Interview with Oisin Leech – Part 1
by Killian Laher

Ahead of the release of his new album, Killian Laher talked to Oisin about his first solo album release and much more.

On March 8th, Oisin Leech will release his Steve Gunn-produced debut LP Cold Sea on Outside Music & Tremone Records. Recorded in Co. Donegal, in an old sea-facing schoolhouse that Leech and Gunn transformed into a working studio, the album features contributions from M. Ward and Tony Garnier, a long-time member of Bob Dylan’s touring band, alongside Irish folk legend Dónal Lunny, and Róisín McGrory.

Photo Credit – Ellius Grace

No More Workhorse: Was there much music in your house growing up?

Oisin Leech: I was really lucky in that my mum is a beautiful singer.  She’s from Buncrana, Donegal.  Her mum, my grandmother, worked in the Plaza dance hall in Buncrana, a huge capacity old springboard venue.  My granny grew up there and then my mum did for a little bit too. There was a different band every night.  My granny used to make tea for all the showbands.  She was a great piano player.  My childhood memories are constant music in the house, whether it’s my granny in the corner playing piano or my mum singing.  Then on my dad’s side, he’s a great singer and violin player.  Dad’s side are from Galway and all my dad’s brothers and sisters are record collectors with a big love of theatre and film.  I grew up surrounded by music which was really lucky.

NMW: What was the first music that grabbed you growing up?

OL: I studied cello when I was seven and didn’t take to it.  I used to hide behind a tree before cello lessons! The teacher would come out and say, where the hell is Oisin?  I started writing plays when I was eleven, and started entering theatre competitions up in Moville, Donegal.  Then I picked up the guitar.  My cousins in Buncrana again were big Beck fans.  I remember when we were kids, they had a cassette of Mellow Gold.  We used to walk around the beaches of Donegal playing Mellow Gold on the beach through this dictaphone.  We used to try and learn Beck songs, Loser and all those great songs.  I was mad into punk music, I had a punk band called Vermin, I liked Stiff Little Fingers, The Clash. I used to go to punk festivals by myself in England when I was 17. A cassette of Bob Dylan’s Freewheelin’ changed everything when I was 17 or 18, and that opened up the whole world of folk roots and then back to Planxty.  It was a life changing record for me.

NMW: You grew up in Navan, is that right?

OL: I was born in Navan, and my mum and brother were born in Derry.  I lived a little bit in Buncrana, on and off every Christmas, summer holidays.  And then I’ve been lucky to travel.  I’ve lived in Naples, London, Liverpool. I’ve travelled a lot. Then from the age of 19 I started busking.  But Meath was my home.

NMW: How did you get started playing music?

OL: My friends and I used to play around Navan in punk bands and then I went to Dublin, to Trinity and studied theatre and film.  After lectures, I used to go to Grafton Street and busk every day for four years. We were the Fluid Druids.  We had a little Honda generator and we used to power the amps through the generator and that’s where I learned how to perform. I had long hair and we used to play at the top of Grafton Street, stuff like the Specials, the Waterboys.  We got random gigs like we actually backed Neville Staples from the Specials.  From busking, Ska Patrol in Dublin phoned us up and said, lads, Neville Staples needs a band for ten gigs. We went to Spain, and played with him around bull rings. So we got to play Ghost Town with Neville Staples! Those busking years were really formative for me. And we went to Naples, lived in Naples for three years busking and eventually came back to Liverpool, which is where we kind of met the music industry. Yeah, when I was about 23 or 24, I had a band there.  We got signed to Island Records.

Then the Lost Brothers happened.  Seven albums later I made my first solo record, this one.  But playing on the street was a huge thing because it taught me about performance.  I toured up and down the length of England in bands in the back of a transit.  That was kind of our boot camp where we learned our craft.

NMW: On this album, you have collaborated with Steve Gunn, Donal Lunny, M Ward, and others. How did that come about?

OL: I run a folk club in Navan called Joey Procida’s Folk Club, and I’ve been running it for the last five, or six years.  Steve Gunn came and played a folk club, this tiny 80-seater capacity Navan bar called the Lantern. He was amazing.  I’m a huge fan of all his stuff.  I had actually met him in New York when Lost Brothers were recording years previously, so it was great to reconnect with Steve.  Three or four years later, I had written these songs for the folk club. Usually, I get up and introduce the folk club with two songs and say, welcome, everyone, and then the night begins.  I said I should really write original songs.  So I started writing, and after a few months, I kind of discovered that I was creating this new sound world of my own that didn’t feel like Lost Brother songs.  A friend of mine said you should make a record.  I had written about 30 songs and whittled it down to about ten, and I made a list of producers who I might record this with and Steve Gunn was top of the list.  I sent him October Sun and he wrote straight back saying, ‘I’m in. I’ll produce this’.  I was like, holy fuck, good job I messaged Steve first!

