Cathal Fitz | Matt Connarton Unleashed

0:00 Speaker 1: Welcome everybody to Matt Connorton Unleashed, and we are live from the studios of wm NH ninety five point three FM and Glorious Manchester, New Ympshire. Of course, you can stream the show live from anywhere. Go to Matt connorton dot com slash live for all your streaming options, social media links, contact info, show archives, et cetera, et cetera. If you are listening to the show live, today is Saturday, January twenty four, twenty twenty six. We have an exciting show for you today. In a few minutes, we're gonna hear some world radio premieres.

0:28 Speaker 1: We get a bunch of new music to share with you. But the track we just heard that is called Pushing thirty. To open up this week's show, the artist is and I'm gonna bring him in a moment. I'm gonna as him if I'm saying his name correctly, because it's not a name I'm used to saying. Ca hal Fits, I don't. I don't know if I'm saying that right. Let's go ahead and bring him in though he's joining us via Microsoft Teams.

0:48 Speaker 2: Hello are you there?

0:51 Speaker 3: I'm there, my friend, har are you you did a very very good stob of my name.

0:54 Speaker 4: I must say, I'm very very impressed.

0:57 Speaker 2: Well, I had to look it up.

0:58 Speaker 4: You know.

0:58 Speaker 2: It's amazing.

0:59 Speaker 1: You can go on YouTube and just type in how to pronounce, and just put in whatever name you're looking for, and someone's inevitably posted a video explaining that.

1:06 Speaker 2: But you know, and I should know, I am.

1:08 Speaker 1: Of Irish descent myself, so I should have had I should have had a clue, but I really didn't until I actually looked it up.

1:16 Speaker 4: Do you have any idea where your Irish descendants come from?

1:19 Speaker 1: I do not.

1:19 Speaker 2: I do not. I need to research that. I haven't.

1:23 Speaker 1: I just know that I've got some Irish in me,

1:27 Speaker 1: not only because my you know, my dad was of Irish descent, but also if I go out into the sun in the summer without sunscreen, I burn immediately. So I'm definitely I'm definitely Irish.

1:37 Speaker 3: You become one of those red and white sweets that we have over here. You red. Yeah, we're very close. That's the tell tale sign that you've Irished genetics. That you don't do the sun very well. And we also don't do the rain very well. It always rains here and no one ever has any proper rain gear, so we're just kind of stuck in this middle of people wearing shorts in December.

1:56 Speaker 4: And so yeah, it's good fun though. It's a lovely place that's interesting.

2:00 Speaker 2: Yeah.

2:01 Speaker 1: Yeah, So I love the song Pushing thirty, although as someone who pushed thirty quite a while ago, it makes me feel a little well, we'll talk about that, but it is a great song.

2:12 Speaker 2: Can you tell us about it.

2:13 Speaker 1: I know that this came out in November, but you're getting a lot of traction with this single.

2:18 Speaker 3: Yeah, Like it's doing well, and I suppose a lot of my songs in general, like I started writing music in July twenty twenty four. I used to be a personal trainer. I left that job to start writing music. I just had some sort of away thing where I was like, this is what I want to do. And most of my songs, and especially Pushing thirty was a reflection of people around me and also myself that I think because of everything the way the world has gone, that I think people in their late twenties and early like they still feel like teenagers, you know, and we're still kind of stuck in these routes that a lot of us in Ireland can't get houses.

2:52 Speaker 4: We can't, you know, like everything's.

2:54 Speaker 3: Expensive, and I think you can if you're living without purpose, you can get caught in that rut of you know, let's go out and number selves the weekend and let's adhere to social peer pressure of you know, the latest trendy close or the latest exposed, and you just get.

3:08 Speaker 4: Stuck in the row.

3:08 Speaker 3: And I suppose I saw that in myself, and I saw that in people around me. And I'm very lucky that since I started doing this that I have the most amazing support network of producers and managers and everything that it's.

3:20 Speaker 4: All kind of falling into place.

3:21 Speaker 3: But yeah, it's a special song and it took me four or five minutes to write and it's having good impact, which is what I want from my music, just for someone to listen to it and no matter how old they after pushing sixty, you or pushing thirty, say, I like that. It feels familiar and it feels relatable.

