An interview with the bright and pragmatic front man, Joe O’Leary, of the Irish band Fred.

by Colm O’Regan

CORK, IRELAND–The phrase ‘happy-go-lucky’ is bandied around a lot these days but, wolfing down chocolate cake and ice-cream while laughing through the details of last night’s football, Joe O’Leary seems to wear the tag quite well. It’s an attitude that doesn’t just pervade his life, but also that of his band, Fred; a band described by critics as ‘saviours of pop’. “We try to avoid the gloomy outlook”, he laughs. “There won’t be a whole lot of A-Minors!”

As mission statements go, that one says a lot. The Irish five piece are currently enjoying an unprecedented run of success, from awards to rave reviews and even a slot on prime-time international TV. Their last album, Go God Go, has achieved massive chart success, and singles Good One, Skyscrapers and Running have had heavy rotation on radio airwaves. But such success, front man O’Leary admits, comes at something of a price.

“It definitely puts us under pressure”, he says, pondering the next album. “It took the bones of 18 months to write Go God Go. Have we had 18 months to write the next one? Yeah. Have we done it? No. When we do get our days off, we take them as days off. You don’t want to kill the person you’re touring with, like!!”

As whimsical as he is, O’Leary is clearly as thoughtful and intelligent as he is funny. Speaking with a heavy Cork accent, he fulfils all the criteria of a local hero. But now, the time has come for Fred to perhaps look further afield – much to the amusement of the band themselves.

“We’re an 11 year overnight success” he jokes, adding, “we’ve ten years worth of cynicism! Not really, but you definitely learn from mistakes, get streetwise. You can keep making mistakes, but as long as you keep learning… I like to say we’ve spent 10 years trying to hone our craft. Now, I could be totally wrong here, getting it arseways, but it took us that long to write songs as a group and make a cohesive album.”

Those ten years have now borne fruit as the band begin to make waves far beyond their native shores. The US, Germany and especially Canada have all come knocking. “We were just asked to go to Canada again and we declined – between what’s going on here and affordability, going over for a fourth time this year, you just think ‘Christ, we’ve spent enough of our money over there!’”

To identify the precise factors behind the success they’ve achieved is, to say the least, testing. “When the album broke, the manager had been there about a year before we made it, and I guess everything came together at the same time. In Canada, our second time in Toronto – a cool, chilled city – it was a sell-out. A record company guy couldn’t get in. Two weeks later, we had a contract”.

“Our deals aren’t ‘sensible’, but they’re reasonable. They’re not mind-blowing; I won’t say it’s no sweat off their back, but it is small change. A booker trying to get us festivals, someone out there getting our album in shops, getting awareness out there. It doesn’t cost them much to physically put it in the shop, it doesn’t cost us much to send it to them; no-one’s got much to lose. We did festivals where we’re not bottom of the bill. We’re getting good slots, Canadian bands saying ‘God lads, ye’ve got good tunes.’

“In the States someone just took us on digitally; if there’s nothing else on the table, why the hell not? No-one’s offering the millions, the hundreds of thousands anymore. You’d love it, but its not there. Band a year, perhaps, but there was a day when every band thought it would happen to them. Not now. A band in Ireland and the UK a year, maybe, but no more than that.”

The band has had numerous trips across the Atlantic, particularly to Canada. There, they saw Go God Go’s lead single, Skyscrapers, become iTunes Canada’s Single of the Week, just one measure of the success the band has achieved, and an explanation as to why they’ve been invited to tour again and again. But no success comes without its price; a literal price in this case. “The more – I won’t say successful, ‘cos I feel that’s a bit out of hand – but the better we do, the broker we get; more costs, more things you need to do.

“Can we afford to go? You could argue ‘can you afford not to go’, and there’s a bit of that too. But we’ve argued that many times. In today’s age, you don’t necessarily have to go somewhere to make a name there. I mean, do we like touring, gigging? Yeah. Would we move there for a few months? Yeah. Have we been asked to? No. If promoters and management come to us and make it a viable option, then we’ll try it. Right now, the longest trip abroad is not a lot over a month and y’know what – that was enough.”

