
Firstly could you just describe for me, to someone who’s never heard of you before, who are The Plea?
We’re a four/five piece band. Four piece sometime, five piece sometimes.
How would you describe the music?
Probably rock/pop type of stuff. That’s about it.
So you started off at the beginning where it was just you and your brother, Denny. So you moved from Donegal, onto London and then onto the US and then back to Ireland. How much influence do you think that location has on the writing process?
Moving about, it probably has a lot. You’re not in the one place all the time, you’re meeting lots of different people and you’re still learning how to write and starting to write. The more people you meet, the more bands you play with, so probably the best thing we ever did, even though we ended up back at the start but best way to go
And then do you think there’s a big difference, as you guys are from basically the tip of Ireland, from Donegal do you think there’s a big difference from writing when you’re within a city say for London than from when you’re back in Donegal?
Well you could easily say that in Ireland. When you’re from Donegal most people down south might think you’re from the North and then you know what I mean if you go Dublin will sit you in the North and people in the North would sit you in the South so it’s weird when you’re trying to out music out from there people really don’t know what category to put you in just if they’re speaking to you they don’t really know the band.
But even from the writing process do you think there’s much difference if you’re writing in a rural area as opposed to somewhere busy like a city
Ah, don’t think so. Well like you’re gonna have more do more things in the city, meet more people and whatever you get up to but I think when it comes to writing for me it doesn’t really matter where you are. You either have an idea for a song or you don’t but yeah the more you see, the more you do, the more you’re going to have to write about, maybe. Haha, it might be different for them but that’s what it is for me.
And then being in a band with your brother, it’s definitely nothing new. Going back from the Kinks, through to Oasis even to Kings of Leon is there a sibling rivalry present with you guys do you think?
There definitely is. The good thing is we write separately you know. We still write songs together the odd time. He’ll finish off one of my songs or I’ll finish off one of his songs he doesn’t think is any good, I’ll think it’s great and vice versa. Yeah we still have arguments and things like that but once we’re in the studio and all the demos are done and we’re recording an album we just both know that we’ve come in with the best songs we think we’ve got from the tunes we’ve both been writing so that takes the argument out of it. We tend to stay far away from each other when we’re not doing that.
So it’s all business really.
It’s alright most of the time do you know what I mean. Especially when you’re at work together and when you’re out doing gigs you’re together and when you’re away travelling you’re living together. Music wise we’re alright but it’s the think that happens when we’re not playing music is where you get
So it’s more the friends and family that’ll know about that than the people listening to the music about the rivalry almost
Well that’s it like, it’s fine but once it comes down to music and we’re both writing a lot of songs in a certain period or we’ll finish off each other’s songs that we’ll fight each other to keep one of the songs on the album stuff like that there, not literally fight each other but we’re still, we get on great when it comes to that but everything else outside it, nah, we don’t really, it’s just about the music for us. He might give you a different answer, two sides to every story there is.
So when you guys were in the States you were recording an album that was never really released. Was it you guys who made the call or was it the label?
Well we sorta, I think we made the call in the end. We had recorded an album over there of sort of acoustic stuff as well that not a lot of people would know. That was the album we wanted to record, like a four or five piece acoustic band with a bit of violin, fiddle in there and some bongos but when we went down and started to record we started a lot of songs here and then we demoed them out there and stuff like that but it just didn’t make any sense at the time you know.
You’re sat in the middle of Indiana and you weren’t really going to cover the whole of North America with a label like that although they said they would do that but we looked into it and knew it wasn’t going to work and decided well lets just leave the songs and get out of it. It wasn’t too bad. We moved past it. When we met them we were in London, playing a gig in London and all of a sudden there’s these people who want us to come to the middle of America to do an album.
And do you think that experience made you more cautious when you were dealing with labels the second time round?
Haha, well you’re always cautious, we’ve had a good few run ins with different but eh I think the bigger the label the less chance you have unless you’re gonna have everybody in the whole record label excited about the band but if you’ve just got one A&R guy who’s signing a band then it’s not really a good place; it’s a dangerous place. If he loses his job then your albums gonna get put on the shelf so we were very cautious about who we did any deals with next until we met R&S Records and that was completely different, the label we’re on now, you know.
With most bands, especially Irish bands they’ll go without a producer for their first, maybe even their second album so how did it feel having a producer on boards, especially one as renowned as Chris Potter for your first released album?
Well it’s great because we wanted Chris Potter to do it at the time. This time last year we were in recording the album that we have recorded now so we wanted Chris to do it out of all the different producers and we couldn’t believe it when he said he would do it. He like the demos and stuff like that. We had demoed most of the album here you know in the home studio. We knew the songs really well, inside out. We only sent the songs to him that we thought would sit on the album and it was just by luck that he seen the album the same way as we did. We didn’t go into a studio with no songs and start from scratch, we knew what we wanted to do and it was easier to work that way. So in that sense we had a great time with a real chilled out atmosphere. We had a lot of work to but we weren’t in battling with a producer in a studio over what song gets on it. We knew what we wanted the album to do and it was just by luck that the same songs we picked he would have picked anyway but for the next album it’ll be completely different we’re already demoing stuff for that now.
And will you be working with Chris again for the next album?
Well we don’t know yet just because we’re gonna go back and do a couple more recordings with Chris in the middle of November and these are completely different to the songs that have gone on this album. So he’s just as excited as us as we’re gonna see what direction it’s gonna go and Chris said himself if he doesn’t think. You know that’s the way it works, you have to work that way. If he doesn’t think that he can do the justice to it then maybe we’ll do it with somebody else but at the minute we just wanna work with Chris as we did the last time but it has to depend on the songs and stuff like that so it’s a good position to be in. There’s no big ego running the whole thing, the end product is what everybody wants you know. He likes the music which is amazing, which is a fucking great thing.
It’s very good, especially to have someone like that on board. Now you guys have a very big sound, just from even your studio going through to your live work, were they written with the bigger stages in mind?
I don’t think so because we knew we wanted to be able to play the songs from the album live and make them sound as big. We kept that in mind when we were recording the songs so instead of putting in a lot of ambiance and a lot of emptiness as we knew when it came to play it live on stage you’d need ten fucking orchestras. So we kept it simple but gave it a big sound and gave it a lot of space. So we probably did, we had demoed the songs before the album and we had a wee bit more time to think about how we’d play them live as we didn’t want to have ten people on the stage, we just wanted to do it with four or five people but I think we had in mind the type of songs we wanted to do and how they’d work live. And at the minute when we go out to play we’re playing a couple of new songs, that we’re going to go in and record to see what they sound like. It’s always different, like when you’re playing live you don’t know, you can’t listen to the song, you just want to try and get the feel of the song. You’ll know after the gig if that did or didn’t feel good. That’s how you do it but obviously you want people there. So we’re hoping we have people there.
It always helps to have a crowd there.
We’ve done gigs where we’re just standing playing to each other but that’s cool too as long as you get a good feeling form a song, that’s the main thing. That’s the way we work it like.
Ah but it definitely helps when you’re playing to more than just the bar staff.
Haha, yeah man, I know. Even if that is the case it makes no difference to us, you just know when the song’s good and that’s the end of it. We’ve recorded songs before that sound great on a CD but when it comes to playing them live unless you’ve got a French Horn or something it doesn’t work. Although the demos we’re doing, they’re stripped way back. They’re just a couple of guitars, bass, drums and that’s it. Maybe a tiny bit of keys or something like that. We’d pulled it back even further to try and get the songs different.
And then just from watching previous interviews with you guys you seem very grateful to be working with your label anyway so with so many bands going ti alone these days how do you think a label fits in to the musical landscape?
Well we still feel like we’re going it alone anyway. It’s that type of vibe. It’s a renowned label and the guy Renaat is a really great guy to work with and he’s our manager as well and it’s part of him just being our manager that there’s talk of us forming a record label within his record label so we did it all sort of together and we focused in that way. We still have a really small team working anyway so it doesn’t feel like we’re on any major record label so we feel like we’re all pushing for the same goals. There’s no limousines or nothing like that. You’re still getting up driving to your gig, going to do your recording so it still sits on the songs for us and we know we still have to keep coming up with the songs and that’s the best thing about it. Whereas if you’re on some massive big record label and you’re doing some promo thing there’s gonna be fifty people you don’t know running around the place whereas we just know five/six people work with us and they’ve been with us for the last 2 years now.
So you can make sure everyone’s pulling their weight with such a small, close knit group.
Once it’s small nobody can hide or lie. They know where you are you know where they are and everyone works for the same goal. You still go through the same shit. We still argue about what songs we want but that would be mostly it, arguing over songs, stuff like that. Whereas in a big massive label I’m sure the arguments would be over something completely different, irrelevant. So it’s good, we still feel like we’re on the. Well we know where we are, we’re right on the floor so trying to push our way up from where we’re at.
And then over the summer you played the second largest stage at this year’s Oxegen. How do you feel that went?
That was crazy because we haven’t played there before. Most bands that start of will play in a tent or something like that so we were just as shocked when we got word we were playing the fucking big stage.
Yeah, the usual route for an Irish band would be to win a battle of the bands that will get them in the New Bands tent.
That’d be normal type of route to go. We don’t know why they put us up there so, but I mean man you’re gonna do a gig aren’t ya, you’re not gonna complain about it.
No you’re not gonna say no to a stage that size.
It was pretty cool, we had the set sorted out, we only had a certain amount of time but it was great too that we demoed a new song. It all went out live on radio too so it was pretty cool.
And even playing to a new crowd, a crowd you might not play to at one of your own gigs.
That’s it like, you’re playing to completely different people and in the pissing rain and you’re not even concerned about the crowd so you’re saying to yourself what’s the song gonna sound like coming out of these speakers in the rain and you can’t hear it anyway you know. It was probably one of the coolest things we’ve done as a band so far just to come out of nowhere and stand on that stage. People were probably wondering the same as us, what are these doing here. It was definitely worth it. It was cool.
And then on the non musical side of things, you’re working with some pretty names, like for the photography you have Jill Furmanovsky and you have Storm Thorgerson on the visuals. How did that come about, and how does it feel to be working with people who’ve been on the top of their game for decades now.
That’s a weird one because with Jill the photographer we needed pictures taken for an early EP release so we were just looking through different albums and seeing who was taking the photographs and Jill kept popping up with the Clash and fucking all sorts of people like Oasis so we said we’ve got to try her for the craic like cos we had to go and see who we wanted to get. So we just sent an email to Jill and sent her the music first and she really like it and would love to come. So she came to Ballyliffen where we’re from and that’s where we did the first photoshoot.
She came all the way to Donegal did she?
She flew over yeah. Well the guy on the label flew her over. We thought we’d go to London and stand on a couple of streets looking cool but it wouldn’t have anything to do with us. So she came to Ballyliffen and we went around some places that she liked, she hadn’t been there before and let her work away. That was pretty cool and with Jill we just talked about the album cover and she wanted to know if we wanted to have photos of the band or what way we wanted to work with it. Me and Den didn’t really want to have a picture of the band you know just sitting at a fucking bus stop or whatever it is. So we were saying that we were maybe gonna go down more artwork and an art cover and she was the one who brought up Storm Thorgerson who we knew anyway from all the Pink Floyd stuff. So we contacted Storm through Jill. We were recording in London and Jill arranged a meeting with Storm. He’s a really cool character so we went and we sat down and he took us though loads of his artwork that he’s done with all these legends when artwork was important on an album. So he really liked the music and had his ideas of what would be a good cover and we were going to hand it over to him. We weren’t that concerned about what we put on the cover really as long as it’s relevant to the songs.
You were happy to let him have his say once he heard the music
If you’re gonna do something with someone like Storm, you can give him an idea of what you want but at the end of the day he is one of the last great album artists in the UK, maybe on the planet at the minute. Everybody knows him and at some stage wants to work with him or doesn’t wanna work with him for that reason so we just gave him the songs and said look, whatever comes out of your head and he shot some ideas over and back with us. We met him last week in London and it was pretty cool man.
What would your musical ambitions for the future be?
Musical ambitions. I don’t know man. Well, we just finished this album and it’s not out yet. It doesn’t come out till March so we’re working on the next album but I suppose at the minute we’re just interested in playing as many gigs. All a band really wants to do is play gigs and record music and at the minute we’re doing that. So we’re going on to record the next album, we’re going on to play a lot of gigs, promote the first album so we’re doing what we want to do. As far as looking way down the road in the future, you shouldn’t do that, you mightn’t like what you come up with so we don’t look at it that way. Well I don’t anyway.
Taking it one day at a time are you?
Taking it one album at a time.