Exclusive Q&A by Brad Balfour
While the Bowery Ballroom isn’t the biggest venue in Manhattan, it’s substantial enough for Coronas’ lead singer/songwriter Danny O’Reilly to take advantage of the space to truly showcase his performance skills. And he has substantial skills at that, rousing the 300+ packed house to cheers and lyrical recitation song after song.
On their latest tour, the 15 year old band took off for their 2025 North American tour in support of their eighth studio album, “Thoughts & Observations,” released last fall. It became the Coronas’s fourth consecutive album to capture the #1 slot on the Irish charts in its first week of release.
The tour included two major dates in Canada and finishes off at the annual Irish Fair of Minnesota where the band will headline the inaugural “Ceol by the River Event on August 7th. That followed the band’s debut at the iconic Glastonbury Festival at Worthy Farm in Somerset, England on June 28.
The Coronas debuted their first album “Heroes or Ghosts” in 2007, becoming Ireland’s popular indie band. They achieved widespread popular acclaim with songs such as “Heroes or Ghosts” and “San Diego Song.”
The two founding members, Danny O’Reilly and Graham Knox, were born two weeks apart in Dublin. Their families were friends as well. They built a firm friendship of their own since both came from particularly musical backgrounds. But it was Danny’s mother, the renowned Irish folk vocalist Mary Black, who really lent them some serious creds. Black is married to Joe O’Reilly of Dara Records (established in 1983). They have two sons (Conor and Danny) and a daughter (Róisín). While Danny is a member of The Coronas, Róisín performs under the name Róisín O — when she’s not playing with her brother.
In 1997, while attending Terenure College secondary school in Dublin, the two were introduced to Conor Egan. It was there that the three also made friends with Jim Lawless, who would later become their manager. Identifying a shared love for music, the trio (then only 15 years old) formed a band called Kiros along with another friend. But it didn’t work out and they soon split. Then in 2003, upon leaving school, they reformed under a new name, Corona, taking Lawless on as their manager.
Danny went on to study Commerce and Irish in University College Dublin, while Graham and Conor both studied sound engineering. Meanwhile, practicing in a disused factory and gigging around small venues in their free time, Corona began to gather a small following. The band soon won a competition for Irish up-and-coming bands, called the Jack Daniel’s “JD Set.”
In 2005, Corona released a self-titled EP, their first recordings of original songs, in a small house in county Wicklow. The EP proved to be popular, especially among Dublin’s college students.
“Corona” came from the Smith Corona typewriter used by the protagonist in the film “Almost Famous” — Cameron Crowe’s paean about the music business. Ultimately, they became The Coronas (there was an Italian dance band named Corona as well).
In 2006, they met guitarist Dave McPhillips while on a holiday in Vancouver. He joined the band as lead guitarist but eventually left. In September, The Coronas sold out a show at Whelans, one of Dublin’s most prestigious venues for new music. Following that gig, they were signed to the independent label 3ú Records, and soon began recording their debut full-length album, Heroes or Ghosts, which was released in October 2007.
A second LP, “Tony Was An Ex-Con,” followed in September 2009. They were nominated for four Meteor Awards, winning Best Irish Album in 2010 for this release beating Snow Patrol’s “Up To Now” and U2’s “How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb” among others.
The band’s third album, “Closer to You,” was released in Ireland on November 11th, 2011. The Coronas recorded the album in LA with producer Tony Hoffer who has worked with Air, Beck, The Kooks, Belle and Sebastian plus many more. Their first single from the album, “Addicted To Progress,” was a big hit on Irish airwaves. That track was on the Top 5 Irish Airplay Chart for more than 13 weeks. The song was also nominated for the 2012 Meteor Choice Music Prize.
Before he addressed an Irish crowd, The Coronas –– along with Jedward and Imelda May –– played for American President, Barack Obama at College Green, Dublin, during his visit on May, 23rd, 2011. The crowd was estimated to be between 80,000 – 100,000 people.
In order to further reach audiences, Danny O’Reilly recently spoke with me during a lull before returning on the road.
Q: Given the lineage, do you think it was inevitable that you made a band?
