Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
It seems like everybody loves the poignant singer songwriters stylings
of Dermot Kennedy from Ireland. He was passing through Colorado
and stopped by the studio this week to talk with me.
You're on the Brett Sonders podcast.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
How are you? How's it going.
Speaker 3 (00:14):
I'm terrific.
Speaker 1 (00:15):
It's really nice to meet you finally in person too.
We've been enjoying your music on KBCO for a long time.
I know that your history involves a lot of busking.
It's been a big thing for you, and I was
wondering do you still do that on occasion?
Speaker 2 (00:28):
Sometimes? It's funny.
Speaker 4 (00:31):
When I was promoting the second album, we had a
tour fall through, and so my hand was forced in
a way, and I was already in America, so I
just kind of did pop ups around the country, and
then I did run in Mexico, and I did a
couple in Dublin, and it became this thing where I
kind of felt like I was busking again to some degree,
and it was just fun. I mean, I don't know,
you can sound quite trite.
Speaker 2 (00:52):
And corny quite quickly if you talk about.
Speaker 4 (00:54):
This stuff, but like I really will play to anybody,
you know what I mean, And I kind of I
take pride in the fact that I think, you know,
these days, as an artist, you should be.
Speaker 2 (01:03):
Able to get into studio and just record a song and.
Speaker 4 (01:05):
Do it properly and righttlogy is there, right, yeah, exactly,
and so yeah, like it sometimes playing to sort of
fifty people on the street somewhere, it can be a
lot more satisfying than playing to forty do people.
Speaker 2 (01:19):
It can be depending on how I'm feeling, how it goes,
you know.
Speaker 1 (01:22):
So unless those forty people have five hundred dollars a
piece in their pocket drop into your guitar case, which
is rare, forty thousand.
Speaker 3 (01:30):
Is much much more lucrative for you.
Speaker 4 (01:33):
Yeah, you'd be surprised actually, because it costs me nothing
to just set up in the street, but it costs
a lot of money to do.
Speaker 2 (01:37):
The big shows.
Speaker 4 (01:38):
But as a good point, but yeah, like it was
just I don't know, it was a very important part
of my musical development because it just gave me a
thick skins, you know what I mean. Like all day
long in Dublin, I would just watch people walk past,
and so you have to be very settled in the
idea that like, I think I'm good at this, but
ninety nine percent of people are ignoring me when I'm
doing it.
Speaker 2 (01:57):
But I don't know.
Speaker 4 (01:58):
It just puts you in a spot where, like, if
I play a festival now where a lot of people
might have heard of me, I'm not sort of living
and dying by their reactions, you know what I mean.
Speaker 1 (02:07):
Esthetically, though, you get something out of playing for that
smaller group of people that maybe you don't get in
a stadium, and I know around the world you play
massive venues.
Speaker 4 (02:15):
Sometimes, Yeah, totally, there's an intimacy to it that is
hard to kind of recreate when needed the big shows.
It's just it's, you know, like this evening, it's Summit.
I'm not sort of one hundred percent sure how many
people it is, but I know it's sort of a
smaller crowd by the standards of what I've been doing
the last few years. But it's just something nice kind
of happens. It's just it's hard to get that in
the massive ones.
Speaker 2 (02:34):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (02:34):
I found it fascinating that you were a really socially
awkward kid. Did this experience, all these experiences coupled together,
did that help?
Speaker 2 (02:44):
Oh, definitely.
Speaker 4 (02:45):
Yeah, I think it would be like near the top
of the list in terms of things that have because
you just get like you become aware quite quickly. We're
all just trying our best, you know what I mean. Like,
I think I found it very difficult to be like
fourteen and fifteen. That to me was a wild time
at everybody in school. But you know, you're kind of
when you're there's just massively differing levels of like how
outgoing people are. And for me, I just didn't want
(03:06):
to do it. And so yeah, I don't know, I
kind of some people. I tell people sometimes I find
public speaking very difficult or I find I find like
addressing a room very difficult, and they're kind of like, well, no,
you do what you do. But then the songs are
a total kind of buffer to me, do you know
what I mean? Anybody could be doing it. It feels
like a shield in the whole thing. So yeah, it
(03:29):
doesn't sort of trigger those things for me at all.
