Better late than never to centre stage
AT the ripe old age of 62, music scene veteran Declan Sinnott has finally got around to making his debut solo album. How come it’s taken so long? “Lack of confidence in my ability as a singer would be part of it,” admits the Wexford native.
“Also, I didn’t write that much over the years. When I was younger — late teens, early twenties — I wrote a lot. But I now look back on it as not at all that good. I didn’t even engage with the process of editing in the way I do now. If I didn’t have a great idea, then there wasn’t going to be any song.”
Sinnott says he now starts working on the song and the inspiration might then kick in along the way.
“A discovery for me was that you could put ideas down and at some point it’d all take fire.”
Growing up in Wexford town, Sinnott listened to a lot of American roots music and British pop. “I obviously kept those influences but I moved to making it my own, for this record,” he says of I Love The Noise It Makes.
The album features 12 tracks, 10 of which were co-written with Owen O’Brien. “Owen and I have known each other for years,” reflects Sinnott. “I first remember seeing him in Cork’s Subway Bar [on MacCurtain Street] years ago. He was a member of a band called Anonymous and he had a pop sensibility that was unusual at the time. Later on, I produced an album for him under the name of Obi Hunter and we’ve worked a lot over the years, mainly with me recording him singing and then I’d come in with arrangements and production ideas. “After I’d been offered a record deal, I asked Owen to write songs specifically for me to sing — songs I could really get my teeth into. Owen very often came up with hooks, beginnings and starting points. Then we’d move on from there,” he explains.
But Sinnott is quick to insist they don’t use any one particular method for songwriting. “There isn’t a specific line down the middle,” he insists. “Owen is good at starting lyric ideas. In general I’m better at finishing them. I’m good at middle-eighths. He’s good at choruses. We definitely have different strengths but there isn’t any formula to it.”
The album title is purported to come from a John Lennon quote. “I was told it was from John Lennon but I can’t find it,” says Sinnott. “Anyway it’s a great line. Apparently he was asked what he liked about a particular record and he said — I just like the noise it makes — not any one ingredient. That describes my approach to making records also, in that the whole thing is a sound.”
Since the album’s release, Sinnott has begun to play solo shows, something he hasn’t done for a while. “I’ve done little bits and bobs over the years but not much. I wasn’t that comfortable at first but I am now and I’m really enjoying it,” he divulges. “Sometimes at a gig I loose focus. I loose my confidence but usually it’s early on in the gig. But recording is different. It’s your own world. I record in my own house. There’s nobody else there during the making of the album. I made a decision when I started that it was going to be the album of a singer. It’s the album of a guitar player too but that’s secondary,” he says.
“I decided when putting the bass and drums together that I was going to keep them very simple so that the song and the singer were at the front. That’s what I want people to focus on,” states Sinnott.
Guitarist, songwriter, arranger and producer, Sinnott has been at the coalface of the Irish music scene for over 40 years.
A founding member of Horslips and Moving Hearts, he was vital to the distinctive sound of Mary Black and Sinead Lohan. For almost 13 years, he’s been musical director, producer and trusty wingman for Christy Moore.
“Playing with Christy is unusual in that we’ve been at it for twelve and a half years. We are taking a break for the first six months of next year. But it isn’t diminishing and we are not getting on each others nerves,” he insists. “It actually staying enjoyable and that’s unusual. It’s a completely different thing.
“It’s just that for a Christy gig, I do what I think is the job I’m being asked to do and as for the solo thing, I do the job I think I should be doing. They are very different requirements.”
* Declan Sinnott’s I Love the Noise it Makes is out now on Warner Music. Tour dates: Dec 8, Triskel, Cork; Dec 10, Mick Murphy’s, Ballymore Eustace; Dec 14, The Tea Sessions, Brewery Lane, Carrick-On-Suir; Dec 28, White Horse, Ballincollig.
www.declansinnott.com