Danny O’Reilly: I don’t think so. My brother, for example, has a real job. He’s not in the industry. My sister is a singer, but my brother works for the civil services. He’s a geo-mathematician and loves music, but it was never forced upon us. We were encouraged to write our own music and follow our dreams. I got to see firsthand how happy it made my mother and father.
That’s the main reason I got into it. I could just see that it never really felt like work for them. They’d be out there talking about gigs, albums and what’s next. I’d say that sort of subconsciously rubbed off on me. I wanted to go in that direction as a career, but I don’t think it was inevitable.
Q: I loved your show. I’m surprised you’re not as big as the biggest band in America. Are you frustrated by the challenges of playing in America?
Danny O’Reilly: I don’t think frustrated is the right word. We did feel like we were making a lot of progress but we’ve noticed that it is maybe a little bit more difficult. That’s for a multitude of reasons. Obviously, there’s a lot of uncertainty now with visas and with people traveling. With the economy and inflation, it’s harder for people to go to shows. I think we’ve toured a couple of times on this album as well.
We need to come back fresh with a new record. We’ve seen an audience building in the States. It’s funny because obviously you saw the show, there’s a lot of Irish there. But there’s also an American crowd we’ve gotten that knows our new music more than our old music, which is really encouraging. I don’t think it’s frustrating, but it’s a challenge that we want to keep working at. We might have to wait a little while until things calm down with everything that’s going on in America at the moment.
Q: Have some songs that originated in Gael talk and other songs that were strictly written in English. When do you decide what song or what lyric deserves one language or the other?
Danny O’Reilly: It depends on what suits the song. The one we did in Gaelic in New York was years ago, I’d love to take the credit for that translation. We initially wrote that song in English and then I recorded it in Gaelic for a special album we were on. I didn’t actually do the translation myself, but because I do speak Irish, I think I had a good grasp of it and maybe have the pronunciation right and stuff like that. But the translation was so accurate and just so sort of poetic. I think it sort of struck a chord with a lot of people.
Obviously, years ago, that song was a bit folky anyway. So it lent itself nicely to the Irish version. I tend to play that live, doing it in either both Irish and English. Or sometimes just in Irish or sometimes just in English. It depends on how I’m feeling on the night and on how the crowd sort of feels as I get a sense of what they want.
Q: Since you write most of the songs, what makes one song closer to you than another? Or are all of them equally close to you and personal?
Danny O’Reilly: I think I’ve always been an honest songwriter. I always just try and write. The more honest I am and the more specific I am with what’s going on with me, those tend to be the lyrics that connect to the most people. When I try to be clever and overly poetic or use too much imagery or something like that, they’re not really the ones that people go for.
I often try to remind myself to listen, even when I’m struggling to write, which I’m having a little bit of at the moment. I often remind myself that I need to write about that. If that’s what I’m struggling with, then write about the struggle. When I was younger, I loved poems by Shamus Heaney. He often wrote poems about writing poetry and I found that fascinating.
Whenever I’m struggling, I write about the struggle. No matter what it is –– whether it’s about my struggling to write or struggling in a friendship, a relationship or with the band. A lot of our lyrics are about the band trying to improve or just about self-improvement in general. I try to be the best brother I can be, the best son, best band mate, whatever it may be. I often just try and be honest about my own self-improvement and journey. They’re usually the lyrics that connect to people.
Q: What was the song that you felt revealed something to you as you wrote it, and why?
Danny O’Reilly: There’s the duet on the new album, which is called, “That’s Exactly What Love Is.” It really opened my eyes; I wrote it in this little room, sitting in the Dublin area. It’s from the male and female perspective about the end of a relationship. It was really cathartic to try and put myself in another person’s shoes, writing about their experience within the breakup. It was the first time I’d ever done that. I found it fascinating and very cathartic. It made me think that that’s a good approach and I should use it in the future.
That was definitely something different for me. That approach allowed me to criticize myself through the eyes of someone else. That was important for me at the time. It’s something I’ll probably try and do again in the future. I don’t know how many layers in the second verse of that song … it’s like I’m writing from that person’s perspective and I’m still having a go at me. Brad: I would recco simply DELETING the rest of this paragraph. I don’t know how many layers of people it is. Even now you have the nerve to write this and guess what I’m thinking for your own therapy, which is, I don’t know how many layers that is, but it’s like me writing about myself from another person’s perspective pretending to be them writing about me. it’s just all these layers and craziness. I found it fascinating and again as I say, cathartic.
