Fred call it a day
FRED’S Joseph O’Leary wishes things had worked out differently. “Personally I’d like to keep rocking. The band is a democracy and a decision has been made,” says the singer. “It’s like your friends telling you they don’t want to be your friends anymore. What can you do? You have to accept it.”
He’s laughing but you can hear the sadness. In November Fred announced they were to split after more than a decade. A farewell tour will culminate with two sold out gigs at The Pavilion in Cork. It’s a bittersweet way to say goodbye.
“I am definitely going to miss it,” says O’Leary. “I wouldn’t have stopped, although there were very good motivations for stopping. I can see the logic. It was a totally amicable decision.”
Fred’s reasons for calling it a day were practical rather than artistic. After four albums and hundreds of gigs, the quintet were finding it increasingly challenging to make ends meet. Several in the ranks were fed up scraping a living. If Fred were going to break through commercially it would have already happened. Enough was enough. They wanted out.
“We had financial worries,” says O’Leary. “We made an album as if we were a major. We paid for everything, went to Canada to work with [renowned producer and former Arcade Fire drummer] Howard Bilerman. While it was fantastic, we were in Canada a month and that had to come out of our own pockets. Off and on we played Canada a lot and had great fun. However, we are an independent act, our own record label effectively. So when the ‘label’ was paying for Fred to go to Canada, that meant we were paying for Fred to go to Canada. You try to recoup it with shows and merch sales. It’s tough.”
In debt, Fred were required to play an ever greater number of gigs. It became a slog.
“Our sales haven’t been where we would want them to be at. We had to play more. It got tiring. The love definitely waned. It was an awful Catch 22: you are asking people to go out and deliver a great show and maybe they are a bit pissed off. You are broke and you are sacrificing a lot. He shrugs. “I never saw it as a sacrifice. At the end of the day that’s what it was. Your art requires you to make that sacrifice. However, others in the band had good reason for wanting to walk away. Life gets in the way.
“We basically released an album every three years. The way the industry is nowadays you almost would want to be releasing an album every two months. It’s harder and harder for good music to stand out. There is so much crap out there.”
Zippy and sophisticated, Fred were too cheerfully eclectic to be pigeon-holed as an indie band, too quirky to be labelled a mainstream act.
O’Leary has no regrets about Fred’s career. They worked hard and achieved a great deal, more than they are often given credit for. Perhaps the high point came in 2009 when their song ‘Damn You Hollywood’ featured on teen soap Gossip Girl.
“One or two musicians have said to me, there’s no shame in what you did. You gave it a lash. You got up a couple of levels on the ladder’. We weren’t looking at the bottom rung all the time. I’m ready to do that sacrifice again. But other people in the band have family lives they want to improve. You can’t knock that either.”
As to the future, O’Leary can’t imagine a day when he stops writing songs. It’s part of who he is. He’s not quite sure how he will bring his new music to the public. For now, he’s focused on giving Fred the best possible send off.
“I’ve been doing some stuff on my own. I keep writing, I need to write. It keeps me sane and helps me make sense of everything. Which is ultimately why a songwriter writes in the first place. I hope to keep doing that. Whether I start gigging… well, I wouldn’t rush into it.”
As with the rest of Fred he has had to supplement his income with a variety of jobs. He sees music as his full-time occupation. But you have to pay the rent too.
“Fred was our full-time job. At the same time, we had to hold down actual full time jobs as well. As a result, our jobs suffered to an extent. We were living the dream and yet the dream wasn’t paying. We live in an amazing country. However, it’s a small country. To make money as a musician you need to be playing to a large population. You can’t do that here, regardless of how hard you try.”
He has goose-bumps thinking about Fred’s final shows. “We played our last Dublin gig recently and the response was amazing. I think it’s going to be great at the Pavilion. The first date sold out straight away and it looks like the second will do likewise. We could have done a larger venue, but I like to see the whites of the audience’s eyes. No matter what happens it is going to be emotional.”
CONNECT WITH US TODAY
Be the first to know the latest news and updates