Of course, services like MySpace and music downloads can certainly contribute to conquering new territories from a distance. But even they probably don’t compare to, eh, Gossip Girl?

“Gossip Girl!!!” he bellows as I bring it up, adding, “Let it be known we shook hands there. High fived like white boys do.” But by way of explanation for their presence alongside Blake Lively and co.? “Our label has publishing partners in LA, a company that just takes artists and, well, pushes them. One of their more recent additions was The Swell Season (Oscar winning Irish musicians Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova) and so you think ‘well they’re going there and they’re doing well, we’re in the right place’. The biggest was a while ago, we were down to the last two for The OC. We didn’t get it, we were like ‘F*CK!!’ You think that’d be your fortune made. Nah! Y’get about $2500. Split that by 5, management, whatnot… wouldn’t buy your Christmas presents…

“But if there’s a song on a show and a few million watching? You can’t buy that publicity. When they told us, I said ‘Excuse me, baby, I know about Gossip Girl!’ She was on the phone but I wagged my finger, like ‘oh no she didn’t’, did the shaky head thing. Even as an Irish man, you know the show. And any female from 14 to 40, they all know the show. Its all fashion and iPhones. The script is shocking – like Dawson’s Creek, The OC, 90210, all rolled into one – but it doesn’t matter ‘cos it looks lovely.”

The song featured was a track from Go God Go named “Damn You, Hollywood”, a song that the band themselves wouldn’t rate as one of their best. “We wouldn’t see it as a bold child, but it isn’t our shining light – maybe that’s our problem right there. I guess the beauty of music is that different people see different things.”

“It was the start of the song, camera zooming through skyscrapers. It goes so low during the dialogue my girlfriend is like – ‘oh, I can nearly hear you’, crouched by the telly. ‘I…yeah, I think that’s your voice, I’m so proud!’ 40-50 seconds, that’s it. And I won’t say inundated, but it upped the profile massively. And for the people pushing us, it lets them say ‘they were in this and that’. It’s baby steps, but it’s so much better than nothing at all.”

Attempting to break Canada and the US, then, represents a new beginning for Fred, and an opportunity to start afresh, putting those lessons of the past decade to good use. “Like learning how to gig right – a lot of bands don’t know. We come from the school of thought that you should be entertaining as well as playing good songs. A lot of bands want to do it, but can’t or don’t do it. If they don’t want to do it and just shoegaze, fair enough, but a lot of bands want to. We did entertainment from day one, but didn’t have the playing. I’m still not a very good guitarist, but Jesus I was shocking.

“We have energy, and Christ, I hope we never get old. But if you give it that energy, 9 out of 10 will enjoy it, just for what it is. In Ireland, they say ‘well why should I like you?’ In Canada, you’ll get it if you deserve it. At a festival called Evolve in Novascotia – more Irish than Ireland – there was nudity, bandanas, lads who looked like they were just out of Vietnam…it was brilliant!! We landed in, going , ‘Jesus, have we been transported back to Woodstock?’. It rained for the first time ever there, and there we were, starting away with the people in their campsites. As you played, you’d see them streaming down, the odd fella bellowing from the top of the hill. Unreal.”

Two weeks later at Hillside, they once again managed to bring the Irish weather with them. “We were on quite early; there were guys like Great Lake Swimmers and Final Fantasy following us up. Lightning storms, rain, serious stuff. And the crowd, in their ponchos, aged 4 to 84, no age bias. They give you the first song. If you’re out there, giving it well, you’re gold.” And then, Joe’s trademark grin breaks across his face again, as the day’s first Spinal Tap moment is unveiled. “We were after an argument a few minutes before we went on, and I think it was Jamin (O’Donovan, ‘bass player extraordinaire’) who wasn’t talking to me. I turned to him halfway through the first song, and all he does is scream “fuck you!” What can I do but shout “fuck you too” and we just carried on and did a great gig.”

