Winning mix from Blizzards

Date Published: 12-Sep-2008

IT’S a busy time for The Blizzards but the Mullingar five piece wouldn’t have it any other way. The band are in the middle of a promotional blitz as they prepare to release their second album The Domino Effect and embark on an extensive Irish tour.

Neil Young travelled from Canada to California and by pure chance happened to meet future band mates Buffalo Springfield, but growing up in Westmeath makes forming a band less of a hike.

“Basically, we’re from a small regional town; we all knew each other. There’s no kind of beautiful mythical story about it,” says lead singer Niall ‘Brezzie’ Breslin. “We all knew each other from school, well-ish,” says Anthony Doran, the Blizzards’ bassist.

“We didn’t bully each other or anything, did we?” asks Brezzie. “We got on OK,” Doran assures him.
“We should probably make up something though, shouldn’t we, cos we get asked that question a lot and we’re going ‘Jesus Christ, this is a boring story’,” Brezzie concludes.

The band released their first single First Girl to Leave Town independently before being signed to Universal Music Ireland in 2006. How did they find the transition to a major label?

“Very simple really,” says Brezzie. “With the label, they bring a bit of confidence into the band. When you get signed you go ‘we can actually do this’. But being signed is a very small part of being in a band. At the end of the day it’s nearly harder, because the responsibility hits that if you don’t sell records you get dropped. There’s no love story there, that’s the business side of it. Being signed is great, but you’ve got to produce the goods and for every band that get’s signed there’s ten that get dropped.”

The Blizzards didn’t ……