Making our way in music: Three Cork artists on sticking with the thing they love
L-R: Caoilian Sherlock; Niamh Dalton; Mark O'Leary
Caoilian Sherlock is a talented Cork City-based music stalwart, who boasts over a decade of experience playing music and writing songs in various bands. Throughout his tenure, he’s worked a myriad of jobs — potato picker, a Santa Claus, a barman, a sexual health teacher and acting the part of a "moving picture" at a Harry Potter-themed wedding — but today, his whole income comes from music.
“Outside of playing music and recording, I work in production management for concerts and different arts events,” he says. “There are pros and cons to it, though — if you work an outside-of-music job, it would be a relief to get to play. But everything I do is music, so I’m mostly trying to fit it all into a puzzle that doesn’t have enough spaces.”
At school, he fell for music, forming a band with classmates that still records today. “That’s The Shaker Hymn,” he smiles. “We’ve had a number of different names over the years, and we’ve released three albums in total. The fourth one is actually being created at the minute. As well as that, I play with a band called The Tan Jackets, which are like a garage and punk cover band, and I also play in the Two-Time Polka, which is like a gigging machine that’s been around for 30 years. I’m the third singer in it, I think. That’s kind of country, cajun, Americana kind of stuff — and I’m thrilled that country is in vogue, because I’ve been trying to form a country music band for many, many years.”
It’s at this point that Sherlock begins to show me the depths of his kit collection; the growing, delicately placed, piles that take up much of his spare room. “I have a growing array of stuff,” he laughs. “There’s a bouzouki, there’s this omnichord that I got in a secondhand shop, a few guitars… I'm always looking for stuff. I actually only recently felt that I had enough and that I can maybe pull it back. But I've also started getting into recording other bands lately, so the focus has changed onto like, microphones and really technical gear. Covid was actually when I started learning how to use different technologies for a home studio. I've recorded a few sessions and then that got me to buy a few more microphones and stuff like that. But, yeah, I have a forever growing room of new desirables.”
Making an album tends to cost different amounts for different people, but in Sherlock’s case, you’d need the guts of €10,000 to create a decent body of work. “I made my album in 2023 and by the time I had just finished touring, at the start of 2024, I maybe just broke even,” he says. “And that's paying for the music production, the actual duplication of records, PR, and then also the band. And then after you’ve finished that, in order to keep being successful, you kind of have to go full force into creating another album — which is what I tried to do but had to stop because I needed rest.
"It’s easier if you’ve a record company backing you, because all of the jobs can be divided amongst the team and you’re probably putting €100,000 into the project. But if you’re a solo artist doing a DIY job of it, you’re doing the work of ten by yourself.”
Despite this, hope abounds for artists keen to make it on their own, as per Sherlock’s recent discovery. “I’m really interested in this artist Cindy Lee,” he says. “Who is a drag performer whose album — that was self-released — was named by Pitchfork as the number one album of last year. It's only on Bandcamp and on her website. It's become this real DIY success story, and it's making me kind of think about the ways that we are going to put music out there, because there's a lot of questions around Spotify. I don't use Spotify anymore as an aside — I gave up on Spotify the day that they gave Joe Rogan a huge contract.”
For Mark O’Leary, a Cork-born guitarist and composer, shift has astronomically changed in his 55 years. Educated in Douglas, he became a session guitarist at 15, playing everything from speed metal to new wave to blues. “We performed in Sir Henry’s, the Underground and Connolly’s,” says O'Leary. “I’m a southside boy, but, I would travel all over Cork city and suburbs playing in bands.”
Then, he left for America to be educated at the Musicians Institute in Los Angeles, where John Frusciante was an early classmate. “He was an introverted kind of guy,” O’Leary says. “When I heard he got the Chili Peppers gig, I was like… him?!”
After this, O’Leary left for London. He was playing as part of various projects, but the lure of home was always there. “I was also getting phone calls from everyone in Cork saying 'It’s happening — the Seattle Wave has landed here and it’s all taking off'.”
He returned under the guise of a teaching role, keen to ride the Cork Wave he’d heard so much about. Among his first students was a bicycle-riding Cillian Murphy.
“An incredibly determined kid," he recalls of his keen student. "And actually, we were both wearing the same Parka which I think also helped.”
In late 2008, O’Leary decided to move in a new direction musically, working on material in the rock/ambient and post-rock genres. He’s used the same kit throughout, a “generic and malleable one,” which brings him from A to Z.
