JUST LIKE STARTING OVER Ahead of his acclaimed new record, Bap Kennedy on his punk past and jamming with his brother Brian Joe Giltrapp's interview with Bap Kennedy in The Irish Post : SINGER/SONGWRITER Bap Kennedy is a man that has drawn hard on his upbringing on Belfast’s Falls Road and Andersonstown areas. For a time he left his home country for the bright lights of London and all that that brought. There, he formed a band in the mid-eighties, Energy Orchard, who had a successful innings although major mainstream success eluded them.
They were discovered by Steve Earle, who heard them at The Marquee and helped them secure a record deal with MCA. They ended up touring America and Canada with him. The band split in 1997 and Bap, who was the main songwriter in the band, decided to concentrate on a solo career. Now older, and doubtlessly wiser, Bap has since returned to life in the North of Ireland. It is apt that his new album is titled Let's Start Again and it is around its forthcoming release that we spoke... So Bap, let's start right at the beginning. Your real name is Martin; where did the nickname ‘Bap’ come from? Well, it was cool to be called Bap when I was about nine. In Belfast there were a few bakeries and one of the well-known ones was Kennedy's Bakery, so there were a plethora of Baps about. The name kind of died; there are still a few Baps around though I think I'm the only one in the music business. What first got you into music? I have an uncle who is about 10 years older than me. When I was about 10 or 11 he was listening to The Rolling Stones and Van Morrison – the really good stuff – and he was my window into that world. I suppose punk-rock really got me going in so far as, not only being able to appreciate music, but to make music. That was a big revelation. I started off in a punk band when I was 16. That was the first time I realised you could just get a guitar, a couple of guys together and bash out a few songs and girls would be interested. What was your first guitar? I got an electric guitar. It was like it was made up of spare parts — cost me a tenner and was the worst-sounding thing you ever heard. I've never seen one since — they might have only made one and dumped the blueprint. It was a piece of rubbish, but it got me going. Any memories of your first gig? It was a punk band called Sellout. We knew some guys in a local band who'd had a support slot come up, so we decided to form a band the day before the gig — as you do. Our drummer had just bought a set of drums from someone and he didn't even know which ones to hit. It was like performance art more than music. We were terrible. I went back to the same club a few years later with a better band, but the guy wouldn't let me play because he remembered me from that first gig. How did your previous band Energy Orchard come about? There were a few bands before that, but there were guys from three different bands that all ended up in London at the same time (1985) looking for a band; six of us got together and formed Energy Orchard. Famously the great Steve Earle discovered you. How did he enter the picture? He had always been a great supporter of the band, but he disappeared off the scene and had his own problems. I actually thought he was dead. He ended up in prison and rehab. When he made his comeback l was just about finishing up with the band because we felt we had taken it as far as we could. A couple of people Steve knew got in touch with me and I ended up with him in Nashville making a record. That was quite an experience I imagine? It was fantastic. You don't realise how amazing it was until you look back on it. I didn't know half the guys there. People like Peter Rowan and Jerry Douglas — I had no idea who they were. Imagine if I was making that record again and trying to get those guys and all the other people who were involved. How did you come to record with Mark Knopfler? That's the music business. You are stumbling along and whenever you make a record you have no idea where it will end up. Mine ended up on Mark Knopfler's iPod. He wanted to find out about me so he got in touch. I ended up touring with him and made the album The Sailors Revenge, which he produced and played on. It was a brilliant experience and great validation from someone like him who is so well respected. He is very into the Celtic thing and when we made that record we were going for that Celtic melancholic vibe. So what prompted your move back to Ireland? l think l went to London to get the money to go to America, but ended up staying in London for a long time. I never thought I'd go back to Belfast, but I started thinking I'd had enough of London. It's a buzzing place and there is always something happening, but after 20 years I just wanted something else. I'd been back and forward to Belfast and seen the changes and I wanted to re-connect with family. I just wanted to go home. I've been back about eight years now and it just feels natural. Do you see much of your brother Brian these days? I would love to hear you do a record together. Any particular song in mind? I'm always looking for new ideas. We played in some bands together way back, but he does his own thing and I do mine. What are your plans for the future? I have a lot of stuff coming up, starting in March. We tend to go away a lot — Italy. Holland, Norway and so on and we are expecting to do a lot more of that. My wife Brenda is the bass player in the band, so it's our lifestyle with no worries about long separations. She is very enthusiastic so it rubs off on me and I'm really enjoying it. The Irish World - Interview 31 Jan 201431/1/2014 The following is the text of an interview with Bap just prior to the release of Let's Start Again Martin ‘Bap’ Kennedy usually records in England or America but for his new sixth album Let’s Start Again, he decided to bring together some of the top musicians in his native Northern Ireland to play on it. Singer-songwriter Bap – not to be confused with the big, crusty round bread famed throughout Northern Ireland – is the brother of fellow singer Brian Kennedy, and cut his musical teeth as lead singer for cult Belfast rockers Energy Orchard, with whom he recorded five albums. The most local of the local talents he recruited for the album is bass player and harmony vocalist, Brenda Kennedy, a.k.a. Bap’s wife, also a regular member of the live band. A former lawyer and author on books about autism (through Brenda’s connections, Bap is now patron of Autism NI) she came over to the dark side in recent years. “She’s always been