David Gray: We've got some surprises in store for anniversary show in Musgrave Park
David gray
David Gray wasn’t sure he wanted to mark the anniversary of his breakthrough album, White Ladder. The chart-topping singer-songwriter has always looked to the future and is more interested in challenging his fanbase with new music than pushing their nostalgia buttons. And yet, coming out of the pandemic, he has delighted to honour the landmark 1998 LP with a series of celebratory concerts that will include a big outdoor show at Cork’s Musgrave Park on June 18.
“As an artist, you have to be slightly wary of giving the audience what it wants,” he says. “The only way that it made sense to me is that it was personal. That it was a genuine celebration of something that happened with the people that did it [such as his early drummer Craig McClune, with whom he reunites] and with the audience. And as it’s turned out it’s become a celebration of music itself. A celebration of the opportunity to even play to a crowd. In a way, that makes the performing of it a little simpler. There’s only one target: connection and uplift. That’s what we’ve achieved at every gig.” White Ladder was the miracle that kept on giving. Gray (53) had built a cult following in Ireland from 1993 on but struggled to break out in his native UK. And so the future was by no means rosy as he started recording the album in his London flat in the spring of 1998.
He was up against it. White Ladder was self-financed and though buoyed by his success across the Irish sea, it seemed a long shot that Gray could cut through internationally. If anything, it looked like he would have to rely on his girlfriend (and future wife), whose career as a solicitor was taking off.
And then the LP came out and everyone in Ireland – or so it felt – acquired a copy. And for a while in 1999 and 2000, songs such as Babylon, Sail Away and This Year’s Love felt truly inescapable. Gray’s grainy, evocative voice would soundtrack the youth of an entire generation and go on to sell an astonishing 375,000 copies in Ireland (out of three million globally). Meaning that, if you hadn’t bought it someone you know almost certainly had. Back in 2000, a headline in this very newspaper referred to an upcoming concert of his as "a very special something". It is a time he remembers vividly.
“The intensity of the reaction,” he says, shaking his head. “One show that stands out was Galway Arts Festival in 1999 [the first time he played to a crowd of more than 1,000]. People went crazy. That was the first time we walked into the white hot cauldron of complete mad energy. It's like being buffeted by some crazy solar wind. It's hard to keep yourself on the right path musically. You can hardly hear what you're doing.” Gray received support from Donal Dineen’s No Disco, which played his early single Shine non-stop through 1993 and which broadcast from RTÉ Cork Cork. And this has led to the theory that it was Cork that discovered Gray first, with Dublin and Galway catching up. He has in the past named Cork Opera House as his favourite venue. Today, however, is too polite to confirm or deny that Cork got there ahead of the rest.
“This is an inner Ireland conflict. I will judiciously say the two things developed entirely in parallel. There was simultaneous growth in the Dublin gigs and the Cork gigs. And of course, there's Galway in there as well – playing the Warwick. These are the things I remember most. The first one in Cork was Triskel Arts Centre. Then it was Nancy Spain’s a couple of times. Meanwhile we were doing the Whelan’s shows in Dublin. The two kind of grew together.” The very first tour was two gigs: Dublin and Cork, he says.
“We’ve always had a tremendous following and reaction in Cork. The Marquee show a few years ago, on the Gold in a Brass Age tour, felt like a moment. I’d been sensing for a while things were coming back for me in a heartfelt way over there [Ireland]. That confirmed a few things. With that gig still ringing in my mind from July 2019, I’m thinking of this Musgrave Park show. As soon as it was put on the map, my eyes were drawn to it. It’s my birthday week. This is basically the party. This is the big one, as far as I’m concerned. We’ve got a few surprises in store for that one as well. We’ve added a few other songs. And who knows, maybe we’ll get a special guest in.” Gray’s memories of White Ladder are bittersweet. In 2001, as the project was becoming a success in the UK, his father died. Twelve months later his daughter was born. So his recollections of that time are bound up with heartache and joy. He revisited that phase of his life in a moving 2020 documentary, made by Donal Scannell (whom Gray got to know when Scannell was a producer on No Disco).
Ed Sheeran and Glen Hansard are among the luminaries lined up to praise him in David Gray: Ireland’s Greatest Hit (“White Ladder for me was an album that moulded me as an artist and as a music fan,” Sheeran would say). There is also footage of his father – the first time Gray had seen him on screen since he passed away. The whole experience, arriving in the middle of the pandemic, was hugely emotional.
“If you're going to make a documentary or film, it’s rather dull if you don't have the honest parts of it available,” says Gray. “If you're going to do it, you have to show what you are and what happened. That’s what makes it something people can relate too. I thought Donal did a good job. My kids watched it and enjoyed it. They weren’t around to see it. They were fascinated. In deciding to go there…I bought into the whole thing. I’ve been quite a private person. There’s nothing to hide: it’s a human story. It did the best I could. Some amazing things happened. Some of it I struggled with. Some of it I loved.” Gray tried to stay busy through lockdown. He released a new album, Skellig, last year. And when the 2022 run of dates was confirmed he experienced a upsurge in productivity. Knowing what lay ahead rejuvenated him in a huge way.
“I had an incredible purple patch leading up to the tour. When the tour was finally locked in last December – for the first time in 18 months I knew what I was doing. It unleashed a massive wave of pent-up songs and ideas. I must have written 25, 30 songs before the end of December and the end of March. That’s definitely a record for me. I’ve got this swathe of new music. That’s all very much alive and kicking.” David Gray plays Musgrave Park, Cork Saturday June 18
Up To Ninety The world was very different when David Gray launched White Ladder on the cusp of 1999. We go back in time for a brief run-down.
1: The biggest selling album of 1999 is Millennium by Backstreet Boys which shifted 40 million copies worldwide and gives humankind hits such as I Want It That Way, Larger Than Life and Show Me the Meaning of Being Lonely.
2 :The box office is dominated by Star Wars: The Phantom Menace. Fans hated this attempt to update Star Wars and took to the fledgling internet to share their ire. The more things change the more they stay the same etc..
3: It is an up-and-down year for Cork sport. The hurlers beat Kilkenny in a classic final but hopes of a double were dashed when the footballers lost to unfancied Meath. There is League of Ireland heartache for Cork City as they finished second to St Patrick’s Athletic.
4: The era of Prestige TV was born with the first season of The Sopranos.
5: Irish artists chart highly through 1999, with Westlife’s Swear It Again and Ronan Keating’s When You Say Nothing At All enjoying heavy airplay.
6: An era ended as Gay Byrne steps down from hosting the Late Late Show after 37 years in May 1999.
7: Ireland’s difficult reckoning with its past continued as Mary Raftery’s States of Fear film, about institutional abuse, airs.
8 : Former Taoiseach and All Ireland winner Jack Lynch passes away aged 82.
9: An obscure St Petersburg functional named Vladimir Putin is named acting President of Russia.
10: Books published in 1999 include Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban by JK Rowling, The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky and Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson.
