Julie draws on her roots for a highly personal album

Date Published: 14-Nov-2012

Julie Feeney is a brave and ambitious artist, a singer who follows creative tangents wherever they lead her. Next Monday, November 19 she plays a long-awaited home town show when she comes to the Druid Theatre.

Julie made an instant splash with her 2005 debut 13 Songs, a record which went on to win the inaugural (and prestigious) Choice Music Prize. The concert in Druid will see her launch her third album, Clocks. Given the acclaim and interest in her work, does she ever feel the weight of expectation?

“I don’t actually feel any external pressure, I just feel more like an excitement,” she says. “The idea is leading me anyway, so that’s usually a really nice impulse and it’s lovely to follow that through.

“The hardest part of the process is decision-making. I get a lot of ideas really quickly, and the hardest part is deciding which one you don’t want to use.”

Julie approaches each record with diligence and care. 13 Songs had its own atmosphere; 2009’s Pages had a different sound. Clocks is another progression in her craft, and each song had to fit her vision for the album.

“There’s a song – it’s really lovely actually, even if I do say so myself! –but I’ve left it off [Clocks] because it’s not the right home for it. It needs to gel properly.”

“I actually left off the song because I thought I’ve already covered that ground with Imperfect Love,” she adds. It would make the point too strong; you’d be undermining and you’d shoot yourself in the foot. Everything needs space.”

The space that this album occupies is home. Clocks is a very personal album in which Julie explores her family tree for inspiration.

“It’s very much Galway rooted,” she says. “I very much wanted to sing in Galway – so I did all the singing in Kylemore Abbey. I really wanted to have my feet on Galway land.”

“And also being in America a lot – I did 10 shows in New York earlier this year- and being back and forth as often as I am, you get a different viewpoint on Ireland. What has happened to me is I’ve become even more rooted in Galway, feeling it in my blood. I’m at least sixth generation Galwegian.

“On the album for me, there’s a sort of poignancy,” Julie continues. “I wanted it be more exposed than the last one. On Pages there’d been a lot of third person and that. But I decided this time to just go for it in the first person.”

“Julia is about my grandfather. It’s kind of like a song that he was possibly singing [to my grandmother] – as in, they’re the emotions he would’ve had. They had a really great love story.”

To strengthen the connection with home, Julie took an unconventional approach to the recording of Clocks.

“I wanted to sing my heart out in Galway,” she says. “I went in to Kylemore Abbey, and the Benedictine nuns were fantastic and they were so happy to have me use the gothic church. We went down there for two weeks, my engineer Ger McDonnell and myself. We recorded vocals over eight nights in the freezing cold.”

Julie Feeney is about to start an Irish tour that will see her sing with ten different choirs from across the country. Her show in Druid, however, will see Julie and her band unveil Clocks, as well as songs from her previous album.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.