Q: There are certain songs that one would call anthemic like “Born to Run”. Do you have a song in mind that you think of as your most anthemic song?
Danny O’Reilly: We have a song on our first album called “San Diego Song” that has sort of transcended generations here in Ireland. We wrote it when we were students. It was like a joke song. It’s about just having a good time and being young and not overthinking things. We wrote it up and thought it would just be a B-side, but it became sort of a hit here in Ireland. Now to this day, people sing it back and it’s our closing song of the night. It’s cool to have a song like that which has had a new lifespan. We did a festival here a month or two ago called Kaleidoscope. It’s a family festival for all ages and there were kids singing this song. That’s crazy.
I was 21 when I wrote that song. Now here we are, 15 years later or whatever, and there’s a new generation of people singing it back to us. It was one of those simple lyrics that I didn’t think too much about and just connected to people. It almost feels like a cover to us now, even though we did write it. But it was so long ago and we were just in a different place that we would play at the end of the set. Now it’s like we’re doing a cover of another band. It’s cool to have a song like that and it gets that sort of anthemic response.
Q: Somebody, like Bob Dylan is known for songs which have a larger philosophical import. He’s also great at writing story songs, and songs about him and women or just about women in general. What songs would you define by those terms that are in your repertoire?
Danny O’Reilly: We definitely have a lot of love songs. As I said, I’m an honest writer. But oftentimes we’ll have songs that I’ve written about the band and people think they’re love songs. I don’t want to correct people; if they think it’s a love song, that’s fine.
“Heroes or Ghosts” for example –– that song we were talking earlier, where I did a bit in Irish. That song is about the band trying to be the best band that we can be. But oftentimes people think, “Oh, that’s such a nice love song. Or, A couple will say it to me, “That was our song.” I try not to tell people too much. Whatever they think the song is about, that’s good with me. But we tend not to write too much about social issues. That’s just not something we did on purpose.
I love Dylan by the way. I love a lot of artists who do talk about social and cultural issues. But that never felt right to us. It never felt like something I was too comfortable with. We don’t really write about politics, the state of the world, or anything. Our music is meant be an escape from all that. That’s how I see us, anyway. I write about things that we’re going through day to day.
Even when the pandemic hit, lives were turned upside down and our jobs were turned upside down. We were in a band called The Coronas, which wasn’t ideal. But I didn’t write about the pandemic as such. I wrote about what I was going through within the backdrop of the pandemic. I referenced how the world was messed up and we couldn’t leave our houses or whatever. I always try to frame the songs in a personal sort of way, just a personal take on what’s going on around me. I would say I’m definitely a more observational songwriter.
Q: Or a story songwriter where you’re basically relating some experience.
Danny O’Reilly: I would say not too many story songs. We’ve definitely had a couple for sure. Songs about people, about things that have happened to us and about experiences. Maybe they do tell a little story, but for the most part it’s the other two for sure.
Q: When people think of your music, what do you hear referenced the most? I can hear a hint of U2 in there. I can hear a lot of English bands in there. And then, a few American bands that might not be what people would think of. What do you hear? What do you hear people saying?
Danny O’Reilly: I definitely think it’s a vast array of different bands. There’s definitely influences for me personally, if you want to go for Irish bands. Yeah, U2, and The Cranberries for sure. I always loved The Cranberries. Then I got into a bit of folk music as well, the likes of Planxty and Paul Brady and a little bit of my mother’s music as I got older. When I was younger, I had no interest.
Then of course when we started the band, there was like a UK invasion of new bands coming through the likes of Snow Patrol, the Kooks and then some America bands like The Killers and Kings of Leon. They would be influences on us, too, for sure. I love The National, a great band from Cincinnati. And yeah, there’s a wide range. And then we always go back to the old stuff. Even now, we’ll put on The Beatles or Radiohead, another English band that were a big influence on me. But yeah, it is different I suppose. And it’s evolved over the years, as well.
