Hermitage Green, one of Ireland’s most popular bands, return to Cork this Saturday to play Live At The Marquee.
For Barry Murphy, one of the quintet, the performance completes something important to the band.
“I was thinking about this morning and I’m pretty sure the Live at the Marquee is probably the only big venue in the country that we haven’t been lucky enough to play,” he said.
“We’ve played in all of them: Three Arena, The Olympia, Vicar St, King John’s Castle, the Cork Opera House, and everywhere in between, but never in the Marquee.”
Barry credits playing Cork as the catalyst for Hermitage Green and their development.
“Cork was the first place we ever played outside of Limerick,” he added.
“We got asked to go down and play in the Oliver Plunkett.
“I’d say we’d three or four original songs, so we’d play a few covers and had a bit of craic at the start.
“Then we put in a lot of work, we came down every second Saturday, and then started playing college gigs in Cork.
“Then we recorded music videos down there and there’s always been some connection since. Darragh’s married to Jessika Zebo, whose brother is Simon, and when I played rugby, a lot of people used to think I was from Cork because of my name.”
There is one particular place that Brian reckons was a turning point for the band — “playing at Live at St Luke’s is really where kicked it off for us big time”.
“We started doing the Christmas shows at St Luke’s and they are our most special gigs of the year.
“We did five of them there at Christmas just gone and it’s such a beautiful venue, we kind of make the most of the opportunity to play in a church and people bring in their own cans and that kind of craic and have it as our Christmas party!”
Since then, the band have released three songs in the last six months: ‘Younger Days’, ‘All You Can Be’ and ‘Driftin’ — which was released two weeks ago.
All the band contribute to the songwriting, so all their personal lives have informed the new material.
Brian laid out what people can expect: “Obviously a few of us being new, young parents, we’ve had those realisations you have when you have a kid, looking back on your whole childhood and your own life.
“You see how it’s now your responsibility to shape these little kids and help them on their journey. Having said that, I wouldn’t say the songs are about parenthood. I’d say that life and death is the key theme to the whole thing.”
‘Driftin’ was a song that Barry was behind, and it was inspired by one of the biggest stories of 2023.
“There’s a bit of meaning in this song, the lads are kind of slagging me saying ‘‘Driftin’ is like Barry’s existential crisis’. Trying to write during covid and over the last few years, where the world has taken a bit of a turn, has been tough.
“It’s a dark enough place … for me, anyway, the more you dig, the harder it is to make sense of it all. That’s kind of what came out in this song.”
In many ways, ‘Driftin’ was Barry’s entry point into creating material for the new album.
“It was the first spark for me to try and write something new in this album, I was finding it quite difficult. A lot of time before I would have written sentimental songs about people that I loved or about experiences that I had, and I found a little bit of a struggle to write those kinds of stuff.
“Then the Titan submersive tragedy happened last year. I wrote the lyrics responding to it, and a lot of them are the kind of words that I would have used to help myself through the last five years which I found really, really hard.
“I knuckled down and I tried to educate myself, reached out and got help in places, and learned about how to handle and manage certain situations. I didn’t sit down to think about writing those words for the song, they emerged.”
After leaving the flow of creating the song’s lyrics and narrative, Brian credits the band-mates and producer for bringing the song to a whole new level.
“It’s kind of afterwards you write a song sometimes that you get more of meaning from it. Cillian, our producer, came in and took it in a direction with the synth sounds in it — which I think created the suspense in the song with the arpeggiator that’s going in and out, it adds tension there. Then the lads all did their bits and brought it to that big level.”
Barry lists off the live rhythm instrument options Hermitage Green have at their disposal.
“There’s so much to lean into, we’ve two drummers, two percussionists, and the bodhrán, the djembe, and all of Darragh’s bits and pieces. We’ve got the synth drums as well.
“The first two tracks we released were a bit softer, but this song is an introduction to where we’re going.”
Performing the new songs live is a thrill for Brian, adding: “It’s challenging, there are so many sounds in these tracks, three of us have to play synth now. We had to pick up a lot of drum machines that allow the lads to do both and then the vocals as well.
“We’ll be rolling them out at Live at the Marquee.
“The rehearsals have been tough, but such a learning experience because you don’t write or record songs thinking ‘what’s it going to be like for me on stage’, you just work on that when the time comes.”
- Hermitage Green are the special guests of Damien Dempsey at Live at the Marquee on Saturday, June 8, Further information available at www.aikenpromotions.com