3:37 Speaker 2: Just for the record, I'm not pushing sixty.

3:39 Speaker 1: That's not what I meant, just to clarify, no, But so I'm curious, like, was there a specific moment that kind of sparked the song, or was this something that was kind of building up in you over time, or because it sounds like it sounds like you haven't been necessarily actively pursuing music for very long, or maybe you have, but from what you said, it kind of sounded like or at least on this level, this is kind of new.

4:08 Speaker 3: No, It's like, like July twenty twenty four, I quit my job to do pub covers, like literally just playing a few covers in a few wo in a few pubs, you know. And then last January, my missus was saying to me, She's like, you know, you're too good and too talented to be a pub singer, so you need to push yourself. So I released my first song last January, and since then, I've like I've wrote, I've written fourteen songs or something. In the last two three weeks, I've another twenty twenty five recorded, and it's just flowing out of me.

4:39 Speaker 3: And I just cannot tell you how much I love it, Like I just I've never again I picked up a guitar like again a year and a half ago, having not played it. I used to strumgle my bedroom at home four or five chords. But I've just found something that for the first time in my life, I've haven't given up on. Yeah, and like you know, I've bounced around loads of different jobs. I'm kind of like that typical Australian man with a hyvas jacket. You'd think of doing anything that used to be me, you know really, but I found I found music and that song in particular is almost just a flow consciousness.

5:08 Speaker 3: I sit down with the guitar five time minutes later the song written.

5:12 Speaker 4: It's not like that all the time.

5:13 Speaker 3: Like I've got a few weeks where you know, you just you don't have anything to say. But I found that I've channeled music into the craziness in my head and the thoughts I have. It gives me a platform to allow me to say what I need to say to myself and maybe to the world. And if someone gets something from it, then that's a bonus too.

5:30 Speaker 2: Yeah, that's fantastic. You mentioned too. You know.

5:32 Speaker 1: The miss is it's great that you have a supportive partner who encourages you to do that, because that that makes a huge difference, you know obviously. I mean, and I'm sure you don't take that for granted because that's I'm sure you know, she's very proud of you.

5:45 Speaker 3: No, she's she's incredible. She's actually inside now minding the small fellow with my mum. So shout out to my mum as well. So I looked away for ten minutes from parenting Judies to.

5:54 Speaker 4: Take my world famous rocks.

5:55 Speaker 3: There prem here of pushing thirty, you know, but no, look, it's almost like it's all meant to happen.

6:00 Speaker 4: That, you know, my partner.

6:02 Speaker 3: My parents are very supportive, and my dad was that typical kind of Irish dad where you know, you get a job now and you stay here and you you have security. And when I told him I was going to be a musician, he was a bit like Aaron Jesus, I don't know about that. No, that's that's not very secure as this, but he kind of sees that it's you know, it's it's going somewhere like I'm talking to a radio station in the US and he's kind of like, jee's fair play.

6:23 Speaker 4: Tore that's brilliant.

6:24 Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, it's cool, it's cool, and yeah it's supportive people. My producer like, I've met all these people very organically in the last year and a half a producer, videographer, manager, and they're almost like the perfect team for me to be around.

6:35 Speaker 4: So I know I'm meant to be doing this and based on just keep around me.

6:39 Speaker 2: Oh, that's fantastic.

6:42 Speaker 1: Do you feel any kind of you know, because I know there's sort of this Irish storytelling tradition and music. I mean, is that something that you're you're conscious of and your your approach to because you as you mentioned, you're you know, you're writing a lot of songs.

6:55 Speaker 3: Yeah, So like I think I actually went back to native languages, guelgap, so it's I went back to study that about two years ago, so I'm kind of learning that. And the Irishness is a very very particular character.

7:12 Speaker 4: We love to tell stories.

7:14 Speaker 3: If you asked us for directions, right, the shot could be up on the right. We'll tell you on the way to the shop about that tree that's been there for ten thousand years and that was once you know, And that's kind of part of our charm and part of our imprint on the world. And what we have to offer is is kind of this unique way of looking at things. And I think as my songs progress in terms of my songwriting, the last few songs have written are a bit more metaphorical, a bit more imagery based, a bit more trying to tell a story.