Q: I just saw “The Saw Doctors” and to me, they’re about a kind of classic rock band of the seventies. You’re definitely more of a contemporary ’80s, ’90s band. It was an interesting contrast to show what Irish audiences both embrace.
Danny O’Reilly: I love “The Saw Doctors.” They’d be a band that we would look at as what could be for us in America moving forward. Also the gigs they do, and the venues they play. We’d definitely go, “Oh, that would be cool if we could be second generation Irish who were broken into this sort of American-Irish crowd.” That’s definitely a route that we could take.
I love those guys, and know what you mean. Their influences are definitely earlier than ours. But I’d compare us in the way it’s clear that we’re about having a good time. I love their show. It’s live music, guitars and sing along moments.
Our shows are about sing-along moments, too. We want the crowd to get involved, and we want people’s arms in the air. It’s feel-good and energetic. It’s not cool and shoe-gazing and standing back. It’s just enjoying fun times, and that’s the music that we love. So I’d say we have some things in common with Saw Doctors as well.
Q: I was impressed with how you were able to do that — jump into the audience. Maybe the Bowery Ballroom was conducive to that. Do you find that it takes certain balls? Or do you just think that’s your bond with the audience?
Danny O’Reilly: I do it at the big shows at home. It wasn’t just because the Bowery Ballroom was a bit smaller or whatever. It’s one of those things that I started doing the last couple of years. It’s that uncertainty of the fact that I just jump in and there’s no security around me and people are like, “What?”
it creates a little bit of chaos that really adds to the gig. Also, when I go down the line to the back there’s people who’ve been just sort of standing at the back there watching. All of a sudden, they feel like they’re in. We always do it. I usually do it around the same moments in the set, and especially when we’re touring, because we don’t have all our bells and whistles. When we play in Ireland, we’ll play bigger venues. We’ll have production fireworks, full light display, maybe even some confetti and bells and whistles — things like that.
When we’re on tour, we don’t have any production. Those sorts of little moments are really important for the show. If you want to keep people’s attention for 90 minutes, you’ve got to have little moments in the show. We try to separate them out. That’s also why we got my sister Roisin to sing a song with us. It just gives a different taste. We all have these different moments in the show that we try to use to keep people engaged.
Q: How does she decide when she joins you versus when she does her own thing?
Danny O’Reilly: It’s tough for her, she’s had to make a few calls recently because her own career is going really well too. She’s got her own tour, so she tries her best to balance it. We’re in a very lucky position, really, because we have our own record label. We can tour when we want to. We’ve been in this band for 15 years, so we know what territories we can sell tickets in. We don’t actually tour an awful lot. We probably tour for three months of the year and then we’ll have some bigger shows here in Ireland. The other three members of the band have kids and families. That’s when I can start working on the next record. We just have a very good balance. I think we’re very lucky in that way.
You said earlier that you thought we could be bigger. I always think there’s no guarantee that that would make us happier. We have a very good work-life balance. We’re very lucky that this is our job. We get to do it on our own terms, without a record label shouting down our throats. Telling us to get to work, or get touring, or start doing this, or make a song sound this way or whatever. We have all that control.
Roisin can find that balance as well. She’s great and things are going really well for her. Some of her new stuff, it’s really, really good. I do a bit of writing and producing for her, as well, when I have a bit of time off. But she’s very talented and it is great to have her in the band. She’s really good at harmonizing my voice as well because we have that sibling thing. We’ve been singing together all our lives. She knows if she hears me singing a little bit flat, she’ll do the harmony a little bit flat and that just masks it. She’s very good at that, and it’s brilliant to have her. She’s so fun. Obviously, she’s pregnant at the moment, so she’s not partying or having fun. She’d be hanging out with the rest of the band more than me. I’ll be off in bed and she’ll be out having a pint of Guinness with them.
Q: When is the drop?
