GEMMA Hayes returns to Dolan’s Warehouse on Saturday January 23. She burst onto the music scene with her debut album Night on My Side, which was nominated for the UK’s prestigious Mercury Music Prize. Since then Gemma has been garnering much international recognition, releasing two other albums and touring extensively. She has written songs with Adam Duritz of Counting Crows and Kevin Shields of My Bloody Valentine.
Her music has been featured on a multitude of films and television shows, including Grey’s Anatomy, ER, HBO’s Bored To Death, and Mr. And Mrs Smith. Claire Kelly spoke to Gemma Hayes ahead of the Dolan’s gig. “I am in a studio in the French countryside in the west of the France just demoing and recording and working towards the next album but I haven’t actually started recording yet. For me this is my favourite time within the process of making an album because anything is possible”. Gemma spent Christmas and the New Year at home in Tipperary in front of the fire, “I watched all the Christmas specials, all the soaps, Eastenders and Cororonation Street, I just vegged and I loved it”.
Ticket sales for gigs have been on the decline for several months now and the music industry has been hit by the dreaded recession. “It’s mad because I had heard from a lot of my peers that it’s really tough at the moment to get people to come out to gigs. My expectations were low of the Dublin show in December so I was amazed I had a full house. We sold the show out which was just mind-boggling. We recorded the show and I did a cover of Cloudbusting by Kate Bush and put it up on my website. It’s a Christmas present anyone can download it for free”. This was an experience that she thoroughly enjoyed “It’s funny when I started to sing this song Cloudbusting from her I realised how intense and slightly mad the song is. Your signing about people from the government coming to take this guy away. It’s so not a love song. The great thing about learning a cover is your putting yourself in someone else’s situation and your not singing about yourself all the time. Definitely I can’t be trying to sing about things that happen in my live all the time – my life is not that exciting. It’s good to listen to other music that’s not about that or else to make stuff up. I have watched movies and thought that was really inspiring and wrote a song about the movie but in a way that sounds it’s about me”.
2009 was a hectic year for the singer who moved back to Ireland after living in LA for four years. “When I was ringing in the new year I was glad to have 2009 done because there was a lot of change, moving my world and finding my feet again.”
In the media she comes across as a very private person and has managed to shun the media glare, “that’s a side of the entertainment business that I don’t gravitate towards, I would be so afraid that it would turn nasty. I know myself and I know that I’m a pretty sensible soul, it’s more out of protection really that I just stick to the music. When my album is ready I will go out and promote, do interviews and do all that stuff because it has a purpose but I’m not interested in being on a magazine just for the hell of it. I want attention for my music but not for anything else”. So how did you do this while living in LA? “What’s really funny is that I lived right in the middle of Hollywood. Where I was living was just down from the Hollywood sign in the mountains. What I found in LA was that everybody knows about the public side of Hollywood but there is also a private side where there are regular people who really care about acting and music and are not there to become a star. To look at the celebrity angle from Hollywood made it even more laughable. You realise it’s more fun, it shouldn’t be taken seriously”. Back in the studio, Gemma is more than content to be re-united with David Odlum who she worked with on her previous two albums. “There is a chemistry that just works and if any artist has the luck to find a producer that they blend with really well it’s fantastic, I feel very lucky to find someone that just gets it”. Of the new album she says it will take a new direction, “Imp making a real conscious effort to make an up tempo album. Even my family are like Gemma would you ever play something we can tap our feet too. It’s slightly more electronic, it’s all about rhythm, it’s very upbeat it’s a brand new area for me.
On my first album I toyed with it a little bit, I didn’t know that world and didn’t want to break away too much from Folk. My acoustic guitar has been with me so long it’s moulded into my body. When I’m recording the album I will definitely get some people in, it’s always just fun to have different personalities on it”.
The album Gemma is hoping will be due for release in May giving her the summer to tour it. Her resolutions for 2010 are “to work really hard and stay really positive”.
So what can we expect from the gig? “I’m eager to try out some new songs, it’s so much more fun for me to sing something new but I will also be singing songs from the older albums I have done. It will be a low key affair with an acoustic guitar and some backing tracks”. Gemma Hayes is followed by the The Termight Klub on January 23.