musical but only got serious a couple of years ago with me”, says the good natured singer. “As a travelling musician, it’s hard to keep a relationship together, but if you’re wife is in the band with you, it’s pretty easy! She’s given me a new lease of life for this – when you’ve been doing it a while you can get jaded, but Brenda’s so enthusiastic. I do what I love with the woman I love…” Bap rekindled an old friendship for Let’s Start Again with fellow Belfast man Mud Wallis, who he started out with in a hard punk band called Ten Past Seven. A country-rocker at hart, Mud introduced Bap to the music he ended up embracing (“what can I say, he always had better taste than me”). Seeing as Bap was making the stuff Mud loves, they decided to make a record together. That sound, he says, is “country, blues, folk and rock, mixed with a bit of Belfast sensibility. There’s some Belfast disparagement in there, some bar-room philosophy, in search of the great one liner.” There are quite a few striking numbers on the album, which after the Celtic melancholy of The Sailor’s Revenge has a more upbeat roots-y Americana feel and spans eighteen years of work, including many live favourites like Return to Jesus. I ask about a few of them, such as If Things Don’t Change, which it turns out was about deciding whether to get out of Belfast in the early 80s, a time when it was most definitely not a happy place to live in. “A lot of my songs are autobiographical, and you might have an idea for a song that hangs around your brain for years”, he explains. “I remember before I left Belfast, it seemed like a huge step and I thought it might never happen. I knew I really needed to go; it was me about to take a leap into the unknown.” Though he’d be back and forth, Bap ended up being based away from Belfast for 24 years. He says it’s something he had to do at the time, go out and live an interesting life for a while. But when he started hitting his late 40s, he began to have thoughts of returning. He’s now been back eight years. “I think it’s a very natural thing. You decide you’ve had enough of a certain kind of life, of these big sprawling cities and you want to reconnect with home, and your musical roots.” Belfast was a pretty tough place when Bap left it, hitting the headlines for all the wrong reasons. What he found when he came home, he recalls, was a different place altogether: “It was much more cosmopolitan. It’s a place with a lot going for it these days. Things like the Oh Yeah music centre would have been a dream for me growing up as a kid. Plus you can get a decent cup of coffee now!” One number that has his city’s sense of humour stamped all over it is King of Mexico, and the Mexican ‘vibe’ is one Bap has a soft spot for, particularly since he found out about Zorro’s supposed Irish origins. Apparently Zorro was based on an Irish guy called William Longford who went to Mexico and tried to start a revolution. Bap tells me with obvious delight that they even have an annual Zorro fest in Wexford every year to celebrate the connection, which attracts lots of Mexicans. He hasn’t been to the country, but he nearly has. “I was supposed to go with a bunch of guys to Tijuana at one point when I was in Los Angeles. They told me my music would be very popular there and I should really try and go and meet some people. But I was too drunk to go. “The night before, I got hammered and the day I was supposed to go I was destroyed so I didn’t go. I have a sombrero though, that was in the studio like a talisman as we were making that track. We gazed at the sombrero looking for inspiration. Shelley Marsden For the full interview, see this week’s Irish World newspaper (issue 1 Feb 2014). To view the interview at The Irish World website click here Belfast News LetterĀ28/1/2014 Bap Kennedy was interviewed by JOANNE SAVAGE of The News Letter about his new album Let’s Start Again. The text of the interview is as follows: “This album is more upbeat - I decided to have some fun,” says Belfast singer/songwriter Bap Kennedy, 51, of his new album Let’s Start Again, the lead track on which, Revelation Blues, is perhaps punchier and rockier than his usual style. The new collection was made with producer Mudd Wallace who Bap – famous, among many other achievements, for having his song Moonlight Kiss played in Hollywood movie Serendipity starring Kate Beckinsale and John Cusack – worked with in his earliest days when he considered his sound more “power-punk” than folk melody with a moody, bluesy twist. “It was fun to revisit my more upbeat self,” laughs Bap, who last collaborated with Mudd in the 1980s. “And I want that sense of liveliness and energy to come out right across the album; it is definitely set to a more optimistic, zesty mood than some of my other work. “Generally, I am quite introspective and the melody is maybe usually more plaintive.” Kennedy has worked and sung with people like Van Morrison and Mark Knopfler. “That was huge validation because starting out as a singer/songwriter you have so much anxiety about whether or not people will respond to your material. “I mean Van is obviously huge, and to get approval from him is pretty epic. “These days I am so happy doing what I am doing as a working musician.” Is it still an amazing feeling walking out there on stage to the microphone and the applause and the atmosphere of anticipation? “Well, this album has definitely gone some way towards rekindling my joy of performing, plus the fact that my wife has joined my band and now plays the bass. That has helped inject excitement into the whole business of performance again because like anything, over the years, doing the same thing, it can become routine and formulaic and lose a bit of the charge it had at first. “I mean you do go through phrases where you feel on automatic pilot and maybe feeling that you’re stagnating. But then when inspiration strikes again you understand why you so wanted to be a performer in the first place. When it’s going well there’s just nothing like it. “Being a musician is as good as it seems a lot of the time, and I do love it.” Bap describes his musical inspirations as incredibly broad, running the whole gamut from hillbilly music to classical. “But the songwriters I really respect and admire would be Hank Williams, Steve Earle and Van Morrison.” It seems songwriting is in Bap Kennedy’s blood, musicianship in his very nature. And long may it continue. Click here to view the interview on The News Letter website Archives
October 2018
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