by Jane Roser
“Right now I’m listening to my twelve year old trying to work out “Heart of Gold” on
the guitar, which makes me happy because I’ve been forcing him to listen to Neil
Young since he was in nappies and now he’s hooked.”
Louise Holden, vocalist for Dublin-based roots band I Draw Slow, is telling me who
she’s listening to right now and I adore that her child is following in her musical
footsteps.
Siblings Dave (guitar) and Louise Holden have been writing music together for 20
years now and their current band, I Draw Slow, includes bassist Konrad Liddy,
violinist Adrian Hart and banjo player Colin Derham. Their sound is a unique
combination of Irish traditional, bluegrass, Americana and old-time Appalachian folk
music.
“Dave was busking in Circular Quay in Sydney when he met a banjo player, luthier and
former police officer named Laurie Grundy who played old-time music,” says Holden.
“They decided to busk together and over the course of the year Laurie taught Dave
loads of bluegrass and old-time standards. He came home hooked and we started
writing in the genre and formed the band soon after.”
I Draw Slow’s third album, White Wave Chapel, was released last year to critical
acclaim and reached No. 2 in the overall Irish iTunes chart, as well as being
selected as RTE Radio 1’s Album of the Week.
“On our first two albums we didn’t have a producer,” explains Holden, “we produced
them ourselves, but for White Wave Chapel we brought in Brian Masterson (Planxty,
The Chieftans, Van Morrison) who has a lot of experience with not just folk music,
but rock, too, so we thought he might bring something different to the process. We
still recorded all of the instruments together, as we did with the previous two
albums, so there wasn’t a huge amount of post-production, but it was really great to
have someone like Brian sitting in on the process and giving us guidance. He’s very
calming and nothing seems to phase him. Brian doesn’t believe in doing take after
take and sacrificing energy for precision, which suits our style because we put lots
of energy into our music and we’re not keen on anything that sounds too clean.”
Two tracks that really stood out for me were the fiddle-driven, foot-stomping song
“The Captain” and “Bread & Butter”, which reminded me a lot of some of the old-timey
tunes we’d square dance to in PE class back in Stafford, Virginia. Holden explains
their intention with “Bread & Butter” was to write a very simple, unadorned song
like you’d hear in the mountains of Appalachia. Songs you could just dance to, but
that don’t try to be overtly clever lyrically and you don’t get much plainer than
bread and butter. (On a side note, this song reminded me of the time I was in Russia
and the family that was hosting us asked my dad what he wanted for breakfast, he
asked for bread and jam, to which our host shook her head and replied, “just like in
prison.”)
With “The Captain”, whose haunting lyrics include the lines: “I wish I was in
waterfall/wading ankles deep/my tongue’s too dry to lick my wounds/and I got no
tears to weep”, Holden says they wanted to employ a traditional lyric form that
appears often in American folk music. An example of which would be the old-time
lyric “peaches in the summertime, apples in the fall, if I can’t have the girl I
love, I won’t have none at all.”
When the lead single for the album, “Valentine”, was made into a music video, the
band was able to snag Game of Thrones actor Aiden Gillen (Petyr “Littlefinger”
Baelish) to star in it.
“The director of the video, Hugh O’Conor (also an actor in Chocolat, The Three
Musketeers and My Left Foot) asked Aiden to listen to the song and see if he was
interested in playing the character of Valentine,” says Holden. “He was and came
along to the shoot when he had a day off from filming Game of Thrones. He’s a huge
supporter of music and presents his own music program on Irish TV from time to time.
We had a weird and wonderful day holed up in a windowless pub [Dublin’s Hacienda
Pub] building up to a big screen row which culminated in a slap in the face for
Aiden. I couldn’t fake it convincingly, so he bravely took seven real slaps for the
team. What a hero.”
Returning to the U.S. for a tour of the Northeast, including Red Wing Roots Festival
in Virginia and Grey Fox Bluegrass Festival in New York, I Draw Slow will be
performing a few shows in Pennsylvania this week. Catch them tonight and tomorrow
in Lancaster. On July 16th they will be at World Cafe Live where the audience can look
forward to some new songs which the band are hoping to include on their upcoming fourth
album.
“There’s a rather dark and filmic song about Mexican bandits called “Maria” which
the crowd [at their recent show at Whelans in Dublin] was very responsive to,” says
Holden. “We also have a country number called “Garage Flowers” that people are
getting a kick out of.”
I Draw Slow heads to Canada for the first time in August, but us Yanks only have to
wait a few days to catch this fabulous group and their unique blend of storytelling,
which captivates the imagination and brings back some of that old-time nostalgia and
barn-raising jamboree fun.
For tour stop details, visit their website.
