The Blindboy Podcast - Hozier

Episode Date: December 8, 2020

To celebrate this podcast having 25 million listens. I have a chat with Irish artist Hozier. We speak about music, songwriting, folkore and divining water. Good craic Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Welcome to the Blind Boy Podcast, you endless Brendas, you teary Kierans, welcome. We are celebrating this week 25 million listens to this podcast. This podcast is just over two years old and 25 million listens, which I never expected never expected that would happen but here we are there's been no advertising for the podcast I haven't plugged it I haven't put any money into pushing it

it's all word of mouth it's all because of ye listening to the podcast and suggesting it to people and suggesting it to friends and suggesting it to friends and it's gone from just a little thing in Ireland to now being completely global

and that's why it's got 25 million listens so thank you so much to anyone who's enjoyed the podcast and listened to it and told someone else about it so to celebrate 25 million listens I decided I would show ye a live interview that I recorded

a little while back with Hosier Hosier you know who fucking Hosier is, he's one of the biggest musical artists in the world alright and we had a fantastic chat and one thing I'll say about Hosier an incredibly

compassionate and beautiful person but most importantly a real artist an artist to the core in the way that he views the world and himself he is an artist straight up

if you're a brand new listener right here at the Dabin you're here because of Hosier, you're very welcome. What's the crack? How are you getting on? When you're finished listening, please consider subscribing to the podcast and listening to a few other of my episodes. I've got loads.

And I think if you're a fan of Hosier, you'll enjoy my podcast because Hosier is on this podcast because he's a he listens to this podcast this is a podcast that he listens to and that's why we're chatting here today so thank you here we go boom all right hosier how's it going from bray what's the crack nothing much all's good all's good can't complain How are you keeping? I'm not too bad. I'm, I'm, do you know what I'm doing? Do you know what I do every single day?

I recognize that being alive contains a certain amount of suffering. It's inevitable. And once I do that, then I'm kind of okay, you know? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I, I, that's a good, it's a good way to to look at it I have been um not for this reason now I just I'm doing it because of other reasons and my friends are into it but I I used I love swimming but I've been swimming trying to keep

it up through as the weather gets colder yeah and um and part of that that is if you not even suffer, but just experience the discomfort of it. You're talking about jumping into the freezing cold water. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, I can understand that. Yeah. And then, and know that that discomfort isn't going to kill you, you know, and you're kind of, you're hesitant at first. And then for the rest of the day, you feel just that little bit more capable, you know. You see, you're lucky because you're And then for the rest of the day, you feel just that little bit more capable, you know. You see, you're lucky because you're up there near the coast.

That's it, yeah. And so I have a similar enough thing with my life where, so instead of jumping into the ocean to experience that cold, I'd go for a run in the freezing rain because it's limerick, you know. Yeah, yeah. I actually, I tried. So the one thing I do have access to is the Shadow River. And I once tried to, like, copy the people up in Bray.

Fuck it, man. You know, I'm going to get cold inside in this river. Yeah. I ended up, so what I did is I started, I didn't have the courage to completely go into the water. So what I did is, on part of my run, because I'm trying to suffer like you were saying when you get up in the morning

and you're drenched wet and you're freezing cold and you're experiencing physical discomfort but just at the limit it wakes you up it makes you appreciate things and it means as well that

not much can stress me in the rest of my day if I've just ran for an hour in the freezing cold yeah 100% but I did started doing press ups on the river right yeah Not much can stress me in the rest of my day if I've just ran for an hour in the freezing cold. Yeah, 100%. But I did start doing press-ups on the river, right? Yeah. And then I ended up getting this very unique fungus on my hand.

You can only get from doing press-ups on a fucking riverbed. It's like shit that Vikings used to get, you know? From hanging around riverbed and it's like shit that vikings used to get you know from hanging around riverbeds so that that put an end to my it was just itchy

itchy on both hands anytime you've got an ailment and it's on equal sides of your body yeah you kind of go right

something's up here so yeah turns out I was fucking big pretentious prick down doing precepts on the river trying to fucking make spiritual contact with an otter. You know?

That is fascinating. How did you find out? Did you look it up or did you get it tested? I had to go to a doctor. I had to go to a doctor. And I was just like, my hands are unbelievably itchy and it's localized entirely around my palms. Right.

And then he says to me, are you doing any fishing? Right. I said, I don't have interest in fishing, but I have been doing press-ups on a riverbed. And then he started roaring laughing. I said, yeah, you caught this off a riverbed. So that put an end to it, you know? Yeah.

But, so I don't think there's much, I don't think there's great health benefits in jumping around rivers. But there is, there is health benefits up in, like you're jumping into the salt water like you do you wear a wetsuit now

do you wear a wetsuit I don't the most the most I have invested into is because the pain on the far side of the swim is the worst part

so it's not even pain it's just like so what do you do you jump into the ocean pretty much I actually where I there's a walk in

there is areas where I could jump off the rocks but I would just walk in off the shore but um yeah and i think you just brace yourself you try to prep the body for the shock and then the most i've invested in is um wetsuit boots so yeah and it's just so that there's a rubber sole on coming out of the water you don't want yeah that stuff on your feet man the stones just yeah it's when you're that cold, you're hypersensitive. So you're, and that's a luxury, you know, that I just leaned into recently. So I don't come from a culture of jumping into, we'll say, the ocean because it's a brave thing.

I do know what it feels like to go into freezing cold water. And do you know when it feels like your chest is being hit with a mallet? Yeah, yeah. Do you ever get used to that? Is that always something that you have to prep yourself every morning? Yeah, the shock is always, it's never not cold, if you get me. And it is wild because you feel your whole kind of body tighten and you can kind of feel your your internal organs going

into just going you know just going uh i don't know just kicking into overdrive you can kind of feel uh the blood flow differently and stuff like that so and that is a rush and there's a spike of adrenaline and a spike yeah what are you chasing what's the what's the the dragon that you're chasing there i think it is i think it is adrenaline i the way i would i would view it and i was gonna just say about running why i have such so much more admiration for actually for what you're doing like running in in cold weathers there is you can stop at any point when you're running when you're when you're you know what i mean so you there requires a conscious decision i'm going to continue i'm going to push through this, especially that first five minutes of a run.

Oh yeah, that's not pleasant. It's not pleasant at all. Whereas once like that, it's, it's the kind of, it's a cheating man's way of, of achieving that mindful, I'm in my body now experience, you know? And I think because once you jump in the water, getting out of it is, is, getting out of it is unthinkable. Because especially if there's wind, the water actually currently, as well too in the mornings, is of a higher temperature than the actual, especially you get up in the morning.

So you achieve a comfort. So you're now in the water and your body is surrounded by this freezing water, but there's a comfort there and outside the water is more harrowing. 100%, especially in the wind. So the water is actually warmer than the wind chill. So once you're in, it's like the endorphins have hit, the adrenaline hits immediately after a few seconds. And then you're just splashing around, having a nice time, enjoying the light on the water

and you're feeling very present and you're feeling very alert and you're feeling very grateful i have to say it's you feel very connected yeah and so i think it's the easy man's way of achieving what the the five minute ten minutes i think you run something like 10k i do i do 10k i do like um an hour and what i'm searching for is it's it's horrible at the start I don't know how you do it it's it's I'm used to doing it I I it man I just get a very present mindful yeah thing at about 20 minutes in and you know it's one of these things where it's like technically I'm I'm hurting myself I'm putting my body through pain but it just I feel alive I feel

the type of alive that I used to take for granted when I was a child when you're a child you feel like that all the time when you're hopping

with energy you know you think back to when you were a child and just the amount of things you would do in one day I remember being like six

and you have to run to the shop yeah yeah what the fuck is that like can you imagine now I want sweets Remember being like six and you have to run to the shop. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The fuck is that like? Can you imagine now? I want sweets. I'm running.

It's brinting. You used to run everywhere. Like, what the fuck is that? No one's telling you to do it. It's just, I must run. Yeah, totally. And I'm trying to revisit a bit of that. Because that then, for my well-being, for my mental health, if I have a bit of that because that then for my well-being for my mental health

if I have a bit of that in my day the little things the things that I interpret as suffering but aren't an annoying email a shitty comment online some work that I have to do that I don't really want to do

these things are now manageable because I've just ran in the freezing cold rain this morning and I have this wonderful sense of completion and achievement that I had in the morning. And now I'm capable, I'm functional. If I don't do it, if I, the opposite of getting up for a run for me is staying in bed and just looking at my phone. Yeah.

If I do that, man, I'm not going to have a good day. Yeah, you're not wrong. The smallest tasks will seem impossible. Yeah. phone yeah yeah if i if i do that man i'm not gonna have a good day yeah you're not the smallest tasks will seem impossible yeah do you know so i suppose that's why i do it um could you imagine i just consider do you imagine how much crack it would be if adults maintained uh do you imagine like just climbing on things because you think you can like you know when you're six years old and you're just you have to clamber on things. Do you imagine? But that's, man,

like, I'm hugely interested in that now. Carl Jung, the psychologist Carl Jung was big into that. Carl Jung used to make time in like, up into his 80s,

he would make time every single day to just get down on his knees and play with mud and sticks. Wow. So that he can access what he's calling the free child. Right, okay. And the free child is,

it's, you know, if you're writing a song and you get to that lovely place where you completely leave your body and you leave your mind and you're existing only in the music, that's the free child that's that's free of ego free of worrying about what other people think free of worrying about what you think about yourself and it's this wonderful land which is for me if i'm if i'm doing anything

creative that's what i'm chasing yeah flow it's called yeah but i try and exist as much as possible not as much as possible I try and make time in my day for being a free child yeah and the thing is

with adulthood and it's something I'm thinking a lot about recently sometimes we get fooled into this performance of what an adult is do you know what I mean

yeah absolutely you've got to be real serious yeah you've got to be polite. Because for me at the moment, something I'm doing at my time during quarantine is I'm making live music to video games.

I've enjoyed some of this now, I have to say. Did you see some of this? I've seen it on Instagram. Yeah, I've seen it in clips. And yeah, to Red Dead, which is... I must meet you online at some point. I've never played it online. Yes, that'd be good, Craig. We could write songs together played Red Dead Redemption. Yes, that'd be good, Craig. We could write songs together on Red Dead Redemption. Yeah, that'd be great, Craig.

That'd be good, Craig. Little duo. It's fantastic. And I have to say, yeah, it's a great bit of crack. Thank you very much. I'm really enjoying it, yeah. Really enjoying it. What I'm trying to do with that is I'm trying to be free child.

