Steven’s honest lyrics strike chord with fans

Groove Tube with Jimi McDonnell – tribunegroove@gmail.com

Steven Sharpe & The Broke Straight Boys launch their new single, Sound It Out, in the city’s Róisín Dubh on Friday next, April 27. The song was recorded in Willow Sea Studios in Furbo by Will O’Connor, who worked with Steven on his debut album and three EPs.

There’s a simple reason why the Galway-based band keep collaborating with Will, says Steven.

“He is the only engineer I’ve ever worked with who will actually go ‘that take sucked, do it again’ or ‘I know you can do that better’.

“He’s not just looking for you to keep doing it to fill up his hours, he actually gives feedback. He understands the tone you’re going for, and he picks it up really quick.”

Steven Sharpe is an original, vibrant voice in the Galway music scene, and quite possibly its best front-man. He is joined in his escapades by Dylan Murphy (guitar), Shane O’Malley (bass) and drummer Dave Shaughnessy. All the Broke Straight Boys play a role in getting the tracks right, and Steven loves working with them.

“I think it’s been three or four years – they’ve been in my life since I moved to Galway,” he says. Naturally, there have been changes in that time.

“When you’re in late 20s and early 30s, things start changing and happening. People go off to do courses for a year, or they want to go travelling for a couple of months,” he says.

“For the last year, it felt like going on a bit of a hiatus. People had certain things they needed to do, and it’s not like we had a Number One record.  We could have lost a bit of momentum, but we’ve come back a lot fresher. We know what we want to do, we know what kind of show we want to make this time.”

Sound It Out is a great blast of Galway funk, underpinned by Dylan Murphy’s magnificent riffing. It recalls a romance from Steven’s younger days and, as always, he is disarmingly frank.

“My lyrics are very autobiographical,” he remarks. With Sound It Out, I wouldn’t have sung that maybe five or six years ago.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.