Cork's Greatest Records: Go God Go, and how Fred ended up on the soundtrack of Gossip Girl
Fred
A good barman always has a few tales of his own to tell. None less so than Joe O’Leary, proprietor of Levis Corner House in Ballydehob.It’s only a decade ago, so the mists of time are hardly gathering around the memories, but O’Leary still gets a faraway look when describing some of the stand-out gigs with his former band, Fred.
Selling out Cork Opera House for a hometown gig where the band were buoyed up by the love in the room for them, where fans sang all the words along with them. Or another time when what looked like a low-key gig at the former Oxegen festival turned into a once-in-a-lifetime experience.
“We got a shitty slot; I think we were on at twelve on Sunday morning,” O’Leary says. “No-one’s head is right the Sunday morning of a festival so we weren’t expecting a crowd. We were playing the Heineken tent; someone told us it was the biggest tent in Europe at the time. It was massive.
“While we were sound-checking there were about 100 people in at the barrier; all the Cork heads. We played the first song and suddenly people were streaming in from the sides of the tent. About three songs in, it was three-quarters full. It was amazing. They were all singing back at us. We said afterwards, wow, if every gig was like that you could stay at this forever.”
Both gigs happened in 2009, a year that was arguably their most successful yet in what had already been over a decade of gigging and recording.
“I remember interviews where you were asked how you got to be such an overnight sensation,” O’Leary says. “Overnight my ass! We were at it for ten or twelve years before we got any recognition outside of our local grassroots support.”
Go God Go, their third album, yielded four catchy and melodic singles: Skyscrapers, Running, The Lights and Good One, the latter of which was released long before the album, while other tracks were still being recorded during 2007. A fifth song, Damn You Hollywood, ended up on the soundtrack to TV show Gossip Girl, which landed Fred a large enough publishing fee that it paid a third of the costs of their follow-up final album, Leaving My Empire.
Self-produced, Go God Go was distributed by Universal records and picked up in Canada by Toronto label Sparks. O’Leary chuckles at the mention of “big in Canada.” “I still have this sticker that says, ‘Le première groupe du musique de l’Irlande’ from the French-Canadian territory and one Canadian journalist said we were the biggest Irish band since U2,” he says with a hearty laugh. “I can confirm we were not. But we went with it.”
The album’s second single, Skyscrapers, released with a kitschy video filmed on location in Cork’s Savoy theatre, was energetic synth-pop with lyrics whose cleverness belied the simple melody.
Guitarist Jamie Hanrahan, drummer Justin O’Mahoney and bass player Jamin O’Donovan decided that, for their third album, they’d self-record, O’Leary explains.
“The lads went away and learned how to be engineers on our time: we basically recorded that album in bedrooms,” he says. “I remember being in Jamin’s apartment on Douglas Street that he was sharing with three other people, and we asked them to leave and he put me into a closet to record. But maybe he was just doing that for craic.
“If you’re a total sound nerd, the sound quality is probably not as good on Go God Go as the album after it, but in terms of the vibe it was great.”
There was plenty of hype for Fred’s 2009 touring of the album. And more tales, including the mishap that saw the band generate more press than they could have imagined when their gear was stolen from their band van in January.
“Now look, I don’t want to take away from the fairytale, but there is the possibility that one of the lads left the van door unlocked,” O’Leary says with a grin. “I’m just putting it out there. The central locking on the van wasn’t working great. There were borrowed guitars there worth thousands, that weren’t even ours to lose. We lost all of it. And we were parked directly across from Anglesea Street Garda Station.
“We got loads of press off it even though we looked like a shower of eejits that we got our gear stolen,” O’Leary says. “Someone even asked us if we had planned it for the publicity.” Following a tip-off that the thief had tried to pawn a bass guitar worth €2,500 for €150 using his real ID, Gardaí raided a house where all the gear was recovered.
Halfway into the year, Fred suffered a blow when keyboard player and vocalist Eibhilín O’Gorman announced her departure; Fred held auditions and replaced O’Gorman with Carolyn Goodwin, a multi-instrumentalist who had already placed saxophone with the band. But O’Leary says there were tears shed over O’Gorman’s decision.
“We started in our early twenties and at this stage we were in our mid-thirties. We were musicians during the boom; our friends were doing really well, buying family homes, and we were broke all the time. We worked part-time all the way through. If you drive from the Roisin Dubh in Galway after a gig, you get home at five in the morning and go to work at eight, as a teacher or a builder or whatever. I’m not giving out, but that’s what we lived through.”
As the refrain goes in Running, “It takes too much to get it right.” Fatigue was setting in, as evinced by O’Gorman’s departure. Fred would go on to record a further album, released in 2011, but in 2013 they announced their split and played two emotional farewell gigs in The Pavilion.
Now, O’Leary runs Levis Corner House in Ballydehob with his partner Caroline; they’ve transformed it from a quirky local curio to one of a handful of far-flung boutique music venues scattered throughout Ireland’s wild, wild west.
Having received government funding under the Live Performance Support Scheme, O’Leary is preparing to film a series of musical events in Levis. Has seeing a Covid-era conversation open up around support for artists changed his perspective on Fred’s fate?
“What’s happened in the last nine months has reinforced how poorly the arts are supported by the powers that be,” he says. “My perspective on Fred probably hasn’t changed though: it was our time. Every band gets to a stage where if they’re not successful, commercially as well as artistically, the time comes to call it a day.”
Jamie Hanrahan lives in Copenhagen and works in web design. “He told me he barely touches his guitar anymore, which is sad,” O’Leary says. “He does sometimes come back and play with the West Cork Ukelele Orchestra though.” Eibhilín O’Gorman Keyboard player and vocalist Eibhilín O’Gorman lives in West Cork, where she teaches music. She has three children.
Jamin O'Donovan lives in London and works as a digital content creator; his projects have included overhauling the Irish citizens information website to make it more user-friendly. He also continues to work on his music.
Justin O’Mahoney lives in Dublin and is married with two children. He works in tech. “He’s tried to explain to me what he does but I don’t understand it,” O’Leary says.
Carolyn Goodwin lives in Copenhagen and is still playing and performing: she’s a frequent visitor to Levis for the annual Ballydehob Jazz Festival.