I'm on a video game exploring a digital wilderness with my guitar trying to write things that are really, really silly and I'm trying to move away from what is considered appropriate adult behavior. And sometimes I get comments

from people who'd be the same age as me saying, would you fucking grow up? What are you doing? Or some people think I'm having a nervous breakdown. You know what I mean?

They're just the idea of a man in his 30s on the internet writing songs about a video game is so strange to him.

And the only reason it's strange is that it flies in the face of the performance of adulthood. We're expected to perform

as adults. And adulthood for me has nothing to do with how serious you are or how polite you are. It has to do with how well you understand your emotions. You know, that's adulthood for me. Do I understand my emotions?

And am I not relying upon the approval of other people for my self-esteem? Yeah. I mean, that's a huge one. That is a huge one. How does that work for you now man because it's something i wanted to ask like um i you're fucking you're famous now you're fucking famous you read about yourself in the fucking paper right i i don't understand it yeah how does it work for your self-esteem? How are you supposed to become someone who is just trying to be compassionate, someone whose sense of self-worth comes from within and all of a sudden now you get to read about yourself in the paper?

I don't think I've really mastered, really mastered that. And I don't think I've really spent enough time sitting with it and maybe doing the work that needs doing on that. Because it is a challenge and some days are great and some days are good and some days aren't. What would you find particularly hurtful? I don't know. I think, yeah, I think it's learning to step away. Like the kind of comments online is, is a thing that, you know, you, you have to be aware, look, you're in a space where people just say shit about you. And that is, that is weird. And it's look, that's them. That's, and, and then making the decision also for your own self and for your own health that you don't you don't you shouldn't go looking for that.

And also you shouldn't you shouldn't be reading it. And so there's a lot of it. As you say, like a lot of it is work that you have to achieve for yourself that you're not not deriving that self-esteem from from what other people think of you. At times I do. I think being an unknown and going back to being being the kind of underdog is a wonderful time because you have that freedom and you have i like when i think back to what i was kind of was going through my head releasing some of the first some of the first musics it was just like a sense of you know i didn't think i would have an audience

either way so it kind of felt like fuck fuck it, I'll do this thing. I had written, I had spent years in the kind of development, writing songs that I thought people wanted to hear. And then I started, you know, but I feel like that's something I could do. Were you trying to do more poppier stuff at the start? At the start, possibly, yeah. Only because you're kind of, but this is stuff I never released, you know. When you say development

now were you like working with labels were you someone who was considered to be in development with a label or was this something you were doing by yourself

it was just something I was doing by myself I use that term it's a very industry term yeah but I think what did I do in the early years

I think I got a I got a who in your mind would you have liked to have sound like at that time like on Who in your mind would you have liked to have sound like at that time? Like on the radio what space

were you trying to occupy? I didn't think I didn't think initially that let's say when we let's see what was the first single that I ever released was Take Me To Church

which ended up being a big ended up being a hit. At that stage I didn't think it was going to be like a radio song. And I think the producer also, I remember having a chat about it and we're going, look, here's a song that's going from 3-4 to 4-4 and has all these weird angular chromatic noises in it. And it's about the institutionalized Roman Catholic church wrapped up in a song about riding. I don't think it'll, it'll, it'll do well on morning radio. Um, and you know, it would have been fair, fair enough to, to assume that either, but like thinking that it would fill it, fall into some

sort of, uh, indie or alternative space. I think the songwriters that I I've always admired were people like Tom Waits and huge, like Paul Simon fan as well too. And I, you know, I listened to, what is it about Tom Waits? What is it about Tom Waits? It's just a mad twist. It's a kind of carnival mirror through which he kind of sees, he kind of reflects back to the world. There was, there's also elements of like his kind of character songs and his, and his, um, exactly. That's what I was going to say. The cat, because for me,

I find comfort in character, whatever I'm doing, whether it's writing books or whatever I find and same with Randy Newman, Randy Newman and Tom. Oh, Randy Newman. Jesus. Yeah. Yeah. You like Randy Newman too? Big time. Yeah. Big time. And he's a very brave writer. And again, here's a man who just doesn't give a shite what people, you know, I think there's, there's great, there's like a terrifying freedom

to some of his work you know what I mean in some of the in some of the the way he went about like he like is it on Sail Away

on the Sail Away album it's like here's a 30 second song and here's a minute and a half and there's no chorus here and it's just you know here's like God's song was a big one for me

oh Jesus actually I can hear God's song now and take me to church yeah like yeah fucking hell that's a fantastic song isn't it stunning

stunning bit of work yeah Jesus for people who don't know that's a song where Randy Newman wrote it from the point of view of God

and his utter contempt for humanity it's beautiful it's mind blowing I recoil in the vileness of thee is the is the yeah and how we all wake up in heaven at the prayers It's beautiful. It's beautiful. It's beautiful. It's beautiful. It's beautiful. It's beautiful.

It's beautiful. It's beautiful. It's beautiful. It's beautiful. It's beautiful. It's beautiful. It's beautiful. It's beautiful.

It's beautiful. It's beautiful. It's beautiful. It's beautiful. It's beautiful. It's beautiful. It's beautiful. It's beautiful.

It's beautiful. It's beautiful. It's beautiful. It's beautiful. It's beautiful teenager. And I know that's okay. So he was kind of my Marlon Manson or something. He was like my treehouse where I'd go and it was like this weird twisted place. And when you're a teenager, you want to hear that the world is an awful place because you feel awful about the world and you feel awful about yourself. So Tom Waits with a song like God's Away on Business. Yes.

The first lyrics are, I'd sell your heart to the junk man for a book. It's just this very twisted character who's like there's no he always had this this perfect ugliness or a crookedness to his work which i just was very unique to to his own self he lent into the the the traditionally what we might like the unpretty sound of his voice. And he kind of just lent into that. I think the character thing. There's that too. Yeah.

The character thing's fucking. Yeah. And another thing that one thing that Randy Newman said about his own work. And when I heard Randy Newman say it, it changed my view of songs. Randy Newman said he wants to elevate songwriting to where short stories are. Right. So he's like, stop looking at my songs as songs. They're short stories with music.

Yeah. And when I took that lens. Yeah. Because there's a freedom that literature has that sometimes music doesn't. No. Like if a songwriter writes a song, you immediately assume, oh, that's about the songwriter. The songwriter, when they say I, the I is the songwriter. Yeah.

Whereas with a short story writer you can write the whole thing as I and we just understand it's not literally the author they're just doing it in first person 100%

and both Tom Waits and Randy Newman's work I viewed them as short stories yeah and then that gives me a freedom like there's a band I'm listening to now

at the moment actually that I enjoy called Whitney have you heard Whitney? I've heard of Whitney I think their first album I've listened to. I haven't listened to much of their, I'm not sure what they've released since, but yeah, really enjoyed it. They're a good crack.

They sound a bit like kind of America or bread. But one thing that I found interesting was they were in a couple of bands beforehand and Whitney is actually a character they've invented, which is like a kind of, a kind of a Tom Waits type character. Sounds like just someone who wanders and drinks a lot of whiskey. And that's what Whitney is. It's not them. I see.

They've created a songwriter. And within that, then they have this freedom to write. Yeah. Yeah. David Bowie as well. Yeah. Very character based throughout his,

that's actually, how much of Hosier is a character compared to Andy? That'd be a tricky one and one I would struggle to answer. I think especially on the second album

and maybe this wasn't something that I didn't really convey all too much or I just assumed would be picked up but the way I viewed the second album was that every song was a very different character or was all viewing a very sort of doom and gloom, end of the world type feeling from a very different perspective. And in some of the songs, there's certain lines that reference lines from other songs and like little nods to it. There's certain lines that reference lines from other songs and like little nods to, but they're all sitting around what, what I kind of described as the same kind of bonfire of our, of our times.

We're all kind of watching the world burn and we're all commenting on it or we're all trying to, and it was sort of, I suppose, influenced by, um, that how we're experiencing, uh, the, the kind of tumult of of the world world through a kind of a hyper real lens and everybody's you know how everybody's kind of commenting on it so some some of the some of the voices on that the second album were hopeful and whatever and some were were not and some were happy about about the world burning and some certainly weren't but um i think there's and i'm sure you you would find also, there is a freedom in the character thing, but you do find, and maybe you have a love for your creation

and you have a love, because you find elements of yourself and you know, it's, I don't know if you view your short stories or your books nearly like they're your children, but in a feeling something like that, that you love them for what they try to achieve, what they do achieve and what they. Unconditional love. Yeah. There's a.

Man, that's a fucking beautiful way to look at art. Yeah. I, I, I know it sounds, it might sound pretentious and sounds a bit. No, no, I understand that completely, man. That's a struggle for me. Yeah. To allow your work. Because when you love a human, when you truly love love a human you love all aspects of them including

what they perceive to be flaws about themselves you just love it all absolutely and that for me is i would love to completely be at that place with my work do you know what i mean yeah i am on until someone criticizes it and then when I see someone criticizing it, I focus on that little critique. Art, listen, yeah. And you want to jettison. How are you for that? That fucking breaks my heart because

I love the process of creating. I love it to bits. And then you put the work out and it's critiqued. And I understand that's the game. You put work out and the work gets critiqued. That's the fucking game. Yeah.

But how do you avoid, number one, the heart of it, but number two, this is the kicker. How do you fucking avoid a negative critique of your work? How do you keep that out of your creative space? Because that's what will stop you creating. You know, I talked to another musician about this. I won't mention him by name, but I remember having a good chat with another guy my own age, and he was... I don't know how you stop yourself getting hurt by it.

I think after the fact, initially when you see it, it's tough. I think... I was talking to a musician. It can be potentially... Are you talking now about a bad review like a bad review can be tough yeah it can be a tough thing to read but it's one of those things

intellectually you distance yourself from but at the same time you have to if you're going to be brave about it you have to intellectually distance yourself from good reviews too but I think that's the yes

you know naturally now we do our best to do that but that naturally when did you learn that because that's the one that a lot of people don't know that if if you don't want to be hurt by the bad you really can't let yourself feel good by the good i i i think i kind of naturally fell into that and i look this might just be tied in with uh like uh a healthy a healthy lack of self-esteem. But I think, you know, that kind of thing

when people are kind of patting you on the back when things are going well for you and complimenting you and stuff like that. I just never, I never really was able to internalize praise. Wow. All that well, you know. So I think...

