Nathan and Jake Carter: New podcast reveals the people behind the country-music superstars

Brothers Nathan and Jake Carter have started a podcast alongside Jake’s partner Karen Byrne. They discuss unfiltered chats with Gemma Fullam

The Carter Couch with Jake Carter, Karen Byrne and Nathan Carter

Nathan Carter is on his way to the airport. Our call drops as he crosses the border, but minutes later, the country music singer is back, taking up the thread without missing a beat. 

Fermanagh-based Carter is used to working on the fly, fitting it in, making it work.

“I probably would describe myself as a workaholic, yeah,” he says (He is currently running four businesses). 

Graft is in the Carter DNA. Thirty-four-year old Nathan is a household name, with 26-year-old brother Jake quickly getting there too. 

There’s no tension between the Liverpudlian siblings though –they’re best buds, and always have been.

“Myself and Nathan were always quite close as brothers; we never really got on each other’s nerves,” Jake, who is already at the airport, tells me. 

The pop singer is all set to fly to Spain to gig at Carter on the Costa, a now annual hooley in the Spanish sun. 

Nathan is the star attraction of a line-up of country-music luminaries that includes Johnny Brady and Lisa McHugh, who Nathan briefly dated a decade ago (they’ve stayed friends and she’s now happily married with two kids).

The Carter brothers will be fitting in a recording of their podcast, The Carter Couch among their gig commitments on the Costa. 

It was, Nathan says, “Jake’s idea”, but Nathan is keen to embrace newness these days, and the podcast, with its refreshingly irreverent banter between himself, Jake and Dancing With the Stars pro Karen Byrne (Jake’s girlfriend of six years), is just one of the ways in which he’s enjoying moving out of his comfort zone. 

The slagging between the trio is merciless but never malicious, with innuendo (“strap on and strap in”) and scatological humour the order of the day (Karen: “they’re full-on thinking I’m having a shite”). 

Nathan is “really happy with it”, pointing out it has charted “just below The Two Johnnies [in the Irish podcast charts] the last two weeks”.

Jake, for his part, wanted “to give people an insight into what we’re like behind the TV cameras or behind the stage.”

“People don’t get to see that side of Nathan, or Karen, a lot. And myself as well. When you’re on stage, you adopt a certain persona… the podcast is relaxed. It’s literally the three of us chatting. It’s nice to have that kind of unfiltered sense to it.”

WATERPROOF JOCKS

Unfiltered is unusual these days; most stars curate their image and their content to the nth degree, which can make for a glossy but anodyne experience. 

Nathan, while obviously media-savvy, remains refreshingly frank, chatting freely about everything from his dislike of school — “I hated every minute… apart from the music lessons” — to his new career direction (more on that anon) to the initial hiccups with his newest venture, Carter Clothing. 

The menswear range, which will largely be sold online, was born out of a casual conversation with a stylist who pointed out the success “Tommy Bowe and people like that” have had in the area. 

“I was like, ‘gee, that’s a really good idea’,” he says, and got the ball rolling. “Between myself and my photographer, Terry… we started designing the range.

“It was a bit of a tricky start because we hired a room in Dublin in a fancy hotel, and invited all the shops to turn up. We invited 25 shops and I think three turned up on the day.”

Going by Carter Clothing’s Instagram page, the aesthetic has the bang of Paul Mescal-cool about it, although, thankfully, boxers-as-shorts don’t feature. 

A promo video for the brand, featuring a naked Nathan in the shower, caught the attention of The Two Johnnies, who called it “very sexy” (it is) and asked, “What the fuck is he sellin’, waterproof jocks?”. To his credit, Carter played the clip on his own podcast – he doesn’t take himself too seriously.

There are Donegal-manufactured knits in “wacky colours”, hoodies, base layers and cargo jackets in ‘quiet luxury’ hues. 

It may be menswear but I can see women buying the Aran knits for themselves, I tell Carter. 

“A lot of the women that I’ve showed [them] to were like, ‘Oh I definitely want one of them’,” Nathan says, admitting he wouldn’t call himself “a fashion person” but he’s “interested in seeing how it goes”.

Jake and Nathan Carter: fashion plates, both.

IRONS IN THE FIRE

Multiple irons in the fire is a Carter thing. Jake, who released his Point of You EP in March, runs a stage school for kids aged three to 16 with Karen, an enterprise which also has under its aegis a dance school (Karen’s) and a music school (Jake’s). 

These are busy people. The stage school has, he says, been “going great” and he thrives on seeing the life skills it nurtures in the kids who “completely come out of themselves,” adding, “it’s great to be able to give back to the younger generation”.

Giving back comes naturally to the brothers and Nathan had no hesitation in saying yes when asked to do an upcoming charity gig in Mallow that will benefit three charities, The Alzheimer Society of Ireland, The Irish Kidney Association, and Breakthrough Cancer Research.

Everyone’s family will likely have been affected by one of the three, I suggest, and Nathan agrees. “Yeah, we’ve had a lot of cancer in our family, unfortunately. Especially breast cancer. When the organisers contacted me and told me about the charities, I was like, I’d love to do the gig.

“I used to perform in Mallow when I started out, in a dance hall called The Hazel Tree. It’s no longer there. When [the organisers] mentioned Mallow, I was like ‘Great memories of gigging down there, I’d love to do another gig’.”

The landscape for artists has changed beyond measure since Carter started out. It’s much tougher now.

“There’s no money left in recording. That’s why everyone has to gig live. [When] I started, we were shifting thousands upon thousands of CDs a year. That’s no longer the case. It’s streams now, which is one-hundredth of the income that we used to get.”

Jake is all too aware of these hard realities and maxes out his diverse skillset to make it work. Jake — who was “lost for words” when he and Ballyfermot native Byrne won series two of DWTS in 2018 — hasn’t stopped dancing with Karen, who, at 32, is six years his senior. 

For the past three years, the duo have run an annual dance retreat in Marbella, although Jake is self-deprecating about his contribution, saying: “I mainly just do the messing and the entertainment.”

BREAK A BIT OF GROUND

The pair’s chemistry is sparklingly evident on the Carter Couch. What’s their secret?

“I think, because we were such good friends before we got together, I think that’s kind of the joy of it. We really enjoy each other’s company and we enjoy slagging each other as well and we give as much as we get, the two of us.”

Jake pushed for the pod to happen, and he’s open to the trio doing more together, cannily aware of the heft of their combined star power.

“Look, if the right opportunity ever came up, I’m sure we would love to do a Keeping Up With The Carters-style show.”

Newness is on the radar right now. Nathan “got a bit of a new lease of life” since he left his manager at the end of last year: “We’ve got a new team together, and all these projects have all come in the meantime.”

“It wasn’t that I was tired of the road and tired of what I was doing,” he says, when I ask if he felt he needed a refresh, “It was getting to a stage where it was the same gigs over and over again and I was like, do you know what, I’m still hopefully young enough to try and have a crack at different markets and try and break a bit of ground.”

He is currently writing songs with Guy Chambers, possibly best known for helping to launch Robbie Williams’ career and co-writing a number of his hits, including ‘Angels’.

“I’ve written a number of songs with him over the last six months and I’m hoping to start recording a new album at the end of this year”, Nathan says. 

“[Chambers] loves country the same way I do, so it probably won’t be that far from what we’ve been doing in the past. But I’d like to think it will be a lot fresher.”

• Nathan Carter will take to the stage in The Marquee at The Arches in Mallow, Co Cork, on October 25, for a major fundraising concert. 
• Tickets, €30 plus booking fee, can be purchased on eventbrite, at Kiely’s Garage, Mallow and on nathancartermusic.com.