I’d like to start off with a thank you to Paul Brady for coming to the Dublin Writers Festival and providing such a wonderful evening. Despite the fact that he found it difficult to be there, due to what he described as “an inability to deconstruct what I do”, Brady gave an outstanding and warm performance, providing an excellent insight into his artistic talents as both singer and songwriter.
Music reaches people the world over and Brady’s performance encapsulated what is special about the art of singing. He punctuated heartfelt and interesting conversation with acoustic interludes, a Q&A session and finished up with a few audience requests, remaining warm and convivial throughout. Brady even gave advice to a singer/songwriter in the audience – a gesture which was much appreciated and which underpins the whole ethos of the Dublin Writers Festival.
John Kelly was an excellent host for the evening, matching Brady in wit, passion for music and knowledge of the industry. It’s impossible to give an entire account here, but I’ve a few snippets which will give you a flavour of the evening.
Connection with music
Brady explained that he has always had an instinctive and intuitive relationship with music, which “provided a touchstone, a sense of belonging which gave me an understanding of the world.” Brady says that he soaked up so much music, especially during the 60´s “which was a million different colours”, that it became easy for him to write his own compositions; “I just had to sit one influence long enough to come up with my own melodic structure.”
Connection with words
It took a lot longer for Brady to relate to words, especially poetry, because he “immediately heard the effort involved in the making of it, whereas songs seemed spontaneous and unfettered.” He began to write poetry for competitions in secondary school, but music remained the underlying interest; we were treated to his first published poem from his school magazine, based on the November 19th 1963 Beatles performance in Dublin.
On the early days
“I cringe now when I hear my early songs with The Johnstons” says Brady, as the audience loudly disagrees. He continues “I moved on to play lots of traditional music in the 70´s and it took a long time for me to come up with something that I wanted to sing. I was learning lots of instruments and was completely enthralled and captivated by traditional music.” It was after several meetings with The Humblebums and listening to Gerry Rafferty that Brady rediscovered his desire to start writing again. Getting tired of the structural and harmonic limitations of traditional music, he decided to return to creating his own songs.
Songwriting
Brady was reluctant to discuss his creative process too deeply, saying “because I still don’t know how to do it.” However, passion and dedication showed themselves as major ingredients as he gave an overview of the process. “First I get the tune which I fall in love with, then I get some lines or a few lyrics. In the song Mother and Son on my new album, I had these lyrics for ten years but I had to wait until any frustration and anger went before I could write the song. I get hooked by the song when I feel strongly about the tune.” Interestingly enough, he doesn’t have any form of routine when it comes to songwriting, other than booking some time away from performances to shape his ideas into new songs.
There is so much more that I could discuss, such as Brady’s love of co-writing, the inspiration behind some of his songs and his thoughts on various pop artists, but I’d like to finish up by reiterating how special the evening was. Every audience member that I spoke to afterwards was elated – and you can’t ask for much more than that.