Danny O’Reilly: She’s due in October. We have a tour of Australia in November that she’s going to miss. And we have a couple of shows in Ireland in October that she’s going to miss. But she’s hoping to be back for our big Christmas shows in December. Fingers crossed: she’ll be back. She doesn’t want to miss them. Every Christmas we do a run of gigs in the Olympia Theatre here in Dublin, which has become a tradition for us. People just keep coming back every year. She doesn’t want to miss those shows, so she’s going to try and make it. I suppose it depends on how it all goes, but fingers crossed it should be all good.
Q: You’ll have a new band member.
Danny O’Reilly: We’ll have to get someone to play the gigs that Roisin is missing, for sure.
Q: No, you’ll have a new band member in the child.
Danny O’Reilly: Oh, exactly of course [chuckles]. She knows it’s a little girl too. She’s so excited. yeah, that baby’s going to be very musical. Her fiancé is also an artist, as well. So, no doubt her daughter is going to be very artistic and creative. Hopefully, she’ll follow in her mother’s and uncles’ and grannies’ footsteps, as well.
Q: You’ve got the other two guys who are the core members. Talk about your relationship with them and how that evolved? Then talk about some of the new guys that have been working with you.
Danny O’Reilly: Myself and Noxy, our bass player [Graham Knox], met when we were literally kids. Our parents are best friends. so we met when we were babies. We’ve been friends our whole lives and went to school together. We learned to play guitar together and used to sneak into my older brother’s bands, rehearsals and watch ’em when we were like 12 and 13 and “Oh my God, they sing their own songs.”That sort of inspired us to start the band when we were probably 15 or whatever. We had lots of different lineups and members and stuff. Conor [Egan], my drummer, went to my primary school as well. I’ve known Conor since I was five or six. We probably started the band around 17 or 18. We had a different lineup. We used to have an electric guitarist, Dave (McPhillips).
Originally, we were a four piece for our first couple of albums. Dave was amazing and he was part of the family, but he wasn’t enjoying it anymore. He said to us one day, “I think you guys should continue without me. I’m going to step aside for a while. I want to do something else. But you guys still love it and I think you should keep going.”
Instead of taking on the burden as a three piece, we just opened up the band to our really talented friends like Roisin and Cian [MacSweeney], our saxophone player, and guitar player Lar [Kaye]. We’ve just got as many musicians as we could bring together to make a big sound.
It worked really, really well. It’s been a lot of fun collaborating with Roisin, Cian and Lar regardless of the three core members, it is a total democracy and we all know our strengths. The guys write with me as well, but for the most part they let me be the main songwriter. Without even realizing it, we’ve all delegated a lot within the band, especially when we started our record label. Our manager does a lot of the business side of things on the label. And our bass player, actually, does all our social media, all our design. He’s the front of house when it comes to our record label. He does all the socials, the merchandising, the designs. And he works with photographers and artwork and all that sort of stuff.
Conor does a lot of our stage stuff. He’s like our production manager and gets together the sound on stage. If we need a backing track, or need to set things up. Conor does a lot of the production stuff. As I said, Jim (Lawless) is sort of the main business end of our label. We’ve gotten good at delegating. That was just something that we fell into without even really deciding to do it.
It just worked out that way. We only started our record label three albums ago, and it’s definitely given us a new lease of life as a band, within the band. We were signed before to Island Records/Universal, a big record deal. When things don’t go right, when you have a record label, you go, “Oh, the label didn’t do this, and they didn’t release the right song, and they didn’t promote us the right way.” But when you’re your own record label, you’ve got no one to blame but yourself if things aren’t going well. That makes you work harder.
It definitely made us work harder, and I think that’s one of the reasons why it’s been really good for us. We were blessed and have great musicians that tour with us, and they love it too. They all have their own projects separate from us as well. So myself, Noxy and Conor will be focused on the next Coronas album while they’ll be doing their other things. Then, when it comes back to touring, they’ll get back involved. They often play on our records, as well, which we have almost finished.
Q: Your bass player has a little bit of a punky side to him. You think of him as the most punky?
Danny O’Reilly: I would say so. He’s got the best music taste, as well. Whenever we’re driving anywhere, or if someone’s putting on music at a party or whatever, we just give him control of the Spotify list or whatever. He’ll pick 90% ’80s bangers and just all these amazing tunes. But yeah, he has the look, he has the punk, he has the musical taste. He was always the cooler of me and him. But I could sing, so that helped me.