So you've made low self-esteem work for you. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So it's like, you know, but that's the other, the second edge of that sword Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So it's like, you know, but that's the, the, the other, the double, the second edge of that sword is that, uh, when, when something comes in, that's negative, uh, it, you already believe it. And so, you know, or you're very quick, you're very,

you're very quick to believe it, you know? So you, you can, it enforces in you something that you've already tried to hold onto for yourself. And I, I fucking missed the trick, you were genius with the mask A lot of people say that to me, the amount of people who are in the public eye that say to me, you fucking back up with that thing You absolutely did Lovely quiet pints, I can do what I want, I can queue

for my own gigs No one knows who the fuck I am No, we were thinking ahead there, It was great. Actually, yeah. How do you find that, man? Because you're very tall. Yeah, no, I stick out like a...

You're like six foot three or something, aren't you? Yeah. Yeah, I'm about six five. I think... Do they leave you alone in Bray? Yeah, like usually locally, like it's hello and how are you? It's never too bad.

And I think as time has gone on, it hasn't been too bad. I think at first when you're this rare apparition, it just appears, it's like, Jesus, there he is in a spa. And, you know, and it's like, yeah, of course, I have to pop into spa or whatever it is for the person. You know, I think initially you are just an odd apparition and it's just the novelty of you appearing in space. And then you have to come to the, it's just coming to terms with me being in Spar is not a novelty.

But for them, let's say you've been wherever the heck or in that pub or in that bar or in that restaurant, it's fine. I will say at first I found it really, really difficult and I just kind of just pushed through it, I guess. And, but I still, I think, yeah, I of just pushed through it I guess and but I still I think yeah I've just pushed it just it's gotten easier you know what I mean being being recognized I at first I think as I was super self-conscious and yeah um I found that I don't know if I just I just found that you didn't feel more it I think if I was to just hazard a guess as to why it feels uncomfortable, I think if you walk into a room and everybody stares at you,

and they're not staring at a badness, but I think your instinctual reaction is one of being threatened or feeling alienated and feeling outside. because it's not normal it's it's in what other situation the only other reference is like i don't know you walk into the classroom when you're five and you're after dragging dog shit in with you yeah yeah you know what i mean so when it's because i understand that feeling too and what one thing that I I always speak with people who who have a bit of notoriety is

how do you feel when when you meet somebody now and they know who you are you don't have to put in the effort of showing them you're a nice person anymore it's like they've made their mind up already and they're like oh it's

Hozier my god and the kind of normal human thing of here's a stranger now i have to gain this stranger's trust by being sound yeah and prove to them that i'm worth talking to and once you become famous that goes yeah and that's it that's it that's a big journey of being human how do you find that? you have to work backwards yeah it's a it's a funny one I think I'm a bit more at ease when people haven't a clue or don't give a shite who I am

if that makes sense it's just I don't know it just feels more natural and you're at an even I don't know I just find that far easier more natural and you're, you're at an even, I don't know. It's just, I just find that far easier. Um, are you still able to get that in Ireland? Yeah, you can in certain places. Absolutely. And like, you know, locally of a lovely, um, lovely community where I'm living and like you go out to places like, like Dingle or something like that, or you go out to certain places and it might be a novel like, Oh Jesus,

it's yourself. Uh, but it's not there's something john i don't know john moriarty had said about about living in a world of mirrors that he's referring to being in connemara in the in the pitch black night of a kind of a night of a kind of a darkness that you don't really experience all that much. And he was walking through the hills one day and he thought, my God, like all mirroring is gone from the world, is what he described it as. A night that is so dark that like mirrors themselves would be useless. They reflect no light.

There's no light to reflect. He would not. So he's lost himself in that darkness. But he's referring to living in a world of mirrors in that we all mirror each other in some way or another. Your mother mirrors to you that you are a child and you'll always be a child in your mother's eyes, I suppose, in some regard. And people tell us who we are all the time when we walk through the world, you know what I mean? we are all the time um when we walk through the world you know what i mean uh and so your identity is kind of is kind of bounced to you um as as you go about as you go about the world and i think that if there's anything that being recognized um thing is it is a challenge because you you are

you're you're seeing yourself mirrored in other people, but they have ideas of who you are or it's because they've seen you on this thing or they've seen this element of you or they've seen you on TV, but it's never yourself. You know what I mean? It's a spectacle of Hosea. It's the spectacle.

Exactly, yeah, exactly. So you kind of see a distorted mirror of some way, but it's yeah exactly so and and the danger is is how do you then separate yourself from the spectacle and not become the spectacle or consumed by the spectacle yeah keeping those two things separate yeah it's yeah that's that's a tricky thing that is it that is a tricky one and where where does i don't know i think over time i've become very protective of my internal life as it were and and my immediate external life so my you know my friends and family i try to keep myself to myself a little bit and not not not court attention too much that's

that's um not for the purposes of of doing something that i've that i'm definitely doing for either work or or whatever else you know like a really tall in you exactly yeah yeah yeah are you into anya um i i have now i haven't lent into her kind of back catalogue but um like i've a lot of respect for the kind of the the sound that she had that she's kind of chased and cultivated and created I think it's fantastic I mean

I think Enya should be viewed the same way that Brian Eno is viewed yeah as in Enya's called New Age yeah yeah

why isn't she called Ambient do you know what I mean yeah very true it's like Ambient is one of these phrases that it's like satire versus comedy. When somebody says something is satire,

then you go, oh, it's the clever type. When someone says ambient, it's like, it's the clever type. But when they say new age, it's like, no, that's what you put on in the background when you're getting a massage. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, it's very true. And I just, I think Enya deserves her place as a,

she took fucking Irish folk in the 80s mixed it with synthesizers and was like here you go, here's something new that no one's ever heard before yeah, very true your process for songwriting what I'd like to know

is what do you do let's just say you decide I'm going to try and write a song this evening, what do you do? Let's just say you decide I'm going to try and write a song this evening. What do you do? My God, I wish I was thinking recently of just leaning more into just start, pick an idea and just go with something. I'm quite a slow starter and I can be quite a slow self starter. quite a slow starter and I'm quite as I can be quite a slow self starter and um and having sitting let's say sitting down go muddling around with ideas and then you stumble upon as you say you stumble piano or guitar what would be your first um at the moment it would it has been piano

recently okay and if it's guitar it would be in some odd tuning that I'm not comfortable with I think part of the reason for that is that I'm not good at piano and if I choose a tuning it might be one that I've never really played before in and I do think that there's something nice about figuring out something

that you haven't played before yourself, that you haven't heard yourself play before and your hands are going to places that you haven't played before yourself uh that you haven't heard yourself play before and your hands are going to places that they haven't gone and okay right now i i am kind of enjoying that a little bit um and i just find that i don't know i just find that you you fall on to something that feels fresher and more exciting to you in that moment because it's look it's you're not terribly there's a lot to be said about not being a master at something at that big time and and again like now now Randy Newman is a master at the piano I would say he's he's pretty shit hot Tom Waits is not a master of an instrument Tom Waits is not someone I would describe as as a

a brilliant musician he's a competent musician who's an incredible songwriter. Yeah, yeah. Same with, for me, Lou Reed, Bob Dylan. Same carry on, you know? Yeah, yeah, yeah, very true. Neil Young as well. Jesus, Neil Young, sometimes you listen to him playing guitar and he sounds like a lad at a party at two in the morning, you know?

But he makes it work. We're just going to take a little break from the interview right there, right, a small little break for about a minute because we're going to do what we call the ocarina pause on this podcast basically digital adverts are inserted and i don't want to surprise you with this big loud advert out of nowhere so i'm going to play a little ocarina a spanish clay whistle or a south american clay whistle and when you hear the ocarina you you're going to hear an advert and you won't be surprised by it a Spanish clay whistle, or a South American clay whistle. And when you hear the Ocorina, you're going to hear an advert and you won't be surprised by it. You're invited to an immersive listening party

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Check me out on Twitch. Check me out on Twitch. Three times a week. Hosier mentioned it earlier there. Three times a week on Twitch. What I do. Twitch.tv forward slash blind buy podcast. I'm doing a hyper real never ending musical. Where basically.

I. I write songs live to a video game to a live audience. So Wednesday, Thursday, Fridays, 8.30pm Irish time, twitch.tv forward slash the blind boy podcast. Come along and you can chat with me as well. I'm on live. You can chat with me. I'll chat with you. It's great crack. I'm just doing it for fun now at this point. You know, before I was like, this is my new thing now. This Twitch business. Fuck that. I'm just having crack. It's tremendous. I'm just doing it for fun now at this point. You know, before I was like,

this is my new thing now. This Twitch business. Fuck that. I'm just having crack. Three times a week, I have the best crack of my life. Talking to sound people and making music in Red Dead Redemption.

I love it. It's fantastic. So come join me. Like the podcast. Subscribe to the podcast. You know the crack. God bless you all. Let's go back to chatting with Hosier.

Do you... How do lyrics work? Do you... So, do you, like, find melodies when you're with the piano and then add the lyrics afterwards? Do you... Would a first...

A first demo, is it simply melody and music or do you actually try and get lyrics involved in the first demo? I would try. How far are they from the end result? Yeah, I would try to get lyrics involved by the first, by the end of the first demo. Maybe to its detriment, the first demos are usually, I've sat with them for such a long amount of time that I've probably over, overproduced them, if that makes sense. Wow. Or overthought about them, which creates a whole other problem called demo white what I would

refer to as demo white is which is then you fall in love with the demo and then when it comes to being in recording you're going oh there was something to the demo that I haven't got and you don't know if it was actually there or not yeah yeah exactly and yeah exactly it may not it's something that you've just sat with it for so long. But I would, I think the melody, if I'm playing around and it's, let's say I arrive on a guitar, a guitar riff or melody or something that feels nice or a piano line or piano,. It just comes to it. Or if you listen to it an amount of times, there's something that, I don't know if it's that thing of just getting out of the way of the music, but a certain progression wants a certain melody.

