Live One Horse Pony put Cork spin on Americana

Groove Tube with Jimi McDonnell – tribunegroove@live.ie

Cork-based Americana outfit One Horse Pony make their Róisín Dubh debut on Saturday, February 27. Citing blues stalwarts like The Allman Brothers and Robert Johnson as influences, the five-piece also bring Tom Waits and Bruce Springsteen’s Seeger Sessions to mind. Their gig comes the day after the General Election, something their harmonica player Kevin Morrison believes will work in their favour.

“It’ll be an antidote to it – I think there’s more chance of getting a crowd!” he says.

The rest of the band is made up of co-lead singers Rob Foley and John Noonan, percussionist Nolwen Milot and Bart Kondat on double bass. How did this motley crew end up playing together?

“We started in the best way possible; at a session,” Kevin says. “We play in a microbrewery in Cork called The Franciscan Well. It was almost like an organic thing, and we liked what we were playing together.  John and Rob started the session and our percussionist and myself joined in. We’re high-energy onstage and that’s never changed.”

The band released their debut album in 2013 and the follow-up is planned for later this year.

“We’re working on new material at the moment,” Kevin says. “We’re about half-way through writing a new album. We’re road-testing some of the stuff, we’ll be playing some of it in the Róisín Dubh.  One of the songs is a Gospel song. A 2016 Gospel song, believe it or not. We’ve set a Joseph Mary Plunkett poem to music. We’ll be testing that and other interesting pieces!”

One Horse Pony put a lot into their high octane live shows – is it difficult to capture that in the studio, where a more measured approach is sometimes needed?

“It always is,” Kevin says. “We try our best to capture the live thing. If I’m honest about it, we’re a better live band. It’s a different scene, the live one. We play a lot, we’re do a gig somewhere around the country every weekend. We play Whelan’s in Dublin every month, we do The Crane Lane in Cork, we played a gig in Portlaoise the week before last. But when we were recording the last one, we had great craic. You have to have that if you’re going to stay together as a band.”

The recently deceased Glenn Frey had a fraught relationship with fellow Eagles’ songwriter Don Henley, Lennon and McCartney fell out and Keith Richards and Mick Jagger didn’t talk to each other for much of the eighties. Are Rob and John getting on OK at the helm of One Horse Pony?

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.