Deans keep beat going on Christmas trip home

Groove Tube with Jimi McDonnell – tribunegroove@live.ie

Not many people can combine their Christmas visit home for holidays with their job, but such is life when you’re Gavin Dean of The Deans.

The rocking, soulful trio, whose music is rooted in folk, blues and country, and who are now based in France play the City’s Róisín Dubh on Wednesday, December 28, and Campbell’s in Cloughanover on Thursday, December 29.

Lead-singer and guitarist Gavin, who originally hails from Athenry, is getting ready for a midnight show in Cork as he takes a call from the Tribune. He’s in chipper form and is looking forward to The Deans Irish tour.

“It’s less often we play around home now, but it gets better and better every time we come back,” he says. “Bigger crowds – more people know us. We have a very solid fan-base in Ireland. It’s like an ever-growing family. Once they come once, they always come a second time.”

2016 has been a productive year for The Deans, with the band hitting a purple patch with their writing.

“That’s been the most exciting part,” Gavin says. “I’d say we have about two albums of new material, but next year we’re going to siphon through it, edit it and try to come out with one decent album worth of material.

“We’re going into the studio in June to record our first album. We’ve always done EPs, so next year is going to be a full album worth of material. It’s very exciting.”

Recording your debut is a big ask for any band, but so is welcoming a new member. The Deans are doing both, having recruited Mathis Dubois on drums a few months ago. How did that happen?

“We met him through a friend of a friend who was a drummer,” Gavin says. “We needed a drummer quickly, and they called Mathis. And quickly, like that, it couldn’t have been any easier. You could be waiting a couple of years to find someone to play with you. He joined the band a couple of weeks after that phone call, and it’s been great ever since.”

Gavin jokes about the band being of ‘no fixed abode’, but The Deans do spend a lot of time on tour. Anyone joining would have to be up for spending much of their life away from home.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.