And that's just how it feels. And that's just maybe the intuition side of it. And sometimes a certain melody wants certain words um and you can feel the the somewhat the contours of be it vowel sounds or consonants when that that come with the melody and sometimes sometimes the melody comes with lyrics uh intact and that's a rare uh beautiful occurrence where it's just like you know you're you could be in the shower going for a walk and then a line hits you or something like that um does that line hit you with the melody it it can do it can do it's very often more often than not like a couplet or a few

words will just land into your head and you scribble them down and you scrap them in later on you kind of you find it find a home for them later uh sometimes yeah sometimes i think a melody will arrive and there's words they're either there are words that are leading you to other words or there are words that just make sense in that melody like you wouldn't hammer in that you just know that there's there's certain things that that work in in the contour and the shape of whatever thing has just landed is just passing through your head at that moment or whatever melody or whatever tune or whatever you want to call it um and i think it's just a case of following following that and letting it and letting it find itself and um what you're

describing there as well is it's one thing so there's this mystery of music right that I'm always trying to figure out like I can figure out why a song is catchy okay I can figure out okay that's a decent chord progression the melody is really really

catchy the one thing I can no matter how much I think about it I can't pinpoint the why is when a lyric and the cards and melody come together to form a new meaning yeah you know what i mean like like take me to church take me to church the actual lyric take me to church that sounds quite enthusiastic and happy as a set of fucking words but the way that you've combined it as a melody and with the chords you've now created a new meaning where i don't think i want to go to church right i don't know what the church he's talking about is whatever

fucking church this cunt is talking about it's not a good one and i don't want to be there and without even hearing the rest of the song pain is involved somehow and i know this like what what is that in between you've gotten take me to church and and something has happened in the middle with vibrations of air and now i understand a feeling of pain yeah what is that i don't know i don't know um it's i think think, I think the human voice has everything to do with it. And I think the way human beings hear human voices and how they express themselves. Yeah. I think they pick up on nuances there. And I think there's probably a lot to that.

There's all the ideas that, I mean, there's... There is a wail. You're definitely, there's a sense of wailing in how you sing that line. Yeah. And I've, like... Look, I've read that review as well, too, where it's like, you know, this...

A lot of wailing from this lad. So it's definitely... You know, I kind of have a voice that maybe lends itself to... But when I heard that wailing, then I saw something else where you said you were in the sun house. Yeah. saw that i was like fucking hell yeah there's sun house everywhere anytime i hear you hit certain notes i hear what sun house was trying to do and i'm a

huge sun house fan yeah yeah so so big time yeah and a lot of Delta Blues players was when I was 14, 15, I kind of fell head over heels for. And my dad was a big, my dad used to play drums in loads of blues bands, but he had a big collection. And this big kind of CD collection of like loads of kind of blues guys. So Robert Johnson, obviously everybody falls in love with him. And like Son House is a big one. Skip James has this kind of haunting. Skip fucking James man yeah with the piano and his lovely falsetto

yeah exactly and like not a lot of blues guys would sing in falsetto like that no he really stands out doesn't he Blind Willie Blind Willie McTell as well also

yes totally for that strange yeah man he used to he used to write songs on his mother's grave I didn't know that

yeah he used to write songs on his mother's grave and his ma died know that. Yeah, he used to write songs on his mother's grave and his ma died and I think he very much relied upon her for care. Right, okay. And there's so much of that sadness in his songs, but the way that he can inject sadness into music.

Yeah, yeah. And it's... What made you fall in love with Delta? Because I'm the same, like when I was a teenager, like a part of me was going, Jesus, these are really poorly recorded because they're from 1920.

I shouldn't like this. And I spent time getting over the fidelity of it. And then I just connected with whatever the fuck it was. I was like, oh my God. Yeah. And they're all using the same cards. Yeah.

But yet they're all so different. Yeah. And something deeply connected with me what was it for you with Delta Blues? I don't know if it's like a folk thing, I don't know if it's I think it is the bare bones sentiment

sorry, the bare bones of storytelling and the bare bones of musicianship and song craft and the bare bones of expressing something of musicianship and and and song craft and and the bare bones of of of expressing something is is at play there there's also i also had this appreciation i was probably being like a bit of a like a pretentious teenager into some to some degree kind of scoffing at music that um i just did yeah and you know I just wanted something that was not what, you know,

kids in my class were listening to and, and, and something that, that to me I could turn to and, and, uh, and probably projected, you know, all sorts of values that, well, this is something that's substantial and this is something that's, that's, and also, and I, there is some truth to that where this is folk, it was music you know it's folk blues yeah um and so it's it's you know it a lot of those recordings are our guys coming down from the city finding you know and commercializing uh what was what was folk music you know um and some of those songs could have been a half an hour long but we only heard the the three four minutes because that's all the technology would allow. Yeah, yeah, quite possibly.

And then I think also I just, I appreciated it then as like all of this other music, like be it rock and roll or pop music, it all was stemming from everything. Of course. It was all stemming from this, you know, and ever shall it be. Like that's the root.

That's the kind of the beginning point of Western pop music as we i believe as as we as we see it it all if you follow every thread it'll all go back to that 12 bar blues structure which became rock and roll which became uh you know or if it if we go to like soul music and everything that stemmed out of soul music goes back to gospel. And it is, it is that tradition of, of, of, of, of, of black music in America, you know, but, so I was kind of fascinated with that. I was fascinated with it as a, as a, as a, as a cultural entity as well. So just to take it there, so a lot of that is like gospel music is spiritual music. like gospel music is spiritual music.

Sun House is definitely spiritual music. And a lot of gospel performers will literally say, when I sing, it's not just me. I'm trying to get a spiritual communion here. Like I remember watching, it was like X Factor, right? It was like X Factor, but it was X Factor for gospel musicians. Wow, I'd say that's off the charts. It was, oh man, the standard of musicianship as a given. They were just, and gospel drummers are my favorite drummers, gospel drummers, my God.

But it was all these incredible acts and it was like an X Factor panel, but they weren't just being judged on how good they were. One of the criteria was whether the judges felt the presence of the Lord in the room. That's amazing. Yeah. And just no irony. It's just, I really felt the presence.

Yeah, yeah. And is there an element, like, do you consider a degree of Irish Catholic spirituality? Like, is there a spiritualism in what you're trying to do or even whether you intend to or not? That's a hard one. I wouldn't be so bold as to say

that there is, but I think there is. For me, I think creation, it can feel like, I think creation it's it can feel like I mean it's it's it's you know the the actual act of creating is it is is to me and I'm not saying anything like um I'm not kind of this is not hyperbole or it's not I'm not exaggerating it is I think one of the best feelings I've ever experienced in my life. And you probably would agree.

Me too. That's 100%. That's the feeling of flow. Yeah. When I'm writing, whatever, that is what I exist for. Yeah. And that, you know, when you feel like you've conceived of something in your mind. Yes.

That has not existed before. And you're holding it, this kind of seed of an idea that it could be anything at that point. You haven't quite fleshed it out yet. And the feeling afterwards of where the fuck did that come from? Yeah, yeah, totally. And it feels like you're standing with divining rods and there's something you can feel. You know what I mean? It's like it's pre-written.

Sometimes it's like it's pre-written and you're divining it from somewhere. Yeah, totally. And what's exciting about it i say if i was born 200 years ago i would literally think that it's god telling me stuff yeah and lance did seriously and lance absolutely did and they did um have you ever had a go at divining rods actually what as in literally trying to find water yeah with a few rods i think i haven't have you it's is that a brave thing thing? It's a Bray thing, yeah. If I ever have a hang, I'll take you out over the fields.

You've had a go at that, have you? I've had a go of it, actually, yeah. How did, is it real? Do you literally feel water? I swear to God. So, I was doing some, when I decided I was going to set up a home in Ireland. This is going completely off topic, so I'm really sorry. Fuck it, man. This is what I want to talk about, man. Do you think fucking Pitchfork are going to ask you about divine and water? They're not.

When I decided I was moving home, this is fucking mad. When you try to explain this to Americans as well, too, this is where they really just think that you're a fucking leprechaun that fell out of a forest there you go, that's the thing this is the thing because there is a perception of you in America so I see comments online from American people and it's like Hosier is this fairy

fairy god who lives underneath a waterfall and like I'm going I know what Wicklow looks like it's lovely, it's a lovely place but lads yeah come on and one thing I do love

is within our Irish culture yeah is our ability and capacity to speak about fairy forts and these things like this

and we can speak about it in the pub and we it's you can embrace it and understand it and you can be critical of it but at the same time

understand that it's part of our culture. So when you say to me, divining rods, I'm not going, shut the fuck up. Yeah, I want to know about this. Yeah, totally. Let's go, divining rods. Totally. I think there's something wonderful about it. And I think there's a constant duality.

And I look at, now I'm going off on one again. There's a constant duality to a lot of Irish thought and its values, where you can at one point value something and at the same time undermine it and scrutinize it to the nth degree. And I don't know if it's something to do with having to live under, let's say, brutal colonial rule, and then also the kind of shadow of the Catholic Church. That at one point point you have to maintain a sort of respect for something but at the same time a healthy disbelief or healthy contempt for something you know there's a but it could be how we speak english too they're like there's a theory about hiberno english and how we speak it like we contradict ourselves in the way that we speak

english we'll say something like are you going to the shop? You are. Yeah. So we've just asked and answered our own question. Yeah. And one theory I heard about that is like, it's just 800 years of not knowing which answer

will get us a box into the head from the landlord or from the soldier that we developed a way of speaking which contradicts itself and then we're perceived as stupid. Yeah.

Do you know what I mean? Yeah. Yeah. And having to codify, I mean, we have to codify everything. I'm codifying contradicts itself and then we're perceived as stupid yeah you know what i mean yeah yeah and having to codify i mean we have to codify everything i'm codifying um even like national pride into songs through ashlings and stuff like that so yeah pretending like it like there was a whole there's a whole genre of irish poetry and song which is called an ashling which is just a dream and it's it's a codified way of going, oh, Jesus, I saw a woman in a dream. But she always represents Ireland and she's always crying and she's always in bondage or tied up or in distress of some

kind, because it got to a point where, lads, you can't be singing about Ireland anymore, like legally, you know what I mean? When you ban that, there is that kind of... But again, I'm immediately thinking Robert Johnson, squeeze my lemon until the juice runs down my leg. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Because he can't be talking about sex, you know. I don't know. There's loads to unpack there.

And then also, and I think it's a terrible, you know what, man? One thing I'd love to do over the next few years is just go back and learn Irish again properly. But it's like that kind of duality. And I'll go back to the Divine and Rosna in a second. Cause I think you will get a kick out of this, but, um, the, like in the Irish language, the fact that like, uh, Lannan, let's say like the word for lover, uh, or beloved, it also means, you know, a chronic syndrome or a chronic affliction. You know what I mean? Lovely. Yeah. It's there's always this, there's always this nuance and this kind of, there's a dry, um, there's a dry sort of self

awareness and there's, there's a kind of a contradiction allowed there in, in the language, you know what I mean? That, that, uh, and like, like Kayla or something could be a husband, it could be a law, it could be, you know, your partner, but it's also in contextually, it could be an opponent, you know, it could be, it's your enemy, uh, but it's also your, your, your, your, literally your spouse, you know? Um, and I think there's, there's, there's, there's an acceptance of nuance. Yeah. 100% ambiguity. 100%. And, and, uh, which would be very confusing for people watching from the outside. Yeah. Yeah. 100%. So in that same way, as I say, you could say fairy forts.

