Adrian Crowley | Matt Connarton Unleashed

Setting the Stage for Adrian Crowley

Speaker 1: Well, that haunting sound, that is Adrian Crowley. And the song is Quinn the Adventurer. And we're going to learn all about that.

Speaker 2: Let's see.

Meet Adrian Crowley and Quinn the Adventurer

Speaker 1: So we've got, I think we have Adrian Crowley with us via restream all the way from Ireland, I believe. Adrian, are you there?

Speaker 2: I am. Can you hear me?

Speaker 1: Yes, yes. Welcome to the show. Very excited to talk with you today because that is such an interesting song, and it's from a very interesting project, of course, Bring Your Own Hammer, and really looking forward to speaking with you today about it. You have more than one contribution to the Bring Your Own Hammer project, correct? It's not only Quinn the Adventurer?

Speaker 2: Absolutely. I've been writing songs for the project for several years, actually. And would you believe I've lost count of the amount of songs I've written for the project. Oh, okay. Yeah, absolutely. Because actually about a year ago, Dr. Richard McMahon, the historian behind the whole project, he reminded me that I've basically my solo contributions amount to the equivalent of an album, you know, of songs. So imagine everyone contributing together, how many songs there are by now or after a few years, because there are so many amazing artists involved.

Speaker 2: So I've no idea how many songs have been written for the project altogether, you know. There's so many, it's such a wealth.

Speaker 1: He's going to be on with us soon to tell

The Unique Blend of History and Music

Speaker 1: us all about it. But what can you tell us about it in the meantime to kind of tide us over about Bring Your Own Hammer and what this project is exactly? Because it's very interesting, the origins of it. And it's ambitious, I would say, to say the least. But what exactly is, in your words, Adrian, what exactly is Bring Your Own Hammer?

Speaker 2: So I would say it's where scholarly pursuits meet songwriting pursuits in a nutshell, but it's more like the meeting of historians and composers creating something that is very specific in that it's a project where the source material is derived from the Irish diaspora and post famine Ireland. So basically, things that happened to Irish people in that time, but in a very kind of like closeup view of people's lives. So it's very, that's very much something that interested me at the beginning that it wasn't this general broad history project.

Speaker 2: It was extremely specific and with, with like threads of different themes that you could pursue, but essentially these are stories. set to song about people's real lives from a particular part of Irish history, not necessarily grounded on in the land of the Island of Ireland, but what happened when people left Ireland too. So I hope that elucidates it a bit. Absolutely. Absolutely.

Speaker 1: Because like I said, it's such a unique and interesting project. Um, I'm, I'm of Irish descent. My father's family, um, My ancestors were from Ireland. But, you know, I will confess, I don't know much about the history. And I have been learning a little bit, you know, from listening to this project, Bring Your Own Hammer. Of course, everything is available on Bandcamp, for example. So people can get access to it. But it's such an interesting thing and highly educational.

The Power of Song as a Teaching Tool

Speaker 1: And I do think, and I assume... this is one of the reasons that this came about is because one of the ways that you can educate people is through song, you know, and through other art forms as well. But if you can connect with people artistically, it generally, I think, makes them much more receptive to what it is that you're trying to teach them rather than, you know, a PowerPoint presentation or something like that. If you can connect through music, you can really transmit that information.

Speaker 2: Yes, absolutely. But there's another thing that's very important to me generally about writing songs, because essentially, even, you know, for projects like this, but any projects that involve songs, the song itself has to sit with the listener in a way. They don't need really to know what the story behind the song was or why it was written. But in this case, and many other cases, I suppose, but in this case, the listener can go and dig and find out, oh, wow, what does that mean, you know? What is...

Speaker 2: What's on golden streets, bitter tears about, I like listening to it, but what is it? What's it coming from? So I think it needs to work as a song first, but then there's another few layers if you want to look underneath, you know, and, and discover something that is fully, fully real. Right. And, and really it kind of opens the pathways to discovery of, And yeah, sure. You were, you can educate yourself, but my personal involvement of it wasn't necessarily to educate anyone, you know, I was inspired naturally by that, by it.

Speaker 2: And, and it was really a real revelation for me to, to, to discover these documents and lose myself in these stories that perhaps could have remained just in some archives or in a kind of a digital folder somewhere that never gets revealed, you know?

Speaker 1: Right.

Speaker 2: Right.

Speaker 1: And if it, if it, if it never gets reviewed, it's like the tree that falls in the forest, you know, it's, it's just kind of lost.