Q: He sang pretty well, I thought. Now the most important question is, “How do you decide when you use the top knot? Or have your hair pulled back?”
Danny O’Reilly: No one’s ever asked me that question before, Brad, and thank you. Well –– today for example –– I was running around and caught myself in the mirror just before the thing. My hair was like an absolute ‘fro. So I put it up. But it depends how I’m feeling on the day. If I know it’s going to be a sweaty gig, I might let it down. It literally is a feeling on the day, depending on how frizzy my hair is, in general. Or if I need a cut or whatever, I’ll just pull it up but that’s a pure feeling. You’ve caught me off guard with that question.
Q: Are there moments which are uncanny where you just connect to something and go somewhere you didn’t know you were going to go? Or do you feel like you’ve got it under control?
Danny O’Reilly: Oftentimes gigs can just take off in a different direction. And that gig, for example, we played the Bowery a few times. It’s a beautiful venue, but that show for me –– something happened. I met my friend after the show who again, he came to the show. A friend of mine lives in New York, his name is Paul. He’s seen us — I’m not going to say hundreds, but maybe he’s seen us tens of times — maybe 20 in his life. He comes to me after the show and says, “I cried three times during that gig.”
I was like, “Oh man, that’s so sweet.” I was feeling it, as well. There was just … sometimes, there’s just a bit of magic in the room. You can’t put your finger on why it is, but something will happen where something just sounds really nice! Or you have a little bit of back and forth with the crowd and a bit of chat or whatever. You can’t really plan that stuff. Oftentimes it’ll just happen in a gig and sometimes people expect it to happen in the big shows. We played the festival here last summer to 20,000 people, probably more. The gig was great, but it went by the flash. It was like the adrenaline, just sort of went by. then you might play in a small room to 150 people, but there’s just magic and you just really feel it in your bones.
Despite everything that’s going on with music being free and the industry changing and being more difficult, people still want that experience of being in a room and not knowing what might happen. “Are they going to sound good?” And, “Oh my God. The lead singer jumped down beside me!” That sort of uncertainty of being in a live show, watching and seeing music being created, I think that is one of the reasons why people still love coming to live shows. We all love that uncertainty.
If someone requests a song, I’ll call out on stage and say to the lads, “Alright, we’ll try it.” The lads will look at me and go, “We haven’t played that song in years.” But we’ll be fine. People know that we haven’t done it in a while, or whatever. Those little bits of chaos, I think, often make a show. I love that. I have earbuds in when I play live. Often you’ll see me try to take them out, because I want to be able to hear exactly what someone’s shouting something out. I want to have that interaction still, with big shows or small ones.
Q: Since you control the label, were there some uncanny decisions that you made in terms of singles to release that to this day you say, “Wow, I’m glad we fought for that?”
Danny O’Reilly: It’s funny because we were so lucky in our first few albums. We got so much radio play here and that really gave us a base and a loyal fan base. People have continued to come back and see us every year. But we used to think in singles for that reason, because we were a daytime radio band. As I said, I listened to some of the bands that were getting a lot of radio play when we were starting, the likes of Kings of Leon, The Killers and the Kooks. These bands are on the radio all the time, and that was the music that we were writing.
These days, the radio landscape has changed, especially here, and we’re not chasing the three and a half minute pop single anymore. We’re sort of just like, “Let’s just write music that we really like.” And what used to happen is we’d write some songs we really like and then some songs that we liked less. But because they were three and a half minutes and they were upbeat and poppy, that had to be the single. Whereas now we just release our favorite songs on the album and it doesn’t matter if they’re slow, fast or whatever. We’re not really sort of vying for that daytime radio pop play anymore, anyway.
It was a weight lifted off our shoulders, and that was one thing. Then when we talk about the influences we have –– the likes of The National, the band I was talking about from Cincinnati –– they don’t get daytime radio play. But they’re really a big band and tour globally. We sort of see ourselves like that as we get older. This is our space.