And I have a respect for fairies, you know, at the same time that I don't believe in the supernatural. Yeah, but I want to... I love fairies and fairy forts and all this stuff because it's ours

and someone tried to take it away once. Right. So I don't have to believe in fairies but i'll sit down for an hour and listen to someone talking about them and give it the utmost of respect because it's ours yeah yeah yeah it's a fact it's it i it is and the more i look the more i read about it and learn about it and then also how it came to be that we imagine these like ancient neolithic burial sites as a course you're just like where where do those come from if you're a celtic society or whatever and then what what's this thing that has always been there in all written history in all oral history that we have there's this structure there and it it it was put there by somebody and it looked it just looks like

it's magic you know what i mean and don't f with it, lads. That's an early people. That's the first. And the idea that the first people of Ireland, the kind of the Danann, what are they? Two of the Danann? Yeah, two of the Danann. That they, you know, they were the, you know, as time went on and we became a Christianized society, as I understand it, there is a theory that we just um they were kind of they became what was then known as the fairies later on you'd have a

better i'm sure you've talked to lads who would contradict that or maybe that or maybe i'm completely off off the beat completely incorrect on that but but fairies being not just something that but you know it goes back a long long way and that I heard a similar thing about leprechauns, that leprechauns represented almost like a paleolithic form of human that was just really, really short that existed in Ireland. And then when modern humans came, there was these small little humans there, and they used to just get really angry at these at us right and perform tricks on them right okay like there's no proof to it it's just one thing i heard you know it's just like

that there was a race here already of of uh australopithecines or just hominids yeah yeah earlier versions of humans it's you know i wouldn't i wouldn't write that one down in the leave insert i need to hear about these divining rods. Oh yeah, sorry. When I decided to kind of move, you know, that I was, I had thought about, I was coming home from tour and I was like, well, where, you know,

I kind of pick a home for myself because I kind of went from, and this leans into what you were saying earlier on about how do you cope with, with let's say getting to the point where your name is in the paper and stuff like that. And I never really,

I never really did. It was kind of of like i went from being a broke college student on a college dropout to releasing a song that became this this hit and then it was just i was just catching up with myself the whole time you know i really was catching up with myself emotionally and energy wise and intellectually as well too because you must have been what 24 25 uh i was 20 yeah 24, 25 yeah Jesus that's a fucking yeah

at the same time I'm really glad that I was 24, 25 and not 17, 18 you know okay I wouldn't want to be and Jesus

I wouldn't want to be 17, 18 now in this world I would certainly want to be wouldn't want to be have that amount of eyes upon me

at 17, 18, 19 you know my heart breaks for someone like Billie Eilish my heart absolutely breaks for him to have that level of fame right now.

Yeah. The strength, the strength that that, I think that requires the pressure. And again, in this world, again, where, you know, you have your phone literally, if you want, like, unless you change it, it's buzzing at you every, every, you know, it's a direct line into the toxicity of you know of other

people's behavior and what they're saying about you you have a screen that you carry in your pocket all the time that if you if you look at it'll it'll tell you exactly all the nasty things people are saying about you not something we had to deal with when we were 14 15 school was tough enough you know no and i think so i you for teenagers, I think have a hard time. Anyway, what was I going to say? So coming home, needed a place to decide to, that I would make a home, that I was going to make a home in Ireland and settle into Wicklow. And there was a place I was looking at.

And there was supposedly a well on site or water moving underneath it. Underneath, it's like an undercourse is that what you is that what you refer to it as um and so uh i asked my uncle who has done a lot of building work over the years and he was kind of helping us out with kind of managing this product project and getting in the very early stages of of like okay well you know let's let's let's explore what's on on site let's find the well let's find the actual well itself and i was like well how do you do that surely there's a there's some sort of echo what did you x-ray the ground or do you survey it or it's like i you know just get it or just we'll just get a diviner on site

and see see what the crack is and like who crack is. So is the diviner advertising in the paper as a diviner or is he just a lad who's known locally as a diviner? He came to us through a... There was a contractor who was an expert in landscaping trees and stuff like that. And a really, really wonderful guy. And he works with this man. He was a much, much older gentleman. And I don't know if he's advertised in the paper.

I did come across a Diviner's Society on Facebook. I'm sure you can find it. So I'm sure it's an active advertised group. And I was like, are you sure you just, you know, on all the building works that you've done, like, is it still a common practice in Ireland that you might just, a man will just show up on site, walk around with some sticks in his hands and tell you where the whale was? And sure as, sure as hell, like he, he showed up and within, within a moment he, he had found it. And we, we dug there and, and first he had found it. And we dug there and first try, there was no hesitation,

there was no questioning. So he has two twigs in his hands. Essentially. And he's able to, he can tell by the way these twigs move whether there's water underneath the ground yeah and if it now so he had found the well i wasn't there right that he actually found the the well itself okay okay but he had showed up um i found it quite quickly but he did say he wanted to come back and speak to the owner and he said it was quite important okay and he kind of you know he felt obliged to do so yeah um and so i get that

message then through my uncle he's saying this guy wants to talk to you he said it's important he feels that there's uh something he needs to tell you a few things he wants to tell you about the site and how it how it pertains to you and i'm actually i'm just remembering a lot of this now so my uncle was saying listen I know you're busy but if you can make it down look you don't have to do it but at the same time I suppose it's

kind of like a Pascal's wager you know this it may be nothing but at the same time it would cost you nothing to just check it out you don't want to be 40 years old and some some bad stuff has happened to the site and you're kicking yourself yeah even if for no reason you're kicking yourself that you didn't listen to uh the man who who who um the diviner this kind of this magic man let's say yeah and um yeah, yeah, and so I kind of, I kind of pop into sight one day

and he's there and he's this lovely, sweet old man. And, and he was, he had sensed or he was of the mind that,

and again, this dude had just made a beeline for the well, boom, finds it. But he had sensed that, and this is, these are his words, that the water wasn't moving as it. But he had sensed that, and these are his words,

that the water wasn't moving as it wanted to move. Okay. And that under the ground, the water wasn't doing, wasn't flowing where it wanted to flow. And he was of the mind that some form of ritual or seance a long, long time ago had maybe taken place I mean

and again it's in a part where it's right near Castlefield yeah so there would have been communities in this place over you know centuries and centuries

yeah yeah thousands of years I would say or over a thousand years but he wanted to he said he could clear years but he wanted to he said he could clear it but he needed he needed me to be involved

right and he asked me to go and buy something that he could use as an offering that I could offer that he could use to clear the magic from the site

so you're now being asked to be part of an ancient ritual to make water flow correctly on where you're building your gaff. Which was wild and there was so much so many other things that he felt he wanted to tell me and we kind of spoke about

we spoke briefly about like I was just curious about, I was curious about him, I was curious about seven sons. I had been to a seven son years and years and years ago. Just again, as I said, I am a sceptic, but it is just that fascination with the, I suppose, with the folklore that this is tied into, that these things are tied into. Tradition.

I don't know, just the tradition of it. Yeah. The old kind of culture of it. So I go down to a local shop and he had said, listen, you just have to make sure that you buy it yourself. Make sure that this thing that you offer, you have to buy it yourself. And I just hopped in my uncle's car and we spun down a garage. The man had said, said listen it could be bread it could be biscuits but you have to pay for it with your own

money and you have to bring it up here which he hammered the point down a couple of times as we were leaving and so I just picked up a packet of biscuits a packet of digestives and he was like great that'll do and he took a few and he was like great that'll do and he took a few

and he kind of stood over an area on the site and he crumbled them in his hands and he kind of spread them down and he kind of mumbled a few words um brilliant i was very it was very sweet it was just this man who was looking out for me and wanted to tell me some stuff that he felt was worth knowing and a lot of it was to do with um um he was advising me also on certain plants that that you know um that would bring out yeah positive energies and creative energies in me and stuff like that very very interesting and i'm super super glad yeah um that i that i did that i that i kind of went for it but it was it was just that interesting thing of of of i don't know hold holding holding it in one hand holding with great reverence and respect for the for the for the that old tradition and the folklore

tied into where these traditions come from yeah and at And at the same time, it also engaging in it as this sort of, not in an irreverent way, but it's a gas bit of crack at the same time. Yeah. But anyway, that was the, yeah, that was the Diviner. I was actually given by the man who had introduced us to the Diviner.

He gave us two rods and he just made them out of two pieces of of metal like you could make did he invite you into the process yeah he showed he just showed me how to how to do it and um and i think he all he just described to me was like some people some people have it and some people can can feel it and some people don't his idea was that it was not magic taking place, but there might be some electromagnetism taking place. But I will say, it's worth experiencing. It's not, I don't, as I understand, it doesn't work too well in cities.

People are going to be commenting in on this going, he's mad, he's absolutely lunatic. But you felt this. Hosier's gone fucking, he is away with the fairies. He can smell water, fuck. Exactly, yeah. But they just move. They kind of pulse back and forth.

Like, in your hand, you hold them limply. They're at two right angles. Yeah. Sorry, you know, two pieces of metal, very thin rods at right angles and longer pointing forward than they are hanging over the part that hangs over your palm and you don't grip them you just hold them and you walk walk in in fields and they will react to where there are maybe uh pockets of water i don't know how to describe

it i have no explanation have you tried doing this on your own for the crack pardon me have you tried doing that on your own i just did it Pardon me? Have you tried doing that on your own for the crack? I just did it for the crack, yeah. And once he gave me the rods, there was a few days where I was fascinated by it and I just would go for a wander up in the fields and see. Wow. And you can follow what's interesting.