Speaker 3 (03:31):
What about those fourteen and fifteen year olds though when
you were a kid? Where are they now? Huh? They're
no Dermo Kennedy, I don't know, man.
Speaker 4 (03:38):
Yeah, but bo Yeah, And like if you spoke to
anybody I went to school with, I think I would
be near the bottom of the list for people who
would do something so kind of forward facing what their
life in.
Speaker 3 (03:51):
High school, you get the least likely to succeed.
Speaker 4 (03:53):
Yes, definitely, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, so that would have
been me.
Speaker 3 (03:56):
Do you love fame?
Speaker 4 (03:59):
No, not at all. I wouldn't say I resisted or
like I hate it or anything like that. But I
to tell you the truth, I don't think I experienced
a lot of venues and stuff, but I don't like
I'll walk around all day and no one stops me,
and like I do exist in this kind of sweet spot.
Speaker 2 (04:13):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (04:14):
Currently, so you're kind of a rock star next door. Yeah, no,
that's the way to be. I think that's how you.
Speaker 4 (04:20):
I think so, And sometimes with certain songs and certain
opportunities and stuff, I think it could be a kind
of careful what you wish for a type thing, because
I do feel in a very healthy spot where I
get to I feel very fulfilled from.
Speaker 2 (04:33):
A career point of view.
Speaker 4 (04:34):
But at the same time, I do have a real life,
and I do I don't feel like that's my only existence.
Speaker 2 (04:41):
You know what I mean. I feel like it's just
a thing I do, and that's quite nice.
Speaker 3 (04:43):
Drop a bomb on us. Tell us something about your
personal life.
Speaker 2 (04:46):
I never do. I miss my dog.
Speaker 3 (04:49):
So you have a dog.
Speaker 2 (04:50):
I do have a dog.
Speaker 3 (04:51):
I ask what kind of dog?
Speaker 2 (04:52):
I don't know.
Speaker 4 (04:53):
He's a rescue so I still don't really know. He's
a mix of terriers. Those are the dogs that live
up much longer. Yes, so that's so. I believe it
is the best.
Speaker 2 (05:02):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (05:02):
I'm kind of holding on to that, but yeah, so
he's been around for two years now. Best thing in
the world. I need to figure out how to tour
with my dog.
Speaker 1 (05:12):
Some people do that. It was the Japanese House. Are
you familiar with the Japanese House. She brought her docs
and with her into the station last year, right, and
I couldn't have been happier.
Speaker 4 (05:20):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I need to do it. Europe is
easy because you just got the ferry or whatever.
Speaker 2 (05:24):
But you need to figure out how to get to
this content.
Speaker 1 (05:26):
Your latest album is titled Sounder. Yeah, and there's a
connection to empathy in that title, right, and empathy is
something that is kind of lacking here in the United
States right now as a general.
Speaker 2 (05:38):
Well, we were talking about it this morning.
Speaker 4 (05:39):
It's like, I don't know, it's I think it's easy
sometimes for people on the other side of the Atlantic
Lake in Ireland and England and wherever to kind of
look at their global news and.
Speaker 2 (05:50):
Make judgments about America.
Speaker 4 (05:52):
But and touring in itself as a bubble, it's a
very sort of like mush thing. So it's it's not
necessarily a very broad perspective, but I don't know, it
is just nice to be like around here this morning
and I have nice interactions, and I don't know, it's
quite uh, it restores your faith a little bit, and
I think it's not necessarily healthy to just kind of
talk shit about countries you don't know much about.
Speaker 1 (06:12):
You know, well, Colorado is a bubble in itself, right,
I guess.
Speaker 4 (06:15):
But then people say that about like Austin, and so
you know, yeah, no, Austin is a bubble sometimes, are okay, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,
But yeah, So I that album title like Sonder being
the awareness of everyone's story and the fact that we're
all kind of having our own little.
Speaker 2 (06:31):
Life play out.
Speaker 4 (06:32):
I just I warmed to that idea because, like you said,
do I like fame Like I really don't, And after
the first album and put me in a certain place,
and I just like the idea of kind of shining
the light on everybody else as opposed to more of myself.