7:40 Speaker 3: And I'm trying to channel into that. I'm trying to lean into that. Like we're called the Lands of Saints and Scholars. You know, we've some of the most amazing English writers ever, you know, James Joyce and Seamus Heaney, all these amazing poets and scholars that have gone before me. And I feel like I have almost values uphols. You know, I'm very proud to be Irish. A lot of people will know that about me. You know, I learned this, I learned the language, and I love where I'm from. In particular, Cork is where I'm from, and everyone from Cork loves being from Cork.

8:11 Speaker 3: That's just kind of you know, we have very special connection to the land. We have a very special connection to storytelling. And you know, over the last few hundred years, we weren't allowed to speak our language because of things that had gone on, and we had a very unique way of preserving that, which was keeping the you know, the spoken word alive and exaggerating stories to try and make it seem magical, you know, and that's kind of even what I'm doing now, the gift of the gap, you know.

8:35 Speaker 2: Right right exactly.

8:37 Speaker 1: And so so this track Pushing thirty that we played that came out in November, and then you've got another single which we're going to play at the end of our conversation called Enemy of Love, which is also a great song. But I'm curious, now, what what are kind of your plans in terms of releasing music are you Are you going to do continue to do singles, do you have an EP in mind or an album or what's what's kind of the forward trajectory for you?

9:00 Speaker 3: See, I'm kind of stuck in a bit of a crossroads at the moment because the way music is in the industry is you know yourself that it's very dependent on algorithms and dependent on a single getting picked up. So I have loads of songs ready to go and written. My next song is coming out hopefully in the next four or five weeks. Will have to submit it to Spotify and do all those bits.

9:21 Speaker 4: But I'm also I wrote, as.

9:24 Speaker 3: I said, maybe twelve eleven, thirteen, fourteen songs, which I'm not exactly sure which ones are going to make it to production. But I wrote a good chunk of those in the last kind of three weeks, and I think I have a kind of calling in me to I have two studio dates booked in February, and I want to record them live, completely live, Yeah, because I think the way AI is going at the moment in synthetic music, I think people are crying out for that authenticity and that wrongness, and even if a chord gets wrong when you're recording it, it's almost like magic now.

9:54 Speaker 3: Imperfection is almost perfection now. So I'm kind of leaning towards getting those A songs recorded. I feel the very strong we'd record them live, and I may go against the arms and just push it as an album, because I think that's the music should be. If you're releasing single by single, the story of what music is supposed to be gets lost, Whereas if you have eight songs together, there's a whole narrative. There's a whole world to get engrossed in and feed into for eight songs.

10:20 Speaker 1: Yeah, That's something that comes up a lot on the show, because you know, everyone kind of approaches it differently, and there's so many different you know, I'm old enough to remember when I was growing up, it was, you know, an artist would release an album. Well, actually, first single would go to radio six to eight weeks before the album came out. Then the album comes out, and then if all goes according to plan, you know, maybe there's a second single. If things go really well, there's a third, et cetera.

10:41 Speaker 1: But that was kind of the set way of doing it. Now there's so many different ways to release music. You can, you know, you can release singles, you can do an EP, you can do an album, you can do a series of singles that eventually coalesce into an EP or an album, kind of.

10:53 Speaker 2: The inverse of what it used to be.

10:56 Speaker 1: And but but it's so interesting, And then that's why ask those questions, because I'm always really curious, you know, what everyone I talked to, what their thought process is in terms of how they approach releasing music, because there are so many ways to do it now. Yeah, the other thing that oh yeah, go ahead.

11:16 Speaker 3: No, Like I think for me with that, and you're very it's very interesting as well. I look at everyone else as of an artist, and I see what they're doing. And for me, I've had plenty conversations with my manager and I think I've decided, not in a very hippy, nonchalant way, but the right thing will will provide itself when when the right moment arrives. So if an album feels right, I'll do that. And I think the way my songs are written and the message and the meaning for me about my music is, you know, I wasn't supposed to be doing this, or maybe I was, and I don't really know where I am, and I'm just releasing music and having fun.

11:49 Speaker 3: And if it means doing singles, great, If it means to an album, I just think the right thing will come along. But for me, like the first album I ever listened to was an Irish artist called Damien Rice, and the album is Oh, and it was the most it's it's it's still a masterpiece.

