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Whistle-stop Clare tour for Senekah

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ROCK group Senekah are going on a small tour of Clare this weekend. After playing in Limerick on Thursday night, they will cross the Shannon to play in The Mill Bar at Sixmilebridge on Friday, Kenny’s of Lahinch on Saturday and Brandon’s in Ennis on Sunday night.

Two members of the group are from Clare, drummer Daragh O’Loughlin of Sixmilebridge and guitarist Brendan O’Gorman from Scariff.

They are just about to release a new album, Human Relations, as Daragh told The Clare Champion last week.
“We recorded it in the Bishop’s Palace in Limerick. Noel Hogan from the Cranberries had a lot of recording equipment in there and he offered to produce it for us and Eoin Lewis engineered it. We spent a month in there and settled on 13 songs.”

Asked to define their sound, he said it’s an amalgamation of various different influences. “The four of us have different musical tastes, so I think it’s kind of a blend of that. Edgy guitar is the first thing, I suppose it’s indie rock but there’s definitely a folk element in it. Often, when we do acoustic gigs, you can hear the folk/rock sound standing out a bit. Then, at other gigs, it’s more of a pop/rock sound. As a drummer, I would have been influenced a lot by The Police when I was younger, that kind of style.

“Brendan played in all sorts of bands from jazz to metal and Rob [Hope, vocals] would very much like Tom Waits and that sort of stuff. Yvonne [Conaty, bassist] is very much into new-age bands that you have at the moment like Muse and Hot Chip and all these. I think we have our own sound but it’s probably like an Irish version of the current English indie bands.”

The band formed in Limerick and three of the members had been involved in another group. “Rob and Yvonne went to Mary I, I went to UL and Brendan at one point went to LIT. Myself, Rob and Yvonne were playing in a covers band. It broke up and we ended up starting an original band. We had a couple of songs rehearsed and recorded and a few months later we met Brendan at a house party and it went from there.”

After the release of their first record, Sweeter than Bourbon, they went to America and ended up doing three tours there.

“We did three tours of America, nearly all the States. There were close to 300 different shows, everything from small pubs to a few festivals, it was up and down. We did particularly well in Denver, got a lot of love out there and in North California, so it was pretty cool.”

The experience there and the eight years they have now been together has seen an evolution in their material, Daragh feels. “I think we’ve got a more mature sound now and it’s a little bit more mainstream. It probably came from constant touring and playing and learning the craft of writing songs.”

The group came together at a time when they were all living in striking distance of each other but eight years later, they are all in different positions and it’s more difficult to get time to play together.

“I’m currently living in London. Life drags you all over the place, especially when you’re together as long as we are. It can be hard to keep it going, a lot of work. We’re all living in different places; Yvonne and Rob are in Dublin and Brendan is going between Limerick and Cork. It’s quite hard to keep it all going but we have about 13 or 14 dates in May to help promote the album.”

That album will be released on Friday, May 17 in Dublin and a single will also be released entitled Start Again.

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