Gigging, clearly, is still a passion for the band, and consequently they are not in the slightest concerned with the changing ways of the music industry. “We’re lucky that we haven’t really suffered from dropping ticket sales.” Joe confesses, “but the energy of thousands of people is nuts – no amount of pyrotechnics or anything could ever replicate the feeling that thousands feeling the music can give.”

Spinal Tap moments are, of course, inevitable as a touring rock band, but Fred do a pretty good line in them. An on-stage fight, sure, but also an unlucky drummer; in June 2003, Justin O’Mahony broke both his arms in a freak mountain biking accident. And just last year, the band had all of their equipment stolen from their tour van. A few days later, the valuables were spotted, in their entirety, for sale in the only pawn shop in Cork. “As advice to any would be thieves”, Joe cackles “don’t let your name and address when you drop off the loot!”

And while doling out advice, he has a surprising recommendation for music lovers everywhere. “Download everything. I don’t care! If you like Fred, and you want to send your buddy a song, then that’s what you should do. What everyone did back in the day. Downloading and selling it on, that’s blackguarding, but the majority are just downloading because they like a song and think their friends would like it too. Nothing wrong with that. They’re not selling records. Nobody’s selling records anymore!! They need to come down in price; the $20, the $15, even the $10 dollar CD is gone now. Dead. It’s a dinosaur. Maybe at a gig, if you want it signed, but people are going to download and move onto another band next week. Fine, no hassle.”

In a changing industry, Fred are determined to move with it; hardly surprising, as the band themselves are hardly strangers to change. The line-up has seen many alterations in personnel up until this current, apparently stable collection, keyboardist Carolyn Goodwin the last member to join around 18 months ago. The song writing process, too, has evolved over time. “When I joined, there were already songwriters in Fred. When I was asked to join, it had more to do with the books of lyrics I had written than the fact that I could sing them. As things evolved, I would’ve thrown ideas into the first album, the second more so, and now, I mean, anyone can come in with something. I remember Justin coming in with a riff for what ended up as Death Song, just standing there, going ‘na-na-naa-na, na-na-na-na-naana’, and we’re thinking ‘what the hell are you doing?’. But then it was interpreted, someone heard it as he wanted it to be heard, tweaked it a bit, someone else heard it as they wanted, tweaked it, and next thing you know we have a verse of a fecking song.

“It all comes from somewhere, but none of us have figured out exactly where. It comes from things, and it comes from people. It’s very hard to tap into that sometimes. So, ‘can we write another Fear’, or ‘could we try another Running’? Harder than you’d think.”

Go God Go was an almost instant hit upon its release last year; pounding singles drew a sizeable audience to a stunning record, as complex and intelligent as it is beautiful and fun. The writing, recording and producing of the album was a band effort, before they sent it off to be polished up by Mark Wallis (who has worked with The Smiths, Talking Heads and U2). It signified a triumph for Fred; musically, lyrically, even professionally, it marked a band reaching their level, producing work of the quality of which they were always capable. But where to go from there?

“Using it as a template is impossible; I don’t think we could even if we wanted to. If you listen to the last album, there are so many different themes and styles floating around. What’s great is that it took us 10 years and three albums to get there, yet there’s still a sound in all of them where you go, ‘oh, that’s Fred’; be it a voice, a guitar lick, whatever. It took a long time to click.”

Even the title was a combination of luck, timing and inspiration. “I just said Go God Go to Jamie (Hanrahan, the group’s guitarist), and we loved it. I just felt God was getting a tough deal. This country is turning…and with 9/11 and all that craic… Look, it’s fundamentalists – radical fundamentalists – that are killing us. People use religion to keep themselves on the straight and narrow; as much as possible, because lets face it, we’re all savages at the end of the day. Love one another, bladdy blah. Without getting too preachy, it was half giving God a bit of encouragement, but half telling him to get the hell out ‘cos he’s fighting a losing battle.

“Someone commented that our album is preachy in a non-preachy way. Our songs were giving guidance, even though they were written for ourselves in a cathartic way. We aren’t going out saying ‘this is the way things should be’”.