12:04 Speaker 4: And when I think of.

12:05 Speaker 3: Releasing music, that's the standard I want to hold myself to. I want someone to listen to a full album and think, well, there's so much in that, there's so much to take on that you have to keep listening to it, and then you find your favorite song and then you say, oh, I love coming up to this part because it's three songs here which are really strong, and yeah, it's just a it's a whole, it's a whole other universe of looking at music.

12:25 Speaker 2: You know, is he your biggest influence? Would you say Damien Rice?

12:28 Speaker 3: I think Damien Rice. I think Damien Rice. I think Tom Waits is another one. I absolutely love Tom Waits, Johnny Cash.

12:37 Speaker 4: When I was growing up as well.

12:38 Speaker 3: I'm very lucky that my parents, my mom and dad, had these CDs and tapes that would play on the car. They were older music, and I just I love that. I think I think Damien Rice and Tom Waits definitely as well. Would be would be two that I you know, if I had to have a dinner in the morning or a breakfast in the morning and to.

12:54 Speaker 4: Invite two people to be would be the two of them? You know?

12:57 Speaker 2: That would that would be interesting?

12:59 Speaker 1: Tom Wait is uh what would be uh fascinating to uh to sit down with?

13:04 Speaker 2: Although probably probably a little hard to understand them at times.

13:06 Speaker 1: But I'm curious too because you did mention AI and that's another subject that, as you can imagine, comes up a lot on the show and its impact on music.

13:20 Speaker 2: And I'm curious.

13:21 Speaker 1: I mean, is that something you're you're concerned about or you sounded you struck Uh, I felt like kind of an optimistic tone about it when you said, you know, it's almost like music that is made entirely by humans. If it's got little flaws in it, that's okay because that's what people really want. They want the humanity of it, and not sort of you know, just completely synthetic music. But I'm curious if you can expand on that a little bit, and how concerned are you about AI and music?

13:47 Speaker 3: Like I think if you if you had say, thirty years ago artists and you know about synthetic drums and synthetic you know, like synthesizers or like using you know, to say even laptops or computers for card music said no, we've our eight tracks and right, so, like, I can't remember who said it, but I was listened to a video the other day and it was really really interesting. They were talk about AI music and your man asked them. He was like, you know, how worried are you about people you know, gravitating towards.

14:15 Speaker 4: AI music and are getting lost?

14:17 Speaker 3: And he said, well, you can go to a supermarket and you can buy organic, fair trade bananas, and you can buy five's bananas that are grown you know, in a greenhouse down the road.

14:28 Speaker 4: It's your choice, you know.

14:30 Speaker 3: And I suppose I would probably lean into the market that I would want to make music for the people who want to buy the organic, fair trade bananas. And I think there's always going to be a market for that. I think there's always going to be a market for imperfection for you know, seeing someone live and all the different instruments and even someone making a bum note and everyone in the crowd laughing because it's just, you know, that's what music is. It's a gathering, it's a celebration. It's someone that you know, you look up to who is able to speak words that you may not able to speak yourself, but you can listen to them say it and it hits something with you, you know.

15:00 Speaker 3: And if that and even my opinion is is that if AI music does that for you, then you know, at least you're conceiving music. It may not be the music I enjoy or may not be the music I'd like to make, but and there's I think again, like there's tools you can take from AI. You know, I actually use it for like I'll say to chat GBT, can you make me a two week calendar for my content ideas. You know, I'll ever use it for music directly, but I think there's ways that we can't. If you duck your head in the sand and say it's not happening, it's not happening, then you're going to get lost behind.

15:34 Speaker 4: And I just think if you can use certain tools.

15:38 Speaker 3: You know, there's a great book by Cal Newpoort called Digital Minimalism, and it's like, you know, use technology to your advantage, you know, make it work for you.

15:45 Speaker 4: So you know, I don't really care too.

15:47 Speaker 3: Much, to be honest, I'll go and play shows to twenty people and they pay twenty quid for a ticket and I'll be laughing, you know, I know it doesn't really you know, people will always want to hear what you want to hear if you're saying the right thing, right.