We were back and forth about where would we work, and we talked about New York, we talked about Dublin.  I suggested to Steve that, why don’t you come over, we’ll go to Donegal, rent a house. Turn it into a studio so that we feel completely that we can just have fun. We’re not under the pressures of a usual studio, and it’ll be a different vibe. Looser.  He said, ‘I love it’.  Then he said something amazing. He said that his great-grandmother was from Donegal, emigrated to Philadelphia and that he always wanted to see Donegal.  So that was kind of the first of a few serendipities that followed the record. So that’s how it came about with Steve.  It was all just actually looking back now.  It flowed.  It was kind of effortless.  And it didn’t rain once when we were in Donegal!  So weird.  Blue skies.  It was July, and we were able to go swimming every day.

My wife found the house where we would work on Airbnb.  It’s near the town of Malin.  A tiny old schoolhouse that faces out over the ocean and everything is made of beautiful panelled wood, so the acoustics were great.  We borrowed and rented equipment.  Brendan Jenkinson gave us all this great equipment, so we threw it on the back of the boot.  We hired a great microphone up in Donegal, this old U87 mic, which Steve Gunn couldn’t believe. This mic, it’s a £10,000 mic we borrowed off this neighbour.  We spent a day setting up the studio to make the record, and we made the record in four days.  We tracked everything. I sang and played everything live. Steve was amazing at getting the sound. The first day I set up in one corner. It was a huge open plan room with this beautiful light coming in, morning light. Steve would be at the kitchen table with his laptop and all this equipment.   We were on the phone to Brendan, ‘how does this work? plug that one in there’.  Steve spent a day getting the levels the way he wanted them, it was fascinating to watch Steve get the balance between the guitar and the vocal.

I actually think that that’s the magic of the record, that Steve was able to get this really beautiful sound through this old mic. Once Steve had gotten the sound, the record just happened.  Everything is first, second or third take. Once I did my part, Steve would play these really beautiful, subtle synth and electric guitar parts.

NMW: Were you listening to other music at that time?

OL: In the build up to making the record, we were sharing a playlist together.  I was sending Steve over early Paul Brady and early Van Morrison.  Steve was sending me Ted Lucas, this singer-songwriter that I’d never heard of before, and this really rare Nina Simone stuff where it’s mainly vocal, a little bit of atmospheric guitar and very minimal production.  We started to have this conversation that, because it’s an ‘Oisin album’, why don’t we really let the songs breathe.  We could have gone all out with drums and brass, but the more we got into the project, we discovered that a lot of our favourite records are really stripped back.  Going back to Bob Dylan’s Freewheeling, it’s mainly voice and guitar.  Then other records by Jackson C. Frank, Nick Drake, Fred Neil…  a lot of those records that we really love are just kind of more capturing a moment than a big production, per se.  Steve was sending me some Link Ray, the 70s stuff where Link Ray is singing, some Brazilian music from the 50s.  We would stick on this playlist in the morning, make some coffee, go for a swim, come back, and we wouldn’t really start tracking till kind of early evening.  We hit this magic moment every night at around 9 where we got most of the record done each night.

The albums I had on in the car while writing these songs were:

Sean O Riada – Port Na bPucai – Previously Unreleased Keyboard Recordings
Sketches Of Spain – Miles Davis
Clouds – Joni Mitchell
Ladies Of The Canyon – Joni Mitchell
New Morning – Bob Dylan
An Ciarrioch Mallaithe – Maire agus Seamus Begley
A Period of Transition – Van Morrison
The Complete Works – Nina Simone

NMW: There is great space in the album.

OL: That was down to Steve’s production. It was a really brave decision for him to say, Oisin, when you go out singing these songs live, it’s going to be you, your guitar, maybe double bass… I’ll be with you on some shows. But essentially that’s your sound.  Steve was loving the sound of the song. When I was writing the songs I went with the songs that felt good to sing.  They felt right.  Even when I play them live now, I’m not crying out for big instrumentation.  These songs seem to work in a lonesome place, stripped back. The guy who mixed the record is a guy called Jimmy Robertson, and he’s amazing. He’s based in north London.  He worked on the last couple of Arctic Monkeys records and Anna Calvi.  I flew to London and we mixed the album underneath a bakery in north London for one week.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.  Oisin plays the Sugar Club on 4th April and Cold Sea is out today (March 8th). 

The interview will continue in Part 2 next week…