Because if it's happening by yourself and nobody is around to observe it, then that to me would suggest that it's real. Because like with something like a Ouija board, a Ouija board is about who's present and there's a collective kind of energy in the room and everyone pushes it, but it's unconscious. But if you're on your own,

like Ouija boards don't work on your own. Yeah, I've heard that there is a collective, like subconscious moving, not even subconscious, but unconscious moving of it. Is that correct? I don't know. But if you're off on your own with these divining rods and there's no one else around to either

influence your thoughts and your experience in this then that's real it's it's it is it's a funny feeling and like

like I am the biggest I am a huge sceptic and like look I you know I am sceptic and I think there's a lot of

I think that comes through in the work like I'm not I don't not i don't kind of um i don't lean in in too too heavy for a religion for for the sake of it or anything like that i'm not saying i'm not a spiritual person i i definitely am but um but i am i would be a bit more science i'd be quite scientifically minded i think but i all it all i can say is what i experienced what what happens is once you pass by a concentration of

it you'll actually notice that the the rods just turn in on themselves so they stop pulsing and stop wobbling um and they get to a point where they cross over and they they point backwards towards you um and it's just this mad i don't know how to describe it but you if you you can actually feel more aware that sounds like a very meditative practice like if i was doing that i'm not worrying about nothing because all i'm concerned about is the rods and the water yeah it's actually is it peaceful it it is it's quite i suppose it's a peaceful thing and you don't want to move around too much and you're trying to keep your hands perfectly still and you don't want to um yeah you don't want to be moving your body thinking about it too much and also you are just trying to especially if you're trying to follow just for the crack if you're in

a field and you're following a water course under the ground because you will notice that you stand look two feet or three feet to one side of something and it'll it'll it'll go away the rods will start stop reacting if you go on the other side four feet the rods will stop reacting but you can actually follow like nearly a trail uh you can you can like in pockets you can see where you can kind of follow where this where this water is going that's how like again i've no explanations i'm sure you'll have a mad hot take just arrived into my head go on please right so you you know auto-tune obviously auto-tune that's used to tune up yes yeah so auto-tune actually comes from people trying to find oil so what you're describing

there with water in america when they were trying to find oil underneath the ground they developed this technology that would basically send notes down into the ground and it would come back up and they would kind of adjust the vibration of sound and autotune as we use it in the studio literally comes from this technology that was used to find

oil and I would wonder is something to do with you being a musician and sensitive to whatever vibrations, is there a relationship there? If autotune and oil is related to find oil underneath the ground, why is the part of you that's sensitive to musical notes, could that be a factor?

It's interesting, actually, and we were talking about flow. Yeah. And where ideas come from. But for him, like his kind of, as he put it, and these were his words and I can only interpret, his kind of reading of energies and reading of and feeling of where things are, feeling of where the water is flowing, where the well was. was. He described to me as it's the same, it arrives to him in a similar way. It seems to be something that kind of comes to him or flows through him with that same sort of feeling of

just intuition to something that you feel and you follow. He was, I think he understood that I was a musician. And he was saying, he said in a kind of a matter of fact way, which is absolutely correct. Sometimes ideas just come to you as if they're coming through you. Yeah. And I was like, yeah, I mean, on a good day that sometimes it just arrives. And he said it was the very same for him. And the things that he needed to tell me,

he felt that there was an obligation to tell me. I'm going to start doing that, man. That sounds like something I could get interested in now. It's a better crack. Better than doing press-ups on a fucking river, man. Out with a coat hanger looking for water underneath the ground. But you know what, though? Like, there's so much stuff that we'll say folklore or whatever has known for years and we've rubbished it.

And then all of a sudden science goes, oh, that's true. Like, I interviewed two scientists there a couple of weeks ago about the relationship between the human gut and the brain and how different foods can impact our brain. Now, people who've been into health have been saying this for years but it's been written off and now science is going ah they were right. The other thing as well but this is something

I've yet to speak to an expert about it but it's an accepted field. Have you heard about the mushroom internet? Yes. So I don't know a great deal about it but how roots and plants kind of interact and share resources

and network. Yeah. And they use and so the roots of trees will go into the ground, but beyond these roots of trees is this vast network of fungus. And the tree's roots will use the fungus network, like the internet, to communicate with each other. So if a tree is hurt or if a tree is injured or if there's,

I don't know, if a deer is coming along and eating the bark off a tree, that tree will send distress signals to the rest of the trees and those trees

can release a toxin into their bark that makes deers not eat it. Right, okay. You know? And loads of people for years and years, oh, the forest is one,

it's one, nature is one. Now science is going, ah, it is actually it's one nature is one now science is going ah it is actually yeah if you build a forest and this forest doesn't have sufficient biodiversity and this forest doesn't have uh a good network of fungus then the forest won't survive yeah yeah it's it's it's it's fascinating i i i i need to read more on it I've heard it referred to as the wood wide web I don't know if that's

the wood wide web yeah yeah yeah I need to seek out an expert and I want to because it's it's just one of those things I could just disappear for hours on Wikipedia learning about it

but I want to hear an expert talking about it 100% 100% it's amazing one thing I meant to ask you about right so you're someone who's who's quite outspoken about things like direct provision.

Fair play to you, right? For those listening who don't know what direct provision is, direct provision is a system in Ireland whereby asylum seekers and refugees are effectively imprisoned in quite inhumane conditions and it's run for profit. And it's a system that the United Nations has described as a severe violation of human rights. It's a stain on Ireland. But recently, both you and I ended up getting our tweets fucking flagged by the Irish government.

Yeah. And put into this weird report. Yeah. fucking flagged by the Irish government and put into this weird report because ourselves and other people with a platform were trying to draw attention to the cruelty of direct provision

look, we put it up on the internet, it's there, it's in public I just personally, I don't like the idea that they secretly put it into a report and the only way to find out they were doing it is that a journalist had to apply for a Freedom of Information Act. It's like, why are you doing it in secret?

What's going on here? Yeah. How do you feel about that? I kind of, I've mixed feelings about it. And I've mixed, I've mixed, like I'm in many minds around it. At first, obviously, my first initial reaction was reaction was well that's effed up and also what are you doing wasting resources that that sounds like a big team by the way like it oh yeah by this by the looks of things by the amount of emails like there was ones like i don't

really tweet all that but i'm not a dedicated activist you're kind of gone off twitter now aren't you well you don't use it that much yeah recently especially this year and part of it is huge part of that is just mental health part of that is just mental health. Part of that is... Twitter's particularly bad for the old mental health, isn't it? It really is. Like, it really is. But you know what?

I don't think Twitter is... So I think Twitter is actually a video game that people don't know they're participating in. Yeah. Where they play a character of themselves that's a bit meaner. Yeah. Because Twitter will reward you for being mean in a way that other websites don't. Yeah, yeah.

Like, I find myself, like, trying to stop myself being a prick on Twitter because I know that's what gets rewarded and I have to go, hold on a second. Yeah. You know what I mean? 100%. And also enjoying the kind of takedown, you know what I mean? So if not

stopping, having to stop yourself from saying something snide or smarmy about something, somebody or something or something that has happened or throwing in your two cents, um, on something also just the act of enjoying that somebody else is being humiliated, um, is itself, it's just, it's just it's it's just not good i don't i just it's not at all yeah and so that for all sorts of reasons um i i kind of decided to step off but also everything that i say the more i find myself going on the record i'm going to be in the horrors after this chat the more i find i go on the record over anything uh i i am so anxious on the far side of it. Like really and truly.

Well, you see, sometimes they can turn it into a headline, man. And the headline, while technically being true, sounds very different to the context that you actually said it. What you were saying about that being, let's say, monitored or ending up with tweets in government reports. Yeah, it is mad, especially when you think, look, this looks like a department or a sub-department all of itself. There's an email for every tweet that this,

I can't remember the name of the journalist who was one of the guys being monitored. So it's like, this is hugely time consuming. This is a few people's wages. This is this is a full time job for somebody. And which is which is wild because it's like, well, these are resources that could be going into alleviating the issues that are that these that these tweets are are writing about. Also, the fact that you are monitoring it knows that you can't claim ignorance. And when people are tweeting about these these issues, we cannot. about also the fact that you are monitoring it knows that you you can't claim ignorance um when people are tweeting about these these issues it's not we cannot and we and i think why you and i

maybe speak so so you know about it and would would when we can draw attention to it is because we've done we've institutionalized people in our in our nation before and we we cannot this time say that we didn't know what was happening and we cannot say and I don't want to be that fucking generation where like I speak to my parents in the same way I'm sure you do and when I ask my ma about Magdalene laundries

she just goes I didn't know I knew something was going on but we didn't know all of it the walls were really high we didn't really know and I don't think I don't want to be that. I don't want my grandkids saying what was going on with direct provision and for me to go, I didn't know.

Because that's what they're doing. They're not telling us enough. Yeah, 100%. We just have an idea that something really bad is happening there. Yeah, 100%. And look, there will be inquiries. We know. Look ahead. There will be inquiries to this you know we just follow follow the natural awful course of history there's going to be inquiries

into this we have 10 years 20 years time 30 years time and it will there will be uh cases of abuse there will be case i mean there's there's there was a life lost only there about a month or two ago um and it was it was a a man took his own life. That's that there will be countless, there will be countless cases of that. So it's upsetting. It is upsetting. And as I say, there's considerable resources are putting into the monitoring for the sake of optics. And I think it's for the sake of how, how bad, how bad are we looking out there, boys? Like, how bad is it? That's what pissed me off. You know, and if they were listening, if they were literally, if they were, because some people said to me, listen, the government are looking at your tweets. Why aren't you happy that they're looking at your tweets and taking your opinions on board?

And I'm like, they're not. If the government were actually saying we're listening to Hosea, we're listening to Blind Boy, they'd make a big deal of it. What they did instead is they did it in secret. And the only way we got to find out is because a journalist had the time to access a Freedom of Information Act. So what it is, is it's a PR exercise. How do we continue to do the bad shit we're doing, but change the perception of it?