15:59 Speaker 1: Right, I agree, and I fundamentally agree with what you said, you know, And it's not like you can't hold back technology anyway. You know that toothpaste is already all the way out of the tube. It's here, and you know, and it's been with us longer than people realize too. I mean, you know, every major recording studio that is you know, sort of technologically up to date, shall we say, is already using AI and a lot of its software and you don't necessarily realize it, but you know, you've got programs that can, you know, pitch correct, and you got all kinds of AI already happening.

16:29 Speaker 2: Anyway.

16:30 Speaker 1: Of course, now you can go on some of these apps and just create songs out of whole cloth, not even whole cloth. You put in a prompt, you tell what you want, and it spits out something that in some cases is actually very high quality.

16:42 Speaker 4: I tell you a phonny story.

16:43 Speaker 3: I was actually on holidays or Alcante no Albaferra this year, and we were start down and having a cup of tea and someone was playing music and a speaker next to me, and I says, well, that sounds like Mumfort and Sons or something that's incredible.

16:56 Speaker 4: And I went up to them and I was like, who's that.

16:59 Speaker 3: They're like, oh, it's our friend. He's her neighbor. He makes music. And I was like wow and he was. They were like, yeah, it's all done through AI. And I was like, oh, I've been caught. I've been caught,

17:10 Speaker 3: but look, yeah, just look it's something's sounds sonically great on our ears, and you know there's a niche that needs to be scratched there too, So you know, I kind of had to I kind of had to take take the eld there as the as the young kids would say, and yeah, I was like, you know, sure, look, it's it's it's it's happening.

17:28 Speaker 4: It's here. We can embrace it, we can use it. We cannot use it.

17:30 Speaker 3: You can complain about it, but you know, at the end of the day, there's a message.

17:33 Speaker 4: Out there, which I feel what music.

17:35 Speaker 3: Is supposed to do, and you know, just let it happen, Let it happen, lean into it.

17:39 Speaker 2: Yeah, I agree with you. I absolutely agree with you.

17:41 Speaker 1: And by the way, so you mentioned playing live. Are you doing a lot of shows?

17:46 Speaker 4: Yeah.

17:46 Speaker 3: So I'm kind of in this weird position where I do cover gigs most nights of the week, and I'm really lucky that I'm really busy, you know, and that finances bills and like the studio time and everything. And I got signed with a manager just before Christmas, which was really cool considering it's been like, you know, say, it was ten months since I had started releating music, and then I got picked up by a manager and even last year I played countless support slots to quite big artists in Ireland and we're Yeah, I'm currently organizing an Irish and kind of UK tour which is going to be starting in April, hopefully myself a manager in close contact doing all of that.

18:24 Speaker 3: And I just I love performing, like I'll always be someone that just I love performing two people in a room and like, you know, my ambitions from music is you know, obviously there's a nice monetary reward down the line when you put in the graph, but as long as I'm just playing music to people who want to hear for the rest of my life and I'm able to you know, live comfortably and have a roof over my head, I really am happy, you know.

18:47 Speaker 2: Yeah.

18:48 Speaker 4: I just I love performing.

18:49 Speaker 3: I Like the first gig I ever did, I got a buzz from people, you know, it was actually in a restaurant, you know, it like a lunchtime slot in a restaurant, and people's you know, turned around put down the knighte from four for a minute and watched me and I was like, wow, I have that impact with my voice, and you know, so, yeah, I just love performing live. I constantly just pick up the guitar at home and then, like each cover gig I do, I try my best to make it seem like it's my last gig.

19:14 Speaker 4: You know.

19:15 Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, you never know, and you know, you know, I could be paralyse smart and not be able to play the guitar again, and I'd be kicking myself if I didn't, even if I.

19:23 Speaker 4: Was playing a pub.

19:24 Speaker 3: Just just give people in there something to remember because you never know who's watching, you know, that.

19:29 Speaker 2: Is absolutely true, absolutely one. No, that's great. That's great.

19:34 Speaker 1: So where's uh, where should people go online? Where's the best place to go online to keep up with everything that you're doing, Like.

19:41 Speaker 4: There's just the usual.

