BLUEGRASS: EOIN CUNNINGHAMtalks to Dave and Louise Holden of the band I Draw Slow about the challenges of mixing music with jobs and kids
AFTER LISTENING TO I Draw Slow’s acclaimed second album, Redhills, you might be surprised to hear that they aren’t a group of Appalachian balladeers but an Irish band. It includes sibling songwriters Dave and Louise Holden. They used to be part of Tabularasa, a late 1990s fixture on the Dublin music circuit which broke up at the beginning of the noughties. This music seems quite a departure. “This album is entirely self-produced and self-released,” says Dave. “When you go into a studio with a producer, you’re often told what you shouldn’t do, what’s not going to work and what won’t get airplay. It’s one of the reasons I got into production, I was sick of being told what I could and could not do. This was partly to do with the Tabularasa years where I came out in the end with something that I put loads of work into but I wouldn’t listen to myself.” That band just died, according to Louise. “It definitely coloured the approach to the way that we’ve developed I Draw Slow,” she says. “It’s been a very organic process.”
Dave's wife Ricky came up with the name I Draw Slow. "We liked it because of the western connotations of being in a duel, in a laidback way. But also, from being a journalist, I loved that it was a complete sentence," says Louise, who writes for The Irish Times.
It is about 10 years since the siblings first came into contact with bluegrass music, says Dave. "I used to busk in Australia, and I met a banjo player. I hadn't heard any of that kind of music but he took me under his wing and showed me the way," he explains. The musician, a retired policeman, was trying to raise money to build a cricket pitch for his son. He was living out of his car while travelling around Australia playing bluegrass music. Louise takes up the story. "You came back evangelical about this music. We started going to bluegrass festivals in Ireland, of which there were a number and are now loads. We used to go down to one in Dunmore East, where we'd sit around the campfire singing. At the same time, that film Oh Brother, Where Art Thou? came out and everybody knew about this music in a way they wouldn't have before. So the popularity was coming from one side and our interest was coming from another." Getting excited about bluegrass is one thing but starting a new band when you have children to take care of is another. Even touring is a different experience when you have to manage the school run.
“It’s funny,” says Louise, “because when we did the Irish tour, it was yo-yo out of Dublin, where you’d drive out and come back again. Obviously if we go to Europe, it’s not going to work so well. My husband Mark is a musician too, so he understands and wants us to do well. Obviously I can’t take the piss, but he’s cool with me going off for a week here and there during the year.”
“It’s different for me and Lou,” says Dave. “Fatherhood is new for me so I’m just finding my feet. There’s an awful lot of emphasis on the fact that if you do music, you can’t do anything else and I think that’s dated. Actually, your free time is incredibly focused and you become really good at time management.” Just because it’s a challenge doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try, says Louise. “If you look around for a role model and say, ‘Is it possible to be a mother of two, living in Dublin, working here, and also having a successful music career?’ I can’t see an example. But then you think, maybe it could be me. Things are changing all the time. It’s a strange mix of us pursuing this strange old type of music, but we’re writing new songs and we’re employing all the latest technology.”
Being able to put together their own videos has helped. “YouTube has been amazing for us. We made a video with Rory Breslin in Lillie’s Bordello. We reeled in every burlesque dancer in the city, borrowed the club for the day and filmed the whole thing in seven hours. Then we stuck it up on YouTube. We’ve had 14,000 hits and filled gigs on the back of it.”
Ultimately, the band exists because of their love of bluegrass and making music, says Dave. “I know it’s clichéd but we really are just interested in making music we like,” he says. “We did spend time writing music in an attempt to please other people and it’s just not the way to do it.”
“A lot of the feedback that we get from people who say they love the album, is that it’s because it’s homespun, very raw and honest,” says Louise. “It’s not trying to be anything else.”
First get a a banjo
Bluegrass is an American musical style dating back to the late 19th century. Primarily acoustic-based, it blended Scottish and Irish traditional music brought by immigrants to the rural Appalachian region of the US with African-American blues, although it quickly became a very individual sound.
Less well-known than other American musical movements, such as jazz, blues and hip-hop, it has nevertheless steadily built a following around the world, particularly in Europe, as folk music in general has had a resurgence in popularity. Bluegrass is not folk, but the two forms have a lot of crossover, both in practitioners and listeners. The distinctive sound of bluegrass comes from the arrangement of banjo, fiddle, upright bass, mandolin and unique vocal harmonies, called a stack. Irish audiences have always liked bluegrass and there are a number festivals throughout the year that feature homegrown bands. The best-known of these is probably the Dunmore East Bluegrass Festival, which runs from August 26th-28th. There's an enormous archive of old music, as well as new artists, worth a listen. To get started, Dave and Louise Holden recommend The Cujo Family, an Irish band; and Norman Blake, a Dylanesque figure who has been active for more than 50 years. "I like his simple approach to Appalachian, bluegrassy stuff," says Dave. "But we also like a lot of the really old stuff, the traditional, proper old-time music made by people like Tommy Jarrell, and Dirk Powell, who was quite a big influence on us."
