Learning To Let Go: Gemma Hayes Interviewed

Gemma Hayes burst onto the music scene in 2002 with her unique brand of indie folk rock on the Mercury Prize nominated debut LP, ‘Night On My Side’. All seemed well for the pioneering artist from County Tipperary in Ireland. Then, during the subsequent promotion of her eagerly awaited sophomore record in 2005, her tour was brutally cut short, midway through, by her record label at the time. Almost twenty years on, Gemma returns with her sixth album ‘Blind Faith’. This follows a ten year gap from her previous release, ‘Bones + Longing’ in 2014.

This decade-long hiatus was a back and forth battle as to whether Gemma would push herself back into the spotlight ever again to the same extent. Then, the pandemic in 2020 was the catalyst for Gemma to move back from London to her native Ireland with her family. Slowly and gently, musical ideas started to dance again in the soul of Gemma Hayes in her new home of Baltimore on Ireland’s west coast. Now, on the cusp of her new album release, Lee Campbell caught up with Gemma in Dublin’s Liberties district on the banks of the River Liffey to get an insight to this fascinating journey.

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I want to rewind back to your 2005 second album, ‘The Roads Don’t Love You’. I remember seeing you on that tour at The Limelight in Belfast. Does that feel like a lifetime ago?

GH: It does, and I feel that album never got its fair shot. The first album was a big hey-hoo and you only have one debut. Then there’s the difficult second album. You don’t know what you’re doing on the first album – you’re just following your gut. If the first album does well, then they want you to repeat. But, I took some time out after the first album, so that second album was hard fought. I was living in LA and as you say, it was a different life. I was buzzing with that album and then I had to come off the road halfway through promoting it because they just pulled everything. I fulfilled the gigs that were in the diary but they wouldn’t book any more. They shelved the album and stopped producing it.

Your new album, ‘Blind Faith’ is your first in 10 years since Bones + Longing. What’s it been like playing live again?

GH: It started off as terrifying. I wouldn’t be a natural entertainer. I think that’s a totally different gift to have. I have to work at it. I love the music part, I love recording. Stepping forward onstage is hard, but once you do it regularly and you have a good band around you, then I lean back on them. I started gigging even before the album was properly recorded, and it’s taken me up until now to really find my feet live. But, I think I’ve found it, and I have a killer band – all new Dublin lads with the incredible Éna [Brennan] as the fiddle player. It adds a whole new flavour.

Will the cello be coming on tour?

GH: No, I had notions [breathes out deeply]. I can’t play the cello without it being heavily edited afterwards [laughs]. I wouldn’t inflict my cello playing on people, not yet anyways, I have a lot of work to do. It’s a beautiful instrument – one note tells a whole story.

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Were you ever tempted to stop making music, commercially ever again? 

GH: I thought it was and then I thought it wasn’t on the cards to make a new album. I put out ‘Bones + Longing’ ten years ago and I had a little baby at the time. I had never had a baby before so I thought I could just throw him on my back and head off touring. Then I realised that it’s just not possible. So I stopped, thinking I would just get back to it eventually, but then as the years went by, I thought it was gone, that life has gone, especially when the second child came along.

How did that feel?

GH: I felt very sad, because I didn’t realise how much it fed into me as a person. It actually gave me a little bit of oxygen that I didn’t realise. It was only over the years that I started to feel quite down actually. I was in love with my kids and all that, and that was great, but there was nothing left for myself, so I thought it was gone. I didn’t like that idea.

What kept you going – was there a moment?

GH: I was watching some peers of mine on the telly, such as Damien Rice, Paul Noonan and Lisa Hannigan. Seeing them do their thing, and that buzz; [Whispers] – oh I know that feeling and it’s brilliant. There’s nothing like it in the world. It was like some coals being thrown on the embers.

I love the artwork for the album cover – how did that take shape?

GH: The previous album had this lone figure in this expansive landscape. I wanted to find something that was connected to it, but different. I knew the album would be called ‘Blind Faith’ halfway through recording when I started to see a connection in what I was writing about. It was just me accepting the fact that I can’t get my head around life, or what it’s about, and it’s so weird that there’s an end to it. If it’s going to end, what’s the whole point of it? With my kids, how can I guarantee that I can be there until they have got grey hair? I feel really uneasy about all of this. Why does religion exist – do people need that security? Is there a power behind it, even if God isn’t real? It’s also about leaning into the music and letting go, free falling.

I was on Pintrest and I saw that picture, so I contacted the artist [Dirk Wüstenhagen]. I thought it would cost about five million pounds to use it. So I emailed and said, “Here’s a snippet of my music and I would love to use it”. He came back and said, “yeah, use it”. It was exactly what I was looking for.

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How’s life in the west of Ireland? Did it shape the sound much on the new record?

GH: I’d say so, maybe not directly. There’s just such a sense of space [on the record], and I think that we are a reflection of our environment. There’s an expanse on some of the songs. There’s a taking your time in the countryside. We call it west Cork time. Don’t worry about being late, you’re in west Cork. Even starting the album with this very lazy, reverby song, it was me saying, “sit back, I’m not gonna be hitting you over the head with the songs just yet. Stick with it.” Actually when I think about it just now, there’s so much reference to water and waves. I look out my window and I see the water. I tend to walk to the sea with my dog every day [a cockapoo called Red].

Who were your biggest influences growing up in terms of musicians?

GH: I was mad about Michael Jackson. I loved the one-hit wonders. Even to this day I love Michael McDonald, The Doobie Brothers, Don Henley’s ‘Boys of Summer’. I loved them as a kid. I could sense that I had been transported through the music.

First album you bought?

GH: This was pre-teen, before the hormones kicked in – it was Bobby Brown – ‘Don’t be Cruel’. In terms of females, Tina Turner, Whitney Houston, Pat Benatar. Stevie Nicks was massive!

Would you be keen on your own kids taking the same musical path?

GH: I’d be delighted. I was only thinking about this recently. It’s a pain in the arse to be a creative person because you can’t not be. It doesn’t stop. But, if you shut yourself off from those thoughts & ideas, you become a shell. If you have the inclination to do it, you really have to do it in order to stay sane I think. Music has brought everything good that’s in my life – the friends, the connections, the adventures, it’s incredible. So, if my kids decided to go down  the creative path, I would be like “yes!”

You play the wonderful Union Chapel in London on September 28th – played there before?

GH: I have. It’s beautiful. I am already tweaking the set list to make the most of the acoustics. You don’t need to hit people over the head with your music in that space.

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What do you miss most about London?

GH: It’s very progressive. You’re always doing things and you get caught up in that energy. It’s very hard to be slovenly in London due to the sense of electricity and buzz. Even on a rainy day there’s just so much you can do. You could live in London for years and still not know it completely.

Best thing about being in Baltimore, Ireland?

GH: I am really enjoying being part of a small community. I like the kind of people who decided to move there, and the people who are from there. Sometimes you get the ‘us and them’, but not there, because I think we need each other and it brings people together. In order to make a place work that is seasonal, everyone has to be involved. The blow-ins and the people that have been there for centuries, have to work together, although it can take generations before you are considered not to be a blow-in [both laugh].

I want to pick out a few songs from the new album; firstly ‘Another Love’ ft. Paul Noonan. You’ve collaborated with Paul a number of times. Why do you think the musical chemistry is so strong between both of you?

GH: I can only speak from me to him. I just love the tone of his voice. It has such a lovely quality. When I think of a male perspective in the song, I just think about him singing it. It’s very hard to go elsewhere because I will just be trying to get them to sing like Paul. It’s an easy call because he is so accommodating. He’s a lovely fella.

‘Feed the Flames’, with Lisa Hannigan co-writing?

GH: So I had written the song already. She would play me something that she’s working on and I would play her something that I’m working on. Lisa’s now my next door neighbour, she’s over the wall, which is really weird because she lived in Hackney and I lived in Battersea, and we both went down to Baltimore for COVID. We were just musical acquaintances in London and then somehow I am now asking her, “can I get the kids  football out of your garden please?” [both laughing]. She said that she really thought it was a strong song but that the verses could be a little more lively. I was thinking the same to myself. I said, “go for it!”. She came up with this really punchy melody for the verse – brilliant, that’s the missing piece. Now I can actually put it out. Before that it was just an album song.

The actual song came from watching ‘Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf’ with Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton. I was fascinated by the dynamic between them and I started looking online about their life and how they got together. The seed of the song was that and then it went off into imagination land. I love the idea of two people burning down their house and revelling in the flames of it. It was an interesting image in my head.

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‘Return of the Daughters’ – the final track?

GH: That was a bit of an adventurous song. It started off to see if I could write a whole song just playing one chord, There would have to be a lot of movement. There’s harmonium, there’s a glockenspiel that comes in and out, but it’s still just one chord. Then when I sat back, I said, “Oh my God, I need to hear another chord, I’ve changed my mind” [laughs]. So I changed it in one section. The subject matter was a weird one. It was when the Taliban took over Afghanistan and there was the image of the people jumping on the planes. It was horrific, it really affected me. I remember seeing a photograph of the inside of one plane and the majority were men, because they could run faster and get into the plane. I was thinking about all of those women and girls, they can’t get out. Then I had this incredible dream that was like a John Wayne country & western movie when you see all of the native Indians lining up against the horizon of a canyon before they march. In my dream, all these Afghan women were lining up against the silhouette of a mountain and they started charging. Then I woke up. It was such a powerful image. This song became about them coming back and claiming what was theirs. It’s a big subject matter but it doesn’t have to mean that for everyone.

Do you have any musical boxes you would like to tick over the next couple of years?

GH: 100 percent! Now that I’ve turned the tap back on, I am never gonna turn it off again. I would love a three-piece punk band, like pop-punk. Just fun and not precious.I also have a little secret soft spot for electronic music, trancey, chill-out style. I would like to work with someone and maybe do an album of that kind.

Who do you have your eye or ears on in terms of up and coming musicians?

GH: I have just come out of a tunnel, so I am finding artists and they may not be new. That fella Mk.Gee. It sounds a bit like late Joni Mitchell, a little bit like Bon Iver with a band. It’s just bizarre, it’s like a set of demos. It’s rough and ready with some hooky Americana music.

Any new songs already starting to surface?

GH: Always. Once I had done the track listing for this and got the masters back, I was already thinking about one or two country songs that I had written with a kind of waltz rhythm, less abstract and more like the beginning of telling a story, so I’m messing about with that when I really should be doing my punk or techno ideas [laughs].

Anything else you would like to say to CLASH readers?

GH: This album will hopefully find its niche of listeners. I think it’s an honest, quirky album and I think it’s very true. I think any time you do something very true it’s not going to land with everybody because we’re all individuals. I’m really proud of it and really proud of the journey I had to go through to get to the point of making this album.

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Gemma Hayes opens her UK tour on September 25th at Liverpool’s Philharmonic Hall and will appear at the Union Chapel in Islington, London on September 28th.

‘Blind Faith’ is released on September 27th.

Words: Lee Campbell
Main Photo: Rich Gulligan
Inset Photography: Miguel Ruiz, Charlotte (@underthefeather)

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