She's self-publishing her new novel. He's releasing his new album on his own label. Marsha Swan and Barry McCormack tell Anna Carey about being in the driving seat.
Spring can be a busy time. There's the house to be freshened up, tax forms to sort out and summer holidays to plan. If you're Marsha Swan and Barry McCormack, there are also albums to release and books to publish. Next weekend McCormack is launching his new album, Last Night, As I Was Wandering, on his Hag's Head label. And this week Hag's Head Books, Swan's publishing house, has launched its second book.
It's all happening at once for the Dublin-based couple, who have been married since 2004. But they never planned this double release. "I started recording the album in 2004, and it was originally meant to come out last year, but reality got in the way of that - having a full-time job, and the grind of doing everything yourself," says McCormack.
In the meantime his wife has published two books, including her debut novel, Dirty Sky. "If Marsha has a list of things to do each day, they happen that day," says McCormack. "If I have a list of things to do, they happen . . . eventually. I can't multitask. If Marsha had done this album it would have happened in two weeks. Maybe it's American pragmatism."
Swan, who moved to Dublin in 1999, grew up in Iowa, the setting for Dirty Sky. An editor at the Lilliput Press, she decided to self-publish her own novel. "I was inspired by the punk-rock ethic that not only can you produce your own art legitimately, but [ you can] probably do it better than a record label or publisher would," she says. "Barry had already released his first solo album on Hag's Head in 2003, and watching him do it - and have a much better experience than he had on record labels with his band [ Jubilee Allstars] - made me realise that I wanted that sort of control over my book. You still need outside help - I hired an editor, and Barry wrote the press release - but I loved having the final say about the design and the marketing. I like being able to sort things out myself."
The result was a beautifully produced book, illustrated with striking black-and-white photographs. "I haven't read it since," she says. "I just look at the pictures. I think that's a good reason to put pictures in a novel, because now, if I want to look at my book and give myself a pat on the back, I just look at the pictures for a minute. I don't want to read it ever again."
Instead, she's concentrating on bringing out new books by other writers, such as Sean Harnett's Aisling Ltd and Hag's Head Press's April publication, Ailbhe Keogan's Molly and the Cyclops.
Hag's Head is named after a headland in Clare where McCormack's mother grew up. McCormack had put out his first album under the name; then Swan took it on. "I liked the idea of an indie brand that wouldn't be just records or books but a little of both," she says. "We'd like to see it developing into a co-op where we produce books and albums with a lot of involvement - including financially - from the authors and musicians."
The couple run the Hag's Head empire from their central-Dublin home, but their creative work can be very different. McCormack finds that working solo can be isolating. "If you're in a band you have all these sounding boards for new ideas: you have rows about it, but you discuss things."
McCormack sometimes misses the camaraderie of being in a band, not least because he was in one with his brothers. "With our band it was all about hanging around together," he says. "And on a creative level, when it's just you on your own, there's no one else to validate what you're doing. You have to be kind of megalomaniacal."
McCormack, who comes from Rathfarnham, in south Dublin, grew up listening to US folk and rock before rediscovering his Irish musical roots. "I'm interested in Dublin and the history of its street names - they're very poetic. I realised that I wanted to sing about Dublin, but I was playing in a very American style. Then I found a Clancy Brothers record in a charity shop, and my friends and I were laughing at the Aran sweaters on the cover. But when we actually put the record on we started to realise that this was where the Bad Seeds come from - it was all sea shanties and murder ballads, with one guy singing and everyone joining in the chorus. The songwriters I've liked have always been storytellers with a twist."
And, as Swan has discovered in her six years in Ireland, there are plenty of storytellers, twisty or otherwise, in Dublin. "When I grew up I never met anyone else who wanted to write," she says. "And then I moved to Ireland, and everyone in the pub seemed to have written a novel or was planning to write one. People that you wouldn't expect to be writers would turn out to have a novel sitting around at home."
McCormack isn't going to be one of them. "Writing fiction always seems like toil and graft to me," he says. "But when you're writing songs you're entertaining yourself." So the two halves of Hag's Head won't be encroaching on each other's territory. "I told him he wasn't allowed to write a novel until I got my book done," says Swan, laughing. "It would have annoyed me too much."
• Barry McCormack launches Last Night, As I Was Wandering next Saturday at Slattery's of Capel Street, Dublin. See www.hagsheadpress.com