Speaker 2: Yes, absolutely. And, uh, so I suppose I, the more I was involved, every time I was asked to consider writing another song for say, a particular theme that was running in the project, or sometimes, say, Richard might discover a story and think, oh, Adrian might like this, and he'd send it to me, you know, and he'd say, what do you think? Do you think there's a song in here for you? And then I was immediately hooked. Even if I was busy with many other things, I always found the time to do it. So I'm saying that because it's just been very inspiring, you know, really.

Speaker 1: That's amazing.

Speaker 2: Yeah.

Speaker 1: Uh, we should tell our listeners too.

The Art of Historical Storytelling in Song

Speaker 1: So Quinn, the adventurer previews the 21 song double album from the tombs. Um, and I assume, so all the stories, I mean, are there, In terms of how these songs, is there a deliberate effort with a collection like this to, I mean, we understand the inspiration that these songs spring from, but is there a particular story being told, or does each song kind of tell its own story, you know, within the context of this bit of history that we're talking about? Or is there some sort of a through line, almost like a concept album, where you're trying to tell a different part of a story with each song?

Speaker 2: Well, let's see. Sometimes, for instance, there was an EP released to do with the sea. So each one of those stories were sea-related.

Speaker 1: Okay.

Speaker 2: But that was their connection. But also they were set in the same period of history. So as far as I'm aware, there are no songs that are retelling the same story, if you know what I mean. they're all interlinked, but they're all standalone songs. But yes, quite often there is a theme to each collection.

Speaker 1: Okay.

Speaker 2: So yeah, it could be law and order or, or the sea and the sea is so broad. It could be about voyages. It could be about something that happened on the Island near the sea. It's, you know, it's quite, it's quite broad, but I think, You know, from a curatorial perspective, that's where Richard is. He very much has the vision for this. And the late Kyle Coughlin, too, of course, who first approached me to join the project. It's their vision. I mean, I'm only vaguely conscious of themes that everyone would bring collectively when I'm working on the songs because I'm so close to it.

Speaker 2: But then Richard might say, ah, we've got 10 songs here, which all are to do with, say, hardship or poverty or seeking new wealth or seeking a new life in the new world or something. So I suppose that's up to Richard to decide. To see the threads, but not just see them, but also to direct them at the beginning. I guess he was the director. Okay, okay.

The Creative Process Behind Quinn the Adventurer

Speaker 1: I'm curious, too, about your approach in terms of production, because I think I'd use the word haunting coming out of that song, Quinn the Adventurer. I mean, it's very... you know, it is, it's haunting. It's atmospheric. It's got a literary vibe, if I could put it that way.

Speaker 1: Is everything that you do for this project, or perhaps even because I haven't heard other music that you've done outside of this project, I mean, do you kind of approach everything that way? Or how do you approach this from a production standpoint?

Speaker 2: I do approach everything that way, I suppose, because, um, well, this, this song I produced and played all the instruments myself and my son mixed it. Oh, good. Uh, yeah. And so I'm speaking to you from the house where I recorded it. I have this little attic studio with lots of instruments and, but at the heart of it, it's about the words. I suppose, What I do, apart from my instrumental, purely instrumental work, the most important thing is the words, the story, and the, I suppose, my voice, because that's my main instrument.

Speaker 2: And I do approach everything with those in mind. And there is always a literary sense to what I write. I mean, I write a lot, and words are very important to me. And if it's haunting, well, you know, I like to hear that.

Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2: I feel haunted when I'm doing it.

Speaker 1: Well, you are in an attic.

Speaker 2: Exactly. I thought I'd give you a bit of context there, you know, to where it came from.

Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah. When you're doing a song like that, obviously, you know, you're singing from the point of view of the character. Is it hard to kind of. Because you don't necessarily want to impose too much of yourself on the performance, right? Because you're this character in the song. I mean, is that a challenge?

Speaker 2: Yeah, it is. I mean, because at the very beginning, like this song, I had a notebook that I was carrying around with me for quite some time. I was traveling and adding bits to the notebook and finding a way into the song. And absolutely... I didn't want to lose track, lose sort of my path and have the song turn into something else entirely. That's, you know, all about me, this man here speaking to you, but rather than, you know, I wanted to keep it to the story of this other man's life, but absolutely through the first person.

Speaker 2: So, yes, that was a challenge, but I think it's almost like, uh, you, you get to know a part for, for a film or a play and you, and you just have to live with it and absorb it. And then when it comes out, it's going to be infused with your essence, but you're hopefully looking through the eyes of this other person. So it is a balance and a challenge. And, Not all of my songs are like that, but this certainly is.