And I don't like that one bit. Yeah, there's a lot of play there. I would think is that I think a lot of it. Yeah. And I don't like that one bit. Yeah. There's a lot of play there. I would think is that I think a lot of it is for it's nearly research for PR management. So it's like you could say, OK, well,

if we know what criticisms are being said, we can prepare for them. We can we can write responses for them. We can we can we can arrange responses so that we're not cut off

the hop, you know, caught on the hop in an interview somewhere down the line. And I would i would say look there is like like anything like any like tool or any infrastructure there is the potential for it to be as you said like is isn't it good that that the government is is is aware of it i there is there is potential there is there is potential positives there especially if they if potential positives there, especially if they, if they see mounting pressure, they're, they're also just trying to see, okay, how much, what can we, you know, what can we not get away with as it were like, what, uh, what,

what's mounting because all those emails as well are measuring how they, how many engagements they got. So it's like, so-and-so said this, but only two people, uh, only two people liked the tweet. So-and-so said this and whatever. So they're seeing how much pressure there is there, you know, and trying to gauge how serious this is in the collective consciousness of people, a collective conscience of people. I still think it's considered a fringe issue, I think, by most people, sadly. I think when you go to, it's not something lads will be chatting about in the pub and and saying unfortunately unfortunately yeah um and i think

i think some of that is just trying to manage that but potentially there is yes if if it as you said if if if the government was transparent about it and said oh yeah we're keeping an eye on these criticisms and we're taking them on board um it doesn't seem to be that case. There is potential there where it is, it's good that they are aware of that mounting pressure. And I think that could and should encourage us to mount that pressure. Power concedes nothing without demand. You have to make somebody sweat. My other worry for thee is these if again if you look just through the awful course of history an infrastructure built in a government department that is monitoring the conversations and yes public conversations so stuff that we put up in public would more often i think be it would be easier for that to fall into a place of it of that infrastructure that quite

powerful infrastructure being abused as opposed you know you know. Like my fear, like my initial fear was right now it's like, OK, fine. They're probably not going to do it. It's more irresponsible. But it's like, what if in I just don't want I don't like a government document existing where it's like I'm on a list of people who are critical of the government. And then as well, simple things. And this would apply to you as well. who are critical of the government. And then as well, simple things, and this would apply to you as well.

I'm sure you've all, like, going through US security at the airport is never fun. Okay? There's always a grilling. And I just don't want to go over

for work to the US and the US department go, oh, blind boy, what have you got in him? Ah, I see he's on a list of people who critique the government.

And hopefully now with Biden it'll be better. But under the Trump administration and stories I've heard of journalists and things being absolutely grilled by US security, I don't want them going,

here's a guy who's on a list of people who critique the Irish government. Should we let him in or not? You know, or any other country in the world. It's like, where's our consent with data around this? Yeah, yeah.

Like, yes, the tweets are public, but it's like, I didn't consent to them being recontextualized. Yeah, and I mean, look, it's, especially if it's, you know, it's something that potentially is informing policy or is informing response from the government. I think, like, I think history is clear on what these infrastructures, you know, like it's not like we haven't seen in recent history, like, let's be honest, smear campaigns carried out

about people who are, let's say, whistleblowers of some kind in our own country either. And I'm not, I don't want to go into it but like yeah we've seen we've seen we saw cases of that like there is there is a an ability for for an infrastructure like that to to to be used incorrectly or in bad faith or whatever but also there as you say with mass information being collected there's also that that argument that let's, whether it's the NSA, the case with that revelation, that there's metadata being collected and everything that you say is being sifted or collected somewhere, maybe not eyes upon it. But the very idea, the very idea that the government is monitoring what you're saying is itself if

that inspires you to filter yourself, that is itself a suppressing element. You know, it is. I still fucking, I'm not going to shut up about something like direct provision.

But I still have to mind myself now going, oh, the government are watching. And i still have to mind myself now going oh the government are watching and then i have to go no fuck it and then sometimes i feel like actually just tagging the justice department in it you know what i mean yeah just to save the time i won't have my right my right to i have a right to draw attention to this stuff so i won't allow i can't i can't allow it's immoral to allow something to stop me what I compared it to is it's like when you're a kid when you're like 13 14 and you're hanging around and the guards come over and the guards are like I'm just taking your name and putting it in my notebook

but they're not like you're going oh wait am I in trouble are you going to tell my parents no no no no no I just I need your name in my notebook because I've been hearing reports about trouble around this area so it won't go further than this notebook. But I all of a sudden now I'm terrified

and I'm adjusting my behaviour. Yes yeah yeah yeah. Or when the teacher says they're talking about you in the staff room. Am I expelled? Am I suspended? No no no they're just

you're being talked about in the staff room. Yeah yeah. A harmless thing that says you're being watched and then you change your behaviour. It comes from a prison called the Panopticon that was invented by a fella called Jeremy Bentham, where

it was a design of prison where the prisoners can't tell if the guard is watching or not. So it's as good as being watched all the time because they change their behaviour. Yeah, yeah yeah that's i mean i mean there there you go i suppose in god the omniscience and the omnipotence of god is a panopticon too yeah yeah very true and actually yeah that's it that's a huge i mean

yeah absolutely santa claus um oh yeah santa claus is a big one yeah big time santa claus is a big panopticon fucking hell were you told that the birds were watching you that was one a little bird not the birds that were watching but I was told that

a little birdie told me this okay okay so that would imply that birds were watching okay I was I'm terrified of birds

I don't know why no I my focus was definitely that the birds were messengers for Santa Claus. So if you were caught. And also there's birds everywhere. I was told that about the robin.

What was it? I was told me that the robin. I know it's a limerick thing. That the robin. Why is the robin's breast red? Because he was plucking the thorns off Jesus's head and he got his blood on his chest and the stain never went away. No way. Which is beautiful.

That's fantastic. What a beautiful explanation for a robin's red chest. Yeah, yeah. I'm going to ask you one last question. Is that alright? Yeah, please do, yeah.

I was going to just mention the wren as well too just as you were on that. Oh, what about the wren? You know the wren, like again, it's a Christmas thing on Stephen's Day.

The wren, the wren, the king of all birds. There's like now, I don't think people do it anymore, right? But they used to. They do it down in Kerry. They probably do it in Kerry. There's the whole wren boy thing, but then. Yeah.

But you would chase a wren and you would have to go and actually catch a wren and you would. Oh, I don't know about that. It would be killed or sacrificed. But it goes back to this. There's this all sorts of stuff. So one is that there's a God trapped in it or it's an incarnation of God. But then also there's a story that there was a raid during,

I think in like the 1798. No, it would have been earlier than that. There was a raid or a military action of some kind where it said that the soldiers who were about to be ambushed were woken in the middle of the night by a wren pecking on a drum skin.

And they were either Norman or British forces. And it scuppered the raid, essentially. It just wrecked the ambush. And ever since then, this wren is kind of... Seen as a messenger, seen as a... Yeah, and it's kind of... Now, I'd have to read into it. It's an interesting one, but...

That's apparently the reason... Do you ever hear of the Puck have to read into it, it's an interesting one that's apparently the reason do you ever hear of the Puck Fair? oh yeah, yeah yeah so they get the goat and they elevate the goat and they make the goat a king apparently the reason for that too is around the time of the Cromwellian invasion whatever village this was

when Cromwell's army was approaching the village to massacre everybody they disturbed a herd of goats and a billy goat ran towards the town and everyone was going this billy goat

belongs in the mountains what the fuck is he doing down here with us something's wrong so they all ran away and Cromwell's army arrived and didn't get to massacre anybody right okay

so that's what I heard about that fascinating so the one last question I have is just your so mental health and creativity how important about that fascinating so the one last question I have is just your so mental health and creativity

how important is the act of creating art to your personal mental health I'm actually realising a bit

too late how important it is and as in that there's a circular thing

at play that if I'm not creating I think I've maybe too much of my idea of my self-worth is probably is wrapped up in whether I'm creating or not. I don't really have any other applicable skills. You know what I mean? I dropped out of college to write songs. I think there's something that I get by with and that's making music, writing songs and singing and so like. But if you're in a

bad place, if your anxiety is flaring up, if you're feeling a bit blue are you also saying that you won't create and the two things feed each other? Yeah 100% so I would find it hard to find the motivation to sit down and write. Also you're just racked with either self doubt or a kind of just your

common off-the-ground self-loathing. So you don't really want to, you know, in that moment, what you create and everything that you've created is something that you can't face and you don't like, you know, because you're not happy

with yourself in that moment. So it's very hard to... Would you, do you ever beat yourself up if you find yourself playing video games too much or watching netflix or things like that how do you how do you find that behavior how does it sit within you definitely um i think yeah like i think like anyone i would escape into into things and whether i'm escaping into i definitely definitely over the years you know had to realize look at this there is escapist behavior here.

Sometimes it might be a video game. You know, sometimes it might be a TV show or it's finding something else to do with my time. You know what I mean? It's, it doesn't have to be drink or drugs. Like it's, it's, there's, there's other things that I, that I, I find, you know, you can get kind of not addicted to but you just lean on for you're filling the hole that songwriting should be filling exactly yeah exactly you know what I've found

over the years I've because I used to be like that I've become a bit more compassionate with myself if I find myself binging Netflix playing video games and I'm not writing or doing whatever I chill out and I say to myself, I'm feeding my unconscious mind. So this activity, instead of flagellating myself saying,

why aren't you inside writing? Why aren't you inside creating? I say to myself, right now I need to fucking relax. And if I can effectively relax, then this netflix show this book i'm reading this game i'm playing if i can actually relax it will go into my unconscious as a value as a valuable nugget and will inform when i do create yeah and that changed a lot of shit for me yeah yeah i i'll i'm definitely gonna try that a bit more i. I think I always do that thing of going, look, when I do this thing, waiting for a time that I can, quote, relax or enjoy myself, you know what I mean? And it just never comes, you know, it just never.

Do you have a writing room? Do you have a little place for you go to work? I do. Yeah, I have a space and I try to keep, I remember reading a thing about trying to keep your workspace a workspace. And if you're getting distracted and you want to do something else, like go on like Netflix or go on a you just watch stupid videos on YouTube or something get up and out of the room and do it elsewhere if that makes sense I have heard that that helps um yeah it does um one other thing as well just to top it off

and it's just a piece of advice around reviews because like yourself if I see a negative review the problem isn't I'm a big boy so I can deal with the heart of it and I can walk away from that but what I can't allow is for that heart to internalise

to a point whereby when I start to create I'm now afraid if I am sitting in front of a blank page and what I'm thinking about is a review I got six months ago that's negative, forget about it. I'm not writing. And if I do write, it's going to be shit because I'm not coming from the inside of my heart.

So one thing I do, which really, really helps with this, okay, think of, I don't know, an album that you adore, a Tom Waits album, a Randy Newman album, and then seek out the bad reviews. Yeah. album, a Randy Newman album, and then seek out the bad reviews. Yeah. Read the bad review of a piece of someone else's work that you adore. And when you do it, you're able to look at that review

and go, I don't give a fuck what this person says. I don't give a shit. Because it's not your own work. Yeah, true. And it's such a liberating feed and it really puts perspective on the whole thing. It really does. It's interesting, actually. Kind of lose the power of it a wee bit, you know.

