WHEN The Clare Champion called Dermot Sheedy on a Friday morning he was en-route from North Clare to Limerick to ensure the safety of a load of records.
“It’s a chaotic morning. We got delivery of the new album in Limerick so I had to drop everything, get in the car and go to Limerick,” he said.
“Barry is away in the US, his house is the point of contact for everything Hermitage Green and there’s a pallet after arriving in his driveway in Limerick and I’m on the way. Hopefully it doesn’t rain!”
The new album is entitled ‘Connection’ and is being released on September 20.
It is the first offering from the band since ‘Hi Generation’ three years ago, and he says it is a change of direction from what has preceded it.
“We’re very proud of it. It’s a different sounding album. I wouldn’t necessarily say it would be familiar to our fan’s ears,” he said.
“A lot of the structure and the songs wouldn’t be like what they’ve heard from us before but we’re very proud of it and we’ve been gigging it over the last month, touring in the US and Ireland, and we’ve really enjoyed the reaction we’ve got.
“People can expect something different, but different is good.”
The album was recorded over a year and a half and he says there are lots of different themes.
“”We have a guest on it, Gregory David Roberts who opens up the album. He is the man who wrote Shantaram [the acclaimed novel] and he’s a great, dear friend of Dan Murphy in the band.
“It was great to have such a prolific legend and deep thinker as the likes of Gregory to appear.
“It moves through lots of different feelings. It moves through feelings of hurt in relationships, it moves through joyous moments, it moves into fictional characters who have moved into different parts of their lives, who are Dads and just want to get back to having the craic, going to a festival and going wild.
“It also deals with the deaths of times and places and people and grief. It’s kind of reflective of each of the five of us and the period of time between the last album ‘Hi Generation’ and now. What has happened in our personal lives is reflected in the writing.
“There’s probably a lot of gratitude on the album as well. Especially on the first track ‘Younger Days’, Dan was looking back to where we’ve come from and what we’ve done in the last 14 years as a band.”
Now 34, Dermot was only in his early twenties when Hermitage Green began to emerge.
“I had come out of different trad bands, I had a TV show with Donal Lunny and it all happened at the same time, I was playing with different bands and then Hermitage Green were starting to brew in the Limerick cover scene. Slowly, at a 45 degree angle, we started to go from there,” he said.
Dermot now lives in North Clare, where there is an increasingly vibrant local arts scene.
“I’m up in Ennistymon, my girlfriend is Aisling Lyons, she’s a great harper and concertina player,” he said.
“We’ve centred in Ennistymon. There’s a great music scene around there, a lot of artists there, it’s kind of the craic capital of the county.
“There’s plenty of cool stuff happening there, and we live on the Main Street.”
Hermitage Green is still the priority for all the members, but the success it has enjoyed over the years has also allowed the members to follow other interests and avenues.
“We’ve got to a very manageable period of the band,” he said.
“We grew exponentially for a while and now we’ve kind of maintained our level, we have enough to satisfy our creativity and we can all have our own lives outside of the band, at home, with families, and have other creative outlets.
“We’re not on the road completely, all of the time. And sometimes we talk to our peers and they’d be envious of it because we’re not touring all the time. Dan lives in London now, he lectures on songwriting in a university over there. Barry and I have a podcast called Potholes and Penguins, it’s a sport podcast that I produce with Barry and Andrew Trimble.
“I have a lot of session work with other bands and record different people’s albums and tour with different people as well.
“Darragh Graham is a tutor in Cork, he’s an unbelievable music tutor and works with Music Generation Limerick. But the band is our main thing and everything else is around that.”
The pandemic, and the massive disruption that was causing to performers, saw them expand what they do.
“It was hustle time for a lot of musicians who