Indeed, O’Leary’s determination to keep Fred’s music from becoming ‘preachy’ is genuine, a fact that will certainly influence the writing of the new album, even in our current climate.

“It’s very hard to talk about economics and the current state of play without sounding patronising, I feel. Don’t get me wrong, there’s plenty of good songs out there – both now and if you go back to UB40’s Signing Off, even back to The Jam, all have massive social commentary – but its slightly more personal to us. As we’ve melded into a group of songwriters, we try to avoid the obvious; the gloom, the heartbreak. Even though a lot of songs might be about being overwhelmed or about being heartbroken, we try to keep the sound a bit lighter.”

So what to expect of the new record? Following the success of its predecessor, is the band due a ‘sophomore slump’? “We haven’t sat down to write it yet, even though we’re feeling the urgency. We’ve been writing away individually as we always do. There’s ideas; I’ve 80 or 90 tiny little recordings of me humming a melody on a mini-disc. Some of them are probably repeated two or three times, so there might only be 20 ideas there, but I love going to the lads and trying to flesh it out.”

“The last album – and everyone’s thinking it normally, it is in the back of your head but you don’t vocalise it – we sat down and said we want to write a good album, a solid album, and an album that we can be proud of forever. It’s not like that’s not the plan with the other records, but we said it out loud that time, and we’re saying it this time again. I hate when bands say ‘we wrote 40 songs, but we’re keeping 8’. Ha! There’s no way you could do 40, put your heart into them, finish them, as good as they can be and then leave them off.”

And expectations on Fred’s own part?

“We’re gone beyond chart positions – even when you make an effort, you mightn’t get close to making it. You can’t battle it, because you’d need a few millions from a record company. The money being spent is stupid.” To say a nerve has been struck would definitely be overstating matters, but one feels a minor bugbear being revealed.

“Pop is rocking – well, pop is popping, it needs to rock a bit more. Beatles, Rolling Stones, that was classic rock, but it was pop. If it’s Kylie, Rihanna even, maybe it’s not too bad. But X Factor or American Idol? Rubbish. Not dissing the talent of them; are they talented? [shrugs] Psssh… Can they sing? Psssh… It’s based on a machine of popularity, not about talent and serving your time. There’s fat heads like Simon Cowell and Cheryl Cole getting…and it’s sad that I know who it is, but it’s in your face. I’m over getting properly annoyed by now. But when friends sit around a TV watching it and think that’s something to do, even if you know it’s rubbish, by watching it your supporting it. Its not gonna keep talent down, ‘cos talent is gonna rise anyway. But pop has gone flat.”

So you’re not pop after all? “I called us bip-pop – Bohemian Indie Pop” he smiles, “but that was about a year ago so I dunno what it is now. We’re some sort of package. You import the package. You’re a pop package, ‘cos that’s how you sell something. Does that make us something that you can just say ‘right, mould away’? No. But you do have to sell yourself.”

And the future of Fred; the legacy the band will leave? “We came, we saw, we left?!” O’Leary laughs, but for once his heart isn’t quite in the joke; beneath the jovial exterior, there lies a desire and determination to achieve. “You’ve got to have a plan, and that’s something we’ve only just got to grips with.

“The way I see it, we’re only on the start of our trip. I want to be making a good living out of this in a year’s time. Now, I said that 10 years ago but realistically we’re getting closer. To look back on another couple of decent albums, another couple of good, catchy pop tunes. That we’re still getting on, and that we become a tighter act and a better act. Making good videos. Maybe if we started making bobs, release a few other acts that we admire. You’d never know Colm, I might be a record company mogul in a few years.

“I won’t even talk to ya then…”

Check out Fred’s website, fredtheband.com

Colm O’Regan is a graduate of University College Cork and currently resides in Cork, Ireland. He enjoys watching sports, drinking pints, traveling, and storytelling (not necessarily in that order). He can be reached at colm_o_regan_fan_club@hotmail.com