The tiny space in which Kevin Doherty diligently crafts his songs says much about the man. The room reeks of both industry and reverence, the guitar, the piano and the map of Donegal indicating roots as well as aspiration. The walls reveal even more. Here hover the images of Ray Charles, Patrick Kavanagh, Bob Dylan, Seamus Heaney and Hank Williams. A copy of his own debut album, Strange Weather, is nowhere to be seen, however. It now exists in other people's rooms - a well-received slice of Donegal Americana created off Dublin's South Circular Road and recorded in upstate New York.
For a Dylan fan like Doherty to record in Woodstock with members of The Band was, strangely enough, quite a casual thing. Given a relationship with Levon Helm, Rick Danko and Garth Hudson that went back to his days with souped-up trad outfit Four Men and a Dog, Doherty's flit to The Catskills had more to do with personalities than with symbolic location. The two groups had toured together, the Dogs themselves had previously recorded a couple of albums at Helm's studios, and The Band in turn had recorded a Doherty song on their current album, Jubilation. Even so, that link to Dylan and his infamous electric Band is not without significance.
"It was only when I found a record of Dylan's that I really started paying any attention to music. I was babysitting in my brother's one night and I went through the record collection in the house and that's where I found it. The first track was Watching The River Flow, and it had a profound effect on me. I couldn't sleep that night thinking about it. After that, I took to it all with a passion and I really got into the music. I was just discovering this stuff for the first time. I hadn't been in a showband from the age of six or anything so this was, as Jimmie Dale Gilmore calls it, my matrix. I took reference points and took it further and further until I was completely swamped. Within a year or so I was lost beyond any help."
According to Doherty, early 1980s Buncrana was hardly fertile musical ground. He recalls one local band called Urban Conflict who split on ideological grounds when someone suggested a rehearsal. The only other person he knew who played music was Ciaran Tourish (now of Altan) although he maintains that even he was fairly furtive about it - scurrying through the town with the fiddle under his coat. Doherty, however, continued to nurture his own half-formed notions of music and, still reeling from the sound of Bob Dylan, began wondering what to do next.
"I started spending time with older people - like teachers. One teacher in particular called Jimmy McKay had the gatefold It's Too Late To Stop Now - the Van Morrison live album - and he'd ask me to listen to that and see what I thought. That was nearly too much for me then but it didn't take me too long. Then my sister taught me House of The Rising Sun on the guitar, and I went at that with a passion too. Of course I didn't realise it at the time but my father had a great collection of records in the house - Sinatra and swing era stuff, and my mother had records of Hank Williams and Don Williams and Hank Snow. I know some of that music didn't feel comfortable then, but once I got to 20 I realised the effect it had on me."
As he puts it himself, Doherty recognised early on that he was never going to be another Bob Dylan. He wasn't going to be bringing out albums at the age of 21 and the only thing for it was to pursue the music in his own way. The only real opportunity to play was in Donegal traditional circles where, apart from the reels and jigs, there was always the odd interloping country or Stones song.
He hooked up with Ciaran Tourish in a bluegrass/country outfit called The Pryos and after that joined another Donegal band called The Gooseberries. It was a natural progression to move to Dublin, and after a couple of months hanging around, he joined Four Men and a Dog.
"From playing around Letterkenny and Buncrana and maybe the odd gig in the Union Hall in Derry, I was suddenly playing all over Europe and America and mixing in really great circles. Then one day I looked at the itinerary and saw that we were going to support The Band in Scandinavia, and that was really amazing. Nobody was blase about anything that day. And that's where I met people like Levon for the first time. But it worked both ways too: people like Rick Danko had never heard anything quite like Cathal Hayden. I saw him virtually crawl over on his knees to sit and listen to Cathal playing tunes."
Four Men and a Dog made several albums and seemed to tour incessantly. Doherty played guitar and sang his own songs when the occasion arose, but the overall impact of the band was as a high-powered instrumental experience. Although Doherty was bringing his songs to the Dogs as he would to a band of his own, he was bound to be a fairly quiet presence on stage. Furthermore, he was not essentially a traditional musician and it was perhaps inevitable that he would eventually tire of it.
"It was hard, especially towards the end. There was no real support coming from the record company, and we felt that we were out there on our own. We all just got tired and I thought there was only one thing for it: I had to go and do my own record. On the road you don't have the time and inclination, so once the band finished up I threw myself into it. Very quickly I applied a structure to the day. I would read in the morning and start working in the afternoon. I was lucky because my mind was already filled with hooks and it only took one word or one sequence of chords for the whole thing to come out."
Unlike many songwriters, Doherty can attempt to articulate the actual process of songwriting itself. He talks easily about "the hooks" he hears in his head. At the time of writing he maintains he has about 15 such hooks - lyrical and musical - floating around all at once. He can pick any of them at will and start working on them, turning and returning them until he has got it right. It's a facility, he says, he is very lucky to have.
"They are fragments really, and I just work and work and work at them to where they are solidly in place, and all the variations are used up and I've settled on one. Occasionally it all comes out at once but that involves another technique. I've heard Van Morrison do it with two chords. Or John Lee Hooker years ago with one chord - just hammer away until the words come. I wanted to try that too, with a train journey from Buncrana to Derry, and it was very exhilarating to record that way. Apart from that song however (All Aboard), the rest were much more structured.
"I know Hank Williams said that if it takes more than 15 minutes to write the song, you should forget about it, but I find that you can get a whole lot from going back to things and applying your time. There are always words that maybe fit better, or phrases that maybe fit in a nicer way."
Kevin Doherty now finds himself in a new position. He is no longer just another member of a band. His is the photograph on the cover of the CD, and he is more than a little uncomfortable with the feeling. But beyond all of that is the desire to put a band together and continue making records. The release of Strange Weather suggests this is a likely prospect. Things have suddenly changed for Kevin Doherty - far from Donegal - but not too far.
"One of the first poets to affect me was Patrick Kavanagh and in particular the poem Epic and the idea of important places. I loved all of that. And then when I started reading Seamus Heaney I was completely convinced that the local thing was possible. Why not love in The Mamore Gap? Why not Mamore as much as Ipanema or wherever? I've written a song for the next album which is basically my attempt to write The Girl From Ipanema. It's set in Culdaff."
Strange Weather by Kevin Doherty is on Key Records