Speaker 3 (06:42):
Now.
Speaker 1 (06:42):
Sonder came out in twenty twenty two. It's been a
few years, right, Yeah, do we have new music on
the way.
Speaker 2 (06:48):
From Yeah, I'm very close. Yeah, yeah, definitely.
Speaker 4 (06:51):
I spent the year and last year working on it,
kind of between home and Nashville and U and Norway,
and yeah, just a lot of good stuff happened to musically.
Speaker 2 (07:01):
I think.
Speaker 4 (07:03):
You know, if my career has been almost ten years now,
it just takes a long time.
Speaker 2 (07:08):
To truly find your feet. It's been a funny journey
because when I.
Speaker 4 (07:11):
Kind of got into music, I had this kind of
from playing in the street. And so if I had
this confidence and I would say almost arrogance about like I.
Speaker 2 (07:18):
Know what I want to do, and I know how
good I am and all that.
Speaker 4 (07:20):
Kind of stuff, and then when you get actually introduced
into it, you kind of get humbled quite quickly, I think,
because you realize everyone's brilliant and and you know you're
very lucky just to be involved, and so then you
kind of take that too far, And now I'm back
in a place where, rather than feeling arrogant, do you
just feel kind of planted and settled and you're just like,
I'm just doing my thing. And so musically, I got
back to a place where I feel very comfortable.
Speaker 3 (07:40):
I think Oslo or Nashville.
Speaker 4 (07:44):
Nashville. Yeah, we weren't the Naso. We were in a
place called Alsund and there's a studio called Ocean Sound
and it's just the coolest.
Speaker 2 (07:52):
Studio I've ever been in our life. It's crazy. It's
on the coast and it's just like infinite.
Speaker 4 (07:57):
And the time we were there, I think it was June maybe,
so it never it got dark or it got dark
for like an hour maybe.
Speaker 3 (08:03):
Yeah, it sounds perfect.
Speaker 2 (08:04):
Yeah, it was cool.
Speaker 3 (08:04):
Because I don't know about you. I sleep like two
hours a day.
Speaker 2 (08:07):
Do you readly?
Speaker 3 (08:08):
Oh yeah, I'm not much of a sleeper.
Speaker 2 (08:09):
Right, Yeah, I guess you can't be. What time you
in here, oh about four thirty?
Speaker 3 (08:13):
Yeah?
Speaker 4 (08:13):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (08:13):
Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3 (08:15):
Hey, I heard from somebody in this room that you
read a lot. You're a voracious reader.
Speaker 4 (08:20):
I used to be better. I used to be better
when my life was not so busy. But yeah, it's
important to me.
Speaker 3 (08:27):
So can you give us a book tip?
Speaker 4 (08:30):
My favorite book at the moment, and I can't think
of the out design at the top of my head,
but the book is called There's Always This Year.
Speaker 2 (08:36):
It's fantastic. It's like.
Speaker 4 (08:39):
It's kind of like, you know, the way it's almost
as you see those like poetry slams and deaf poetry stuff.
It's almost as if like an author took that but
just like expanded into a novel.
Speaker 1 (08:47):
It's yeah, it's beautiful. It does sound beautiful. I'm reading
The New Pension Thomas Pinchin.
Speaker 2 (08:51):
Oh cool, right now you like it?
Speaker 3 (08:53):
Yeah, I'm getting lost in it already.
Speaker 2 (08:54):
Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 4 (08:56):
Sometimes I got stuck into a book and I kind
of get reminded of how power for it is in
terms of actually just clearing my mind completely.
Speaker 2 (09:03):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (09:04):
Well, we can't wait to see you on stage Summit
tonight and hopefully next time you come around you can
play some music for us.
Speaker 3 (09:10):
When new music.
Speaker 2 (09:11):
Nice one, Thank you.
Speaker 3 (09:12):
Sure Dermott Kennedy Summit Tonight, downtown Denver. Nice to meet you.
Speaker 1 (09:16):
You're a nice guy. I appreciate it. Man, you to
that was nice. Dermott Kennedy. Great to meet that dude.
I'm Brett. See you next time on the Brett Sonders Podcast.