Bringing James Quinn's Story to Life

Speaker 1: Sure, sure. And of course, to be clear for everyone, James Quinn, obviously, who the song is about, he was a real person. These are all historical stories. None of this is fiction. So I'm curious, how did you encounter his story? And there's all these details in the story, Charlie Chaplin and the shrunken heads and the burglary and his disappearance and everything. Like what, like, how did you, how did you, or maybe Richard brought the story to you? I'm not sure.

Speaker 2: Yes. Richard did bring the story to me. Uh, and he, I, I straight away thought, wow, this is incredible. It's like, it's like the treatment for a movie, you know? Yeah. Really? There's so much in it. And so almost all, you can be overwhelmed by that amount of information and that amount of details because you can't have everything in a song. So in a way, I had to choose the arc of the song, the key elements, and actually treat it like a very visual thing for myself. So, yeah, Richard sent me the story and he said, what do you think of this?

Speaker 2: And he said, actually, first of all, he said, I found some source material that could be really interesting for you. And perhaps you could write a song about some shrunken head. So I was thinking, what was that really? So I read it, read it and I, I understood what he was getting at. Uh, but yeah, the, the song kind of asked me to, to tell it in that way, you know, after a while. So, I suppose it's episodic. I mean, I could even, I keep thinking about that song and think how it could have even been longer.

Speaker 2: It could have gone on for days.

Speaker 1: Sure.

Speaker 2: Sure. Name them song for now. And the, the challenge. Yeah. The, the challenge was, was very enticing. And also the source material was so rich and, uh, It feels good then, you know, when you feel like something has clicked because you know, when you're reading, if anyone looks into the backstory of the song, it's very, very, very interesting. You know, the, um, it's basically this, this man, James Quinn, who changed his name to Tim O'Brien. He leaves Belfast. He seems to have some kind of maybe a sketchy background, but he's like, he could be running away from something and he wants to be a famous film star.

Speaker 2: in Hollywood. He seems to, he kind of gathers together the price of the transatlantic voyage, gets there, gets into all kinds of scrapes, steals some shrunken heads, goes to the Amazon. People don't believe that he's been to the Amazon. Then he goes, he starts this kind of roadshow where he's talking about his adventures and he's showing these relics and finally gets arrested and sentenced to prison in San Quentin. But there's this kind of, there's a kind of like lapse whereby he's able to abscond before he's brought to the prison.

Speaker 2: And he writes, oh, all the while he's writing letters to his mother. So apparently he wrote about, I don't know, a hundred letters. And yeah, they were all kept and they were regarded as like a really comprehensive process document of someone's life from that time and he only wrote to her so then he disappears he says to his mom hey mom I'm going to Cuba and then that was the end of it oh no kidding so but you can't really get all of that into a song so in the end in the end I left out any reference to San Quentin or Cuba, but you do get the sense.

Speaker 2: Yeah. You get a sense of his, um, he taught in one of his letters, he's telling his mother about his plans and that he's going to be great. But for now he's doing this really challenging job in a really hot place where people are, you know, paying, um, two, two bits for the entry or whatever, uh, to get inside, um, the show. And he's saying he's really hot. It's not what he really wants to do, but he's going to make her proud one day. So you get a sense of that, I think.

Speaker 1: It's interesting that... So for all we know, he may have lived out the rest of his life in Cuba, but we'll never know that part, obviously.

Speaker 2: Exactly.

Speaker 1: That's interesting. I'm curious, has Richard ever brought anything to you that you couldn't... that you couldn't go forward with? Or do you always, do you always find a way to, uh, to, to shape it into a song? I'm curious if he's ever brought you anything where maybe you tried and it just wasn't, maybe it just wasn't vibing for you or something.

Speaker 2: Uh, good question. Actually, I've never said to him, no, I can't do this. So, but what has happened before is that he might've had, for instance, he had an idea that perhaps I could write a song, uh, with a, William Butler Yates poem. If he sent me the poem or, you know, suggested a poem for me to write music for, turn it into a song. He sent me a few and I thought, these are beautiful poems. I love WB Yates. But I said, okay, but I don't know if this is the poem for me. Send me another. So he'd send me another, but it didn't take long.

Speaker 2: I mean, I think maybe he sent me two or three. And then he sent me a poem called The White Birds. And I thought, yeah, I was walking down the street when I was reading the poem and I started hearing music. So sometimes it pays to say we're nearly there, but this isn't the actual one. But something along the lines of this might be the one. And similarly with a shipwreck story you sent me. And I was thinking, I said, this is a really great story, but for some reason, I don't think this is my shipwreck.

