Young Men of Twenty keep faith with home

Groove Tube with Jimi McDonnell – tribunegroove@live.ie

Up-and-coming indie rock band Men of Twenty will play Monroe’s Live on Friday next, November 20. The band members are Johnny McDonnell (vocals/guitar), Daniel Clarke (lead guitar/vocals), Paul McCarthy (bass) and Conor McCarthy (drums/keys/vocals). Now based in Dublin, the group originally hailed from Limerick.

“We all went to school together,” Daniel says. “Myself and John have known each other since we were about 10, so about 13 years now. We all started playing guitar around the same time, and you know yourself, once you’re good enough at that you say ‘let’s start a band’.”

Originally called Animal Beats, the band went for a name change when they became wary of being mistaken for a dance music act.

“We chose the name Men of Twenty because it suits the image of the band a bit more, it’s a bit more mature,” Daniel says. “It comes from a play by John B. Keane called Many Young Men of Twenty. It’s about when the Irish were moving over to England all those years ago for work – similar enough to what’s happening now.”

Although many of their friends have made a similar journey, Men of Twenty are determined to make an impression on home soil.

“We were resistant to moving over to England like other bands have done, to look for a label,” Daniel says. “We feel the music scene over here is absolutely incredible. The likes of Hozier prove you can write an album in your attic in Bray and still manage to get it out there. You don’t have to go to Abbey Road.”

Studying in Dublin gave Men of Twenty the chance to record three singles at the Sound Training College. They spent some time in Temple Lane and Sun Studios, before getting the tracks mixed at Westland Studios. Daniel feels the band have benefited from stepping up to this more professional environment.

“When we were younger, we were scraping what little earnings we had together,” he says. “Usually recording was very minimal. You’d go in for two days, or whatever time you had, and whatever you recorded was what you came out with.  There was very little thought gone into it.

“Now what we’re able to do is spent a lot of time on pre-production and focus on things we weren’t able to before, like what amps we were going to use, what tones. Even what gauge strings we were going to use, what to pick. We were very lucky to be able to spend time on it; we loved every second of it. John, the main songwriter, is a sound engineer. I think out of all of us, he feels at home in the studio.”

Given that the band is fairly new on the scene, who would Daniel cite as influences?

“My dad was a big AC/DC fan, and all our parents loved Thin Lizzy,” he says. “In terms of other influences, there’d be the Kings of Leon early days and myself and John would be huge fans of The National. Connor would be a big Killers fan.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.