Oh, yeah. All the power is gone. Out the window. It's just one person. There is a reviewer and their name is Donal and they don't like what I'm doing. And that's fine. Because someone else does. I'm always really touched by um when you if meeting

people after shows or let's say somebody who just listens to to music because they fucking love music and they go to shows because they just fucking love it and what it and there's a great there's a great free there's a great freedom in that there's a great freedom and just and just liking something and um enjoying it it for what that is. Similar to what you were saying early on. Which for me, any piece of work that makes me want to go and create, that's what I'm chasing in other people's work. If I hear something, like when I first heard Take Me to Church, man,

I wanted to write songs for six months. Honest to God. No, genuinely genuinely because it was just it just knocked me off my chair actually here's one question take me to church when it for i remember watching that one had 5 000 views yeah yeah and it was quiet for a while yeah and i i remember and you know you were saying earlier when you were like um you know when you were in school and you had sun house and robert johnson and you had almost protected saying earlier when you were like you know when you were in school and you had Sun House and Robert Johnson and you had almost protected them as

here's this little jewel now and only I know about it yeah I was like that would take me to church for like a month ah stop really yeah I was like fucking hell

no one knows about this now ha ha ha mad you know the hips are in me yeah and then it just fucking exploded what the fuck was that

how cause I couldn't understand it I was literally it was the song I was sending to everyone I know the hipster in me yeah and then it just fucking exploded what the fuck was that how cause I couldn't understand it I was literally it was the song I was sending to everyone I know yeah and I was like how the fuck

does this song only have X amount of views why the fuck isn't this on the radio yeah because I could hear it's just

it's a great song what the fuck how did that happen how did it go quiet and then just exploded it was so it was quiet and then just exploded it was so it was quiet

for a while we actually was free on Bandcamp or I think it was up yeah it was free you could just download it or kind of give it to you what you like

what was it so then it it eased forward the I think the music video caught that was

directed by Brendan Canty and Conal Thompson of a group called Feel Good Lost based in cork they did that that kind of um that music video i remember it went viral on reddit this was also a time when there was less avenues of things kind of going viral as there are yeah you know big time um yeah so it went to kind of hit the front page of reddit then it's the the music video itself got got loads of um hits on youtube the song then started taking off in like i remember it getting so it was organic but it was just late it just was late yeah because it had it had been

sitting it just hadn't been it hadn't been seen it was started then i remember getting emails from my manager being look at this hat you're being sh Shazammed on Alabama mountain radio. So one of the first radio stations that played me in America was, was Alabama mountain radio, which I didn't know of course existed. And, um, and soon after then you're kind of talking with guys and, um, I don't know. Yeah. It just, it just, it just started to pick up momentum. The thing is about marketing something in america is it takes about they they work a single for you know months and months you know it could take take months of promotion and let's say they they release it and it might be six months later a year later that it's actually gained its its full steam and that it's if it's if it's to pick up in the charts as

it were not maybe not so with superstars who are already household names and are dropping them into a fan base. But kind of building something like that takes a long, long time in America. But yeah, I do remember, there were certain moments that would give it a jolt forward.

There was an iTunes campaign which LeBron James was involved in which would give it a jolt forward. There was an iTunes campaign, which LeBron James was involved in, which gave it another massive jolt forward of just a composure. And I would say it is weird because I remember being like for a moment, for a hot minute, for a very short time, it was kind of like, geez, who's this kind of unknown Wicklow guy who's making music that just sounds a little bit out of left field? And for one moment, you're kind of this as you say this kind of unknown like little hips like hipster oddity of

like have you heard of this guy and then the next moment you're ubiquitous and it's it's an it's an odd sort of um you go from being hyper cool to just super hyper uncool uh yeah um and i hope to god every every hipster out there experiences that pain because it'll mean you've you've fucking maybe

well you see I was old enough as a hipster to consciously not allow myself to do that right because had I been younger

I'd have been like hoes yours class yeah and then all of a sudden it's like being played inside in Centra yeah and then

if I was younger I'd go don't like that anymore yeah but I was older so I was like no no no no no that's my insecurity the song is fucking good do you know what i mean yeah look but i still i can't escape that hipster part of myself i can't escape it yeah the part of myself it's i think if you really love art you you want to be it's like it's it's like divining the water you want you want to find the fucking spring that no one knows about you want to have this to yourself yeah i i'm like yeah totally and it is it's a weird

feeling from from my like for being being that artist that that but i was like so blessed and when i i do jokingly say i hope artists out there experience what what that's like and the decisions that you make when your music is being discovered by people and stuff that you as a teenager would have thought, oh, that's the uncool thing to do. You're just doing that for success. But at the same time, it's like, you know, if you believe in your work, you want the best for it, et cetera. Some artists get that success and then they go, fuck that. And they try and do the exact opposite. Now, sometimes it works like in utero for Nirvana. Like in utero was Nirvana going, I hate this fame. Let's destroy it.

Yeah. But then other times, I won't mention any names because it's not fair, but there are artists who got huge and then they're like, fuck this. I need to do something completely different. And it did not work in their favor commercially. Yeah. Yeah. It's tough. And it's like, even whether making it the first time around or trying to

trying to hang it hang in there and and look it's it's a really it's a it can be a fickle business it could be it can be it could be tough you know i i've been blessed so far and and um i think just i was going to say on the point of what you're saying, that thing of where people let go of work or turn against work because now it's it's it's known and it's it's. It's known by other people and it's enjoyed by more people than yourself, and it's no longer this secret thing. It is a really interesting thing, and it's something that obviously we find is an element so not like we've all been that kid we've all been that person yeah we find it synonymous with hipsters oh that's that's cool therefore i must you don't want to be doing a past 25 yeah i'm doing and doing that doing doing that type thing but if if it's funny because it's like how how

are we viewing what does that say about how we view art, how we view somebody else's art as an accessory to your, you know. There you go. Yeah, exactly. As an accessory or a fashion statement that you carry around with you, as opposed to something that you, that you, that you, that truly enriches you or that you, that you admire or that brings some sense of joy or fulfillment to your life. It's something that you, you wear like a hat on your head. If I was 19 and someone, if I was at a party and someone spoke shit about Tom Waits, I would experience it as a deep hurt.

You know what I mean? And I used to think I love Tom Waits so much. And now being an older person, I realize, no, no, no, no. I had attached my identity and self-esteem into being someone who likes Tom Waits and everything around that. And I've now worked really hard on not being that person because I self-identify as a hipster in that I say, yes, I do search for things that are authentic rare

I love that that's very very healthy what I won't do is be elitist about it consider myself better than other people because I know

this music and they don't that's the stuff that's toxic but it's still okay to be like I fucking love art and I love

finding the thing it's very enjoyable to find a piece of music or a piece of work that your friends don't know and then you share it with them i love being that person how could you not 100 percent and giving people gifts i'm yeah and that that feeling of exploration um yeah that's it's you know it's uncharted ground for yourself like diving into i remember you were sharing links on italian disco a little while ago stuff yeah stuff like that or or be it like um you know let me i'm just trying to think of examples let's say you get into like music from mali or something like that there's this feeling of you know you've cut you've cut out from from a from a path and there's also

an element of your own creative process is goes into the discovering of this work and the experiencing and processing and interpreting of this work so it's something that you feel it's that you are taking an active role in it's not just and maybe that's why it's it's it's an enriching experience it's not just sitting and this is what the radio is telling you it's active listening yeah it's really active like i did a podcast recently on, have you heard of Cape Verde music? Cape Verde? No. So it's an island off West Africa,

right? And in the 70s they came out with this mad synth music that was unlike anything anyone had ever heard. Because there was an expo of synthesizers in Brazil. So this ship full of synths was heading for Brazil, but it got lost at sea and the crew abandoned it.

So this entire ship full of like Moogs and Yamaha CS80s and all these incredible synths shipwrecked on this African island. Amazing. And the leader of the country at the time was like a socialist. So he said, I'm taking all these synths and we're claiming them for the country and we're was like a socialist so he said I'm taking all these synths and we're we're claiming them for the country

and we're putting them into every school and you ended up with the folk music of the people of Cape Verde doing it with synths

and you just have this music that's like there's nothing like it how could there be anything like it they'd never heard a synth they had to figure out

how to use it how to program it like I love finding that shit out i love that i fucking it takes every single every single bone in my body that loves music i adore that and i love the narrative of it you know what i mean yeah totally and the story behind that and also that what you're going to get is a product that is completely unlike you know you know completely unlike that of any other any other community or culture that's going to exactly that's going to work with those tools and create you know you're going to end up with sounds

and music and and storytelling which is just totally different you know from and if you love music that shit's fascinating yeah 100 and my job is to just not use that as a stick if i say to someone have you heard cape verde music and then they. And I go, you haven't heard Cape Verde synth music? And look, we all do. We all do that stuff, mate. We do. I try not to, though. I go, oh, you haven't heard it.

Let me show you. Let me give you a gift. Do you know what I mean? And then I'm doing responsible hipsterism. Yeah. Empathetic hipsterism. I'm going to leave you going now because I've got a lump of bacon outside on the boil which is

threatening to burn right oh yeah thank you so much for that chat that was fucking fantastic no thank you thank you it was great really great crack delighted to get to sit down and have a chat with you nice one so there you have it what a lovely

chat there with Hosier what a lovely chat there with Hosier what a lovely human being that was an absolute pleasure for me to do hope you enjoyed it we could have chatted for longer I'd have literally

burnt my dinner I'd have literally burnt my dinner the I didn't I put in I didn't put enough no I put in just enough water

in the pot with the bacon just enough but it was down to the end and I could smell it, I could smell it through the door of the studio and I was like fuck this man, I'm not having a house full of

burning, you know you don't want to burn the bottom of a pot so, what a great chat, what a fantastic fucking chat em, I'm going to catch you next week if, what me and Hosier spoke about on the second part about direct provision

if you want to learn about direct provision a good charitable organisation that's trying to end direct provision is Massey massey.ie m-a-s-s-i dot i-e also if you want to listen to one of my earlier podcasts i speak to an activist called ellie kizionbe who is an irish activist who is has actually lived in direct provision so you can

hear about direct provision from her lived experience i believe actually ellie is one of the activists that appears in hosier's for Nina Cries Power. Alright, I'll catch you next week. Yart. Thank you. I'm going to go. To be continued... orchestra music director Gustavo Jimeno in conversation. Together, they dissect the mesmerizing layers of Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring, followed by a complete soul-stirring rendition of the famously unnerving piece, Symphony Exploder, April 5th at Roy Thompson Hall. For tickets, visit tso.ca. Thank you.