Donal Dineen: Pushing the buttons on a new podcast

Donal Dineen was the man who first brought David Gray and many other emerging artists to our ears. He’s had a lower profile in recent years, but has returned with a new podcast, writes Eoghan O’Sullivan

Sun, 31 May, 2020 - 20:19

Eoghan O’Sullivan

Eoghan O’Sullivan speaks to Donal Dineen who first brought David Gray to our ears.

Donal Dineen has been keeping very busy during lockdown, having started the Make Me An Island podcast. He's putting out 19 shows in just over six weeks, with the raison d’etre of presenting an illustrated guide to the musical universe.

How are you getting on in lockdown?

Lockdown has mostly been spent concentrating on making the shows. It’s been an all-day every-day kind of pursuit. There hasn’t been much time for anything else. Not that there’s been a lot else to do!

What was the idea behind the new podcast?

I had been developing the Make Me An Island idea with a theatre producer called Kate Ferris. We have been doing a thing called Tiny Dancer together since 2018. Making actual kids dance as opposed to the adult version behaving like children was a breath of fresh air for me.

That was all down to Kate. So she and I started meeting up regularly and working on plans to start making other types of shows. The plan was to host recording sessions in my favourite place to eat in Dublin, Luncheonette, which is in the basement of NCAD. Along with Jennie Moran who runs that establishment we were going to present these evenings there under the name The Well-Fed Radio Society.

There was to be live music but not all the guests were going to be musicians. The central idea was to discuss ways in which artists constructed their imaginary worlds in front of an audience already won over through the medium of food or something along those lines!

Was a podcast something you had been planning for a while?

To be honest, I wasted a lot of time and energy trying to find a way back into actual broadcasting while getting more disillusioned with every rejection. Wish I hadn’t but there you go. I had a really good innings of 14 years on air and rather than being unlucky to lose that role I was very lucky that it lasted as long as it did.

As regards the doomed attempt to get back inside, in my defence it was my absolute dream job so it’s only natural to get stuck in reverse. But it went on for too long. By the time I woke up, not only had the goalposts shifted but the game had changed and there were more people with podcasts than without.

You say on the first episode, "I used to be on the actual radio. These days the radio is everything you carry around and you can take it anywhere you're going." Is the big world of the internet and technology enough for you to get your fill?

It’s a relief to be making shows again even if it isn’t on the actual radio. I retain a deep love for that medium. In doing what I am doing now I am trying to channel that sense of anticipation that might have made radio shows momentous back in the day. The opening bars of the first tune have to sound like some sort of call to prayer.

Essentially I am mapping out a new path to the waterfall that I myself am familiar with and I want to bring the listener with me all the way on that journey. I am a hopeless romantic in that regard.

The idea of the radio DJ is obsolete and the medium itself has been complicit in its own demise but the role of the gatekeeper and guide is not dead yet. These podcasts bring me back to what I’ve always believed, which is that DJing is storytelling with buttons.

Tell us about the process that goes into an episode of Make me an Island?

A key development was enlisting the help of Ian Cudmore who is a sound ninja and production wizard from Bishopstown. The shows are really a collaborative effort between us.

Having banged my head off brick walls and closed doors for several years it was a revelation to sit in my home and make shows again for people who gave a shit. I am late to the revolution but bypassing all of the palaver that goes with being on a station was a relief. I never did have much to say to the middle man anyway.

A passion for music tends to be an irritant to such folk. For the first time in many years I felt 100% comfortable speaking my own language knowing that it would be understood and appreciated. Not having to dilute that in any way has been one of the most eye-opening things of the last couple of months. It’s personal. Private service broadcasting is what I am calling it.

What's happening with This Ain't No Disco at the moment? You put out a brilliant episode on Christmas Day, the first of season two, and were planning on going to New York for St Patrick's Day but obviously that fell through...

We were in the middle of shooting the second show in the second series of This Ain’t No Disco when the shutters came down. It’s an entirely voluntary operation thus far and the break we took in 2018 was necessary to recharge the batteries after a colossal effort in 2017.

The inspiration behind that show was to invent a place to go for all the amazing music that was coming out of this country. I have said it many times before but it’s more true now than ever that this is a golden age of Irish music. The final few seconds of the last shoot we did before lockdown ended with me accidentally smashing a giant vase into smithereens. Props tend to explode around The Bonk. We went out with a crash and we will be back with a bang!

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Make me an Island is a treasure trove of new discoveries of older songs. Here are Donal’s picks of some ‘Sunken Treasures:

Burning Spear - Studio One Session. A stone-cold classic from the Coxsone Dodd stable.
The Essential K Frimpong and his Cubano Fiestas. The high watermark from an extraordinary period of musical revolution in Ghana.
Emahoy Tesgue Maryam Gebrou - Ethiopiques Volume 21. Deeply meditative musical perfection from the piano-playing Ethiopian nun
The Abner Jay Story. An extraordinary collection of songs from the eternal outsider.
Noel Hill and Tony McMahon - In Knocknagree Two musical giants whipping up a dancing storm in Sliabh Luachra.

And five Irish tunes that have lit up the show: