The Hedge Schools – An Interview with Pat Barrett – Part 2
by Killian Laher

At The End of The Winding Day is released on vinyl on April 19th, and can be ordered here. Part 1 of the interview can be found here.

NMW: You had a lot of songs written in advance before you started recording? 

PB: They were all written in advance, apart from the title track.  The title track was an absolute accident.  That just happened. That was the only thing that was actually written in the studio.  The pace and the flow of something we both knew would be the first track. We had to be brave with each other and go, this is the opening track because it’ll make people stop.  People go, what is this? It doesn’t sound like a standard Irish band.

I adore that opening track.  We only ever played it live once, which was in the National Concert Hall, in the John Field room.  We played the album from start to finish.  When Joe went looking for the album, he found an absolute rake of live recordings from when we were rehearsing, which sound absolutely phenomenal., When we played live, Vivienne Long came in, because Kevin couldn’t do it at the time, and then she ended up playing cello on the third record (Magnificent Birds).

We never did much. We did one show, a full band, and that was it.  There’s all sorts of people prodding, going, ‘would you not do it again’?  Even now, the people who are buying the vinyl are going: ‘are there going to be shows around this’?  I don’t know. I’m not going to say no, put it that way. But again, it’s the financials of getting Joe from France, paying Joe, and getting Viv into rehearsals.  I don’t have that money anymore.  Life goes on.

I have a phone call to make to someone next week who’s expressed a bit of interest in bringing it to a festival, as a one-off performance of the entire album in the middle of a weekend festival.  So I don’t know, we’ll wait and see.  The money would have to be there so we can bring Joe over.

NMW:  Do you still like the songs?  Do you play them if you’re doing solo shows? 

PB: I do.  I still love them.  The solo stuff that I’m doing these days, it’s a different kind of beast altogether.  Those songs, the way they sound on the record, it’s very hard to replicate that when I’m just doing it as a solo guitar performance.  I’d certainly need a bit of accompaniment if I was doing anything like that.  I haven’t played them live in quite a while, to be honest.

NMW: Any that you’re particularly fond of? 

PB: I love the whole thing. There’s a song sitting in the middle, Oceans, which is always one for me, because the Oceans was about the family, about my brothers and sister, because we travelled all around the world.  I was the only one who stayed here but John’s in Australia, Dermot’s in Norway and Bernie’s in Porto.  That’s always a huge one for me.  I’ve always loved that.  It meant connection and it meant family for me.

NMW: Tell me about the artwork. 

PB: That’s Ruth Medjber.  The glorious Ruth Medjber. I was working in HMV at the time that record came out.  Ruth was there working part-time to get to photography college. And I’d asked her,

I said I want a tree to be on the front of this record.  Will you take some photographs of trees?  I swear to God, she sent me over a folder one day that must have had about 400 photographs of trees.  The one that I did pick, she was kind of going, ‘Why did you pick that’?  I said, I just love that one.  She took the original photograph of that and it’s still the same. I wasn’t going to revisit artwork just for the sake of it. I’ve always loved it.

NMW: It’ll look well on vinyl. 

PB: They were asking me, do you want coloured vinyl?  I like vinyl like I like coffee: black.  The amount of vinyl that I’ve bought recently, coloured vinyl, green… or purple… I don’t understand that.  I’ve always been a bit of a purist, it’s always been black.  They’re doing a heavy pressing on 180g vinyl, which is heavier than the average 140g.  I’m looking forward to owning it.

NMW: How do you feel about reissues in general? 

PB: I don’t know. It depends on what it is and what you’re getting as an extra. Because with this there’s no extras. It is as it is. But there could have been because Joe had found some recordings. He found three recordings. One of a track that we didn’t put on the album because we just felt it would have been one track too heavy. So it didn’t end up on the record. And then there were recordings of a song called Golden, which is on Magnificent Birds, and Winter Coats, a recording from the Unitarian Church.  I played support to Joe that night.  We will do something with them. We could have put them on the vinyl, but then I said to myself, no, let’s not.  He was on the same side of the fence as well, leave it as it is.

Claddagh Records, their archives, that stuff would interest me.  I did buy Christy Moore’s Prosperous actually.  A remastered version.  It’s beautiful.  It’s great to hear it warmed up again.  Stuff like that would interest me, that’s been really old and sitting in the vaults for a couple of years.  You asked me what would we listen to – we were obsessed with O’Riada, the bellow and harmoniums and organs and stuff.  There’s a religious tone to it.  When we turned on the speakers in the studio, we used to play a piece of music on the speakers every day before we started.  Joe would bring in lots of O’Riada, Gorecki, Talk Talk.

NMW: Anything else going on with you musically? 

PB: No.  I just want to take a break this year.  It’s been a tough couple of years.  I’m not in the headspace to kind of sit and start writing again because I don’t feel the need to do it, if that makes sense.  I’ve started scribbling in terms of a bit of writing, but it’ll be a long time before any of that gets to a point where it looks like it’s finished.  My head occupies a different space these days.  You can be ‘self-centric’ as an artist… and it’s not always about you.

I’m all for spending a year and a half off and just living in a relationship and just growing within that… and not think that I need to put out a record, because I don’t need to.  That’s the thing.  There’s a body of work there: 2 Arrivalists albums, 3 Hedge Schools albums and whatever else, bits and pieces in between.

At The End of The Winding Day is released on vinyl on April 19th and can be ordered here: https://store.dublinvinyl.com/products/hedge-schools-at-the-end-of-a-winding-day