“I don’t need a lot of pedals, I’m actually kind of a minimalist in terms of instruments,” he says. “I had a Cream Suhr Strat that had been around the world with me, the best guitar I ever played. I used to play lefty so I got rid of it as I play right-handed now. If I could get that guitar right-handed...”
To keep himself going financially, O’Leary relies on a number of things; while he stopped teaching when he began looking after his father, he regularly works on creating soundscapes, recording electronic music and writing music for streaming purposes.
“The record company can hire the dream studio, you’re in there for months living off the fat of the land and barely produce an album. Luckily, I’ve created music on a whim that has gone down brilliantly with my record company. And as I tell everyone: It’s not the best people who make it, it’s the people with the best team. Thankfully, I have a pretty good team.”
- See the Spotify playlist This Is Mark O'Leary: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/37i9dQZF1DZ06evO0QTg8W
Ana Palindrome is a project made up of three Cork-based musicians; multi-instrumentalist, singer and songwriter Niamh Dalton, multi-instrumentalist Sara Leslie, and sound designer, composer and musician Ruairí de Búrca. The project, running since 2022, centres around a fictionalised alias, Ana Palindrome, a character that developed on a whim.
“My brother and I were riffing off drag queen names.” Dalton smiles. “And we kind of thought that Ana was a pretty good alias. So I actually performed under that name by myself first, then we kind of formed as a trio to play up in St Luke’s [Cathedral] alongside Anna Mieke, and we were chuffed with how well it all went together.”
The band has become a mainstay on the Irish small festival circuit since, as well as supporting names such as Oxn and Tandem Felix in 2024. Their influences, they tell me, are varied. “We all come from different types of music, but we probably overlap in what feels a bit more left-leaning and alternative,” de Búrca says. “Our different backgrounds kind of inform the tunes, and that is, say, rock, electronic, strings, folk music… and a few other things, too.”
Only recently were they discussing the the realities of an investment into music. “It’s when you’re packing up a van, or dragging instruments across fields that you actually realise how much you have,” Leslie laughs. “And we were just saying, you could spend €1,000 on an instrument, but then you’re like… I won’t buy the €200 case. That said, you’re always kind of hoping or dreaming of the next purchase,” de Búrca says.
“The fiddle I play with Ana Palindrome kind of wishes it was a viola,” Dalton smiles. “I put viola strings on it and it kind of works, which is kind of the reality of being a DIY artist. Thankfully, here in Cork, we’ve been really lucky in that we have people around us who would lend up an amp or a microphone or whatever, whenever we need it. It’s a really supportive scene and it’s not to be taken for granted.”
“It’s a danger as well though, because if you borrow something from someone and it’s a really good instrument, it’s kind of a blessing and a curse, because you’ve tasted what that’s like now, and then you’ve to go back to your situation. There have been times when I’ve Googled how much certain pieces of equipment cost and been horrified.”
De Búrca finds himself in, what he calls, a “very lucky situation”. “I'm on the Basic Income for the Arts pilot scheme [which provides a basic income payment of €325 a week to 2000 eligible artists in Ireland] which has allowed me, personally, a safety net in terms of, like, being able to take on music in a more full-time capacity and pay rent. That is definitely an outlier as opposed to the norm, I’m very aware.”
“I think it’s also worth saying that for Ana Palindrome, we do everything ourselves,” Dalton says. “And even though our fees have gotten a little bit better, I think it’s good to say that we never really take any money from the project. Whatever we do gets paid, it just goes straight back in. We might have taken under €1,000 each over the past two years, that’s it. And I mean, we’re lucky — we can put money back into the project, but it’s not an earner.”
While their situation has deemed them experts and innovators — “we genuinely record in a wardrobe, with a duvet and sleeping bag over it” — the realities of such circumstances often can lead to overwhelm. “It would be great to be able to plan long-term,” Dalton says. “And like, the Irish economy relies on artists and musicians so much, and yet, we’re often the last to be paid. I like the idea of the UBI [Universal Basic Income] being rolled out again because it’s kind of a recognition of how much time and labour is committed to practising your instrument, upkeep your kit, travelling to gigs… that sort of stuff.”
“Also Spotify changing their model would be really helpful,” de Búrca says. “I think they pay the least to artists of all major streaming services, meaning that if tens of thousands of people stream your music, you still only get pennies. It’s totally exploitative and unsustainable for artists.”