We’re connected to people in slightly different ways. Those sort of things come into mind when we’re picking songs to release. Where do we want to be? What playlist do we want to be on? What world do we want to place ourselves in? What songs best represent that? They’re the sort of questions we have [to ask], and we just trust ourselves on it. Sometimes, it’s easier when you have a label that goes, “Oh, this is definitely the single.” But when you don’t have someone doing that, you can second guess yourself a bit, as well. “Are we sure?” No one had told us so we need to trust ourselves. But I think we’ve gotten better at that too.
Q: Where does this take you for the rest of the day? What’s next, what are you going to do after you’re done gabbing with me?
Danny O’Reilly: I’m on a fitness kick at the moment in between. Because we’ve got half of the American tour, well over half. We’ve got to fly back over to the States next week to do a festival and a show in Chicago. And we were on tour for the last two weeks, two and a half weeks. America’s a tough country to eat healthily in, especially when you’re traveling, where we’re stopping in rest stops and it’s just all fast food everywhere. In the cities, it’s fine. You can eat healthy in New York, you can eat healthy in LA, but when you’re traveling, it’s tough eating healthy. Tonight, I’m going to go training, I’m playing a game of football, still at my age, and I’m going to go kick football around and try to sweat it out. That’s at seven.
Until then, I’ve got a few little bits. This is my little studio here. Actually, I started working on a song last night that I’m excited about. It’s very early. It could be terrible. That’s why the guys in the band come in really, really helpful as well. Because oftentimes I’ll write a song and I’m like, “Wait till they get a load of this.” I’ll send it to the band and I have complete trust in them. If they say, “No, that’s not quite there,” I go, “Okay.” It can happen the other way as well though, where I write something that I go, “I’m not sure about this, I think it sounds a bit weird.” And they’re like, “Oh, that’s something good.” They’re always right.
That ends up being the song that connects. It can be difficult because with songwriting, like writing in general, you don’t finish something unless you think it’s good and it connects with you. Everything that I’ve written, even though I know a lot of it has been terrible at some stage, I thought was good. I thought it was really good. Having people you trust in your inner circle to sort of sift through that stuff, I think is really key for keeping the quality up. At the moment, I think this song that I started last night is great. But we will see and let it keep going, let it flow and see where it goes.
Eventually I’ll send it to the guys and they can tell me it’s terrible! We’re going back over to America to record in January to record the next album. So when we have a bit of time off in between tours or whatever, I’m starting to get to that stage where I’m trying to put myself under a bit of pressure to keep writing. I’m not one to usually sit down 9 to 5. “Okay, let’s go. I’m going to write today.” I try to let the inspiration hit me a bit, but you have to be disciplined as well.
You can always find an excuse not to sit down and write/ I’ll do it tomorrow. I’m going to go for a walk. I’m going to go and play football, or whatever it is.I’ve gotten better over the years now. I need to make some time and really get stuck into the next album. I’d say we’re about halfway there. We’ve got about 10 or 12 songs. I’m really excited about five or six of them. I think we’re about halfway there at the next record.
Q: Where will you record?
Danny O’Reilly: We are recording in a studio in Connecticut, so just outside New York with a producer who has done The National. Actually he’s won a Grammy for The National, one of their albums. His name is Peter Katis, and he’s mixed our last couple of albums. He has a studio there that we’re going to go over and stay with him. We’l; live in the studio for three weeks and record the album in January. So that’s the plan.
We’ll probably start releasing songs in the summer and drip-feed the songs out. That’s usually the way it goes these days, with releases the album later in the year. We’re not taking a break. We’re kept going while the hunger is still there and we love it, we enjoy it, we want to keep it going. We feel really grateful to be able to do this. Whether it’s 300 people in the Bowery Ballroom or 10,000 in Dublin, we’re happy to do it. We’re very lucky that we have this life and we want to keep continuing. We want to improve since we still feel like we have something to say.
Q: What are your next challenges?
Danny O’Reilly: What are our next challenges? Wow. I think we still feel like as a band, we have something to say. I feel like our challenges are always the same. It’s to try and improve and to try and try and improve our show, improve our recorded music, our writing. I suppose our challenge is to keep going the way we’ve been going. And continue to build on what we have because we still love it. We still love the work, we still love the tour, we love what we do. We love playing live. So, I think the challenge is to keep going as long as we can.