Speaker 2: You know, you sent me another shipwreck. story and it was right up my street and yeah and and it turned into like a i don't know 14 minute long song that sean oh wow contributed to yeah so sometimes you get a flash of what might be the song the story yeah but it's not that actual story but it's related to that story and then you unearth it you know yeah yeah there's a bit of there's a bit of divining or a bit of a sixth sense involved sometimes, you know?

Speaker 1: Absolutely. Absolutely. Um, by the way, you mentioned, uh, you mentioned your son, he mixed, uh, Quinn, the adventure. Is that correct?

Speaker 2: That's right.

Speaker 1: Yeah.

Speaker 2: Um, his name is Max and he's 23. He's, uh, an extremely hard worker and he's a producer and he plays the Ellen pipes, you know, the Irish traditional instrument. Wow. And, Yeah, and he is a bit of a wizard in the studio. And he's pretty much self-taught. When he was a teenager during lockdown, he just honed in on his skills of production and he actually just matured so quickly musically. It's really quite something.

Speaker 1: Oh, good for him. And to be able to work with him like that, I mean, that must be amazing for both of you.

Speaker 2: It really is. It really is. And we're working on other music together all the time. And, you know, we, uh, get excited about the same things and he might discover an instrument somewhere, you know, on sale online and he'd say, Hey dad, what do you think? Do you think we should go halves on this?

Speaker 1: Right.

Speaker 2: You know, that's what we do. It's great. I feel very lucky.

Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely. No doubt. No doubt. Um, now what's, what's next for you as far as bring your own hammer?

The Collaborative Spirit of Bring Your Own Hammer

Speaker 1: Because it sounds like you're, you're, you're constantly working on things for that project.

Speaker 2: Yes. Oh yes. Well for the project, um, what usually happens with bring your own hammer with me is that I would say, do a flurry of activity for the project and, uh, and then go back to my, my main, music my main work and then so it's for that reason i think it's it's gone on for many years now uh thankfully because i've enjoyed it so much yeah but yeah i'm working on my own my 11th album at the moment oh wow uh solo album yeah so that's my main pursuit these days for for for the coming months it's going well yeah i aim to finish by the end of By the time the winter comes in.

Speaker 1: Is your material, is that all on Bandcamp? Can people find that there?

Speaker 2: Yeah, it's Bandcamp and all various places where you find music. So yeah, it's quite easy to find.

Speaker 1: Oh, excellent. Outstanding. And in a moment, we're going to play, to close out our conversation, and I do appreciate you joining us today, we're going to play this Golden Streets Bitter Tears with, looks like, so you collaborated on this with, I want to make sure I get her name right,

Speaker 1: Bridget May Power?

Speaker 2: That's right. She's an astonishing artist and one of my dearest friends, so she very kindly lent her voice to the song and I think elevated it so, so much. I love her voice. Yeah.

Speaker 1: Yeah, definitely. No, she does have a, she does have a beautiful voice. Um, we're going to, so we're going to close out our conversation with that, but before we let you go, and again, Adrian, thank you so much for joining us today. Um, but where's the, where's the best place for people to go online to keep up with everything that you're doing?

Speaker 2: Okay. That's a very good question. Everything I'm doing. Oh, wow. Well, okay. Well, I have an Instagram page and it's crow on a fence, all one word. And I also have a website, adriancrowley.com.

Speaker 1: Perfect.

Speaker 2: And yeah, I suppose you could start there.

Speaker 1: That's the best place to start. Absolutely. Absolutely. Adrian Crowley, thank you so much. We'll definitely do this again in the future because it sounds like you've got a lot of, you know, you're always working on new stuff. So we'll have you back soon. I'm quite sure. Right.

Speaker 2: Well, It was a pleasure to talk. Thanks so much, Matt.

Speaker 1: Absolutely, Adrian. Thank you. Take care.

Speaker 2: Bye now.

Speaker 1: Bye-bye. All right, that was Adrian Crowley, and we're going

Wrapping Up and Looking Ahead

Speaker 1: to close out our conversation with this. This is also, no, I should say, I'm sorry, and I should have said this with him still on the line. This is from a different EP from Bring Your Own Hammer, but I think you referred to this earlier in our conversation, My Grief on the Sea, and another historical song here. So we'll learn something from this. But again, this is Golden Street's Bitter Tears, Adrian Crowley, featuring Bridget May Power. And check this out.