19:42 Speaker 3: If there's Instagram, cahole fits music, Spotify, cahole fits, TikTok, cahole fits, you know, the usual stuff.

19:49 Speaker 4: You you'll find me somewhere.

19:51 Speaker 3: If you do a Google start cahol fits music, You'll find me somewhere. And if people have been listening to this and they're like, you know what I have to say and they like the music, send me a message, connect and have a chat, and you know, it's all it's all gravy, it's all gravy.

20:04 Speaker 1: Absolutely, you should spell your name too for our Americans who have no idea how to have no idea how to spell that.

20:13 Speaker 3: So it's C A T H A L F I t Z. You'll find me there somewhere.

20:21 Speaker 2: Excellent, excellent.

20:23 Speaker 1: Well, so in a moment, we're going to play this track enemy of Love after we let you go. It's been wonderful speaking with you. What should we know about this song? Is this the I know this is the previous single right right before pushing thirty.

20:36 Speaker 3: Yeah, like this was like I would consider myself mostly kind of The stuff that I'm writing now is quite a bit more folky and a bit more stripped back. But again, I didn't want to tie myself to one genre because I think some people get to focus that I'm a focus singer, and I'm like, yeah, fantastic.

20:53 Speaker 4: But I went into the studio with a song.

20:55 Speaker 3: That had been fingerpicking at home with my guitar and my producer. I have to give him a shout out. His name is Keel, and Kenny is a magician. He's just he's so incredibly talented. And I went into him and I said, let's just make the funnest song possible we could out of what we have here. Yeah, and you know, he put down he got a drummer in. We put down some drums in it. I had never had drums on a song before, and I was like, interesting. He put some funky guitar on it, some funky mandolin, which is an Irish instrument that we use here, mandolin, And I just said, I went into the studio and said, the people, the session musicians, listen to the song once, whatever comes to you naturally, let's track it down and let's just make something fun.

21:33 Speaker 4: And it turned out quite well. Like it.

21:35 Speaker 3: It's a little bit different to what the direction I kind of have normally for songs. But again, I think if you tie yourself to one genre too much, you'll become closed off to different types of music. Like I started listening to like rap again, you know. And it's not that I'm a rapper, but I think music there's so many different genres, but it all.

21:53 Speaker 4: Says the same thing. It's expression, you know.

21:55 Speaker 3: So I just said, you know, let's just make this fun, let's make it different, and you know it's it's done quite well locally, and like all this has happened really in the last year, so I'm not as happy with it as other songs, but I can also I'm so lucky that I was open minded enough to say, let's just go a little bit of a different route and see what happens.

22:14 Speaker 2: Yeah. No, I love it.

22:15 Speaker 1: I think it's a great song. We're gonna play that for everybody in a moment call fits. Thank you so much for joining us today. This has been wonderful. Oh, by the way, are you where you do?

22:24 Speaker 2: You have a show tonight? Are you playing anywhere tonight?

22:27 Speaker 3: I'm playing again. It's a kind of local pub in Cork. It's called the Hideout. Probably not many Irish listeners here, but yeah, just my local, one of the local pubs in Cork. I'm very lucky that we're I live in particular like in Ireland, that there's live music like seven nights a week in multiple different locations, so there's no shortage of work. So I just bounced around the different pubs and small live music venues, excellent tunes, get some.

22:50 Speaker 4: Money and go home.

22:51 Speaker 1: That's fantastic. That's the way to do it, my friend, very very good. Well listen, thank you so much. We will definitely do this again in the future. Especially it sounds like you've got you've got a lot of new music coming, so we will. We'll have you on again, and you know, and we'd love to as you're releasing new music, we'd love to continue to kind of be your your conduit into the American radio market here.

23:09 Speaker 4: So I really appreciate that.

23:11 Speaker 3: In Ireland, in Irish we have a phrase which says gir of Mela mahagods, which means one hundred thousand thank yous to you. So it's been an absolute pleasure to have to speak to you as well, So I really appreciate the time and opportunity.

23:22 Speaker 2: Oh wonderful. All right, very very good.

23:24 Speaker 1: We're gonna hit this track Enemy of Love and we'll let you go call Hall Fits again.

23:27 Speaker 2: Thank you so much. We'll talk to you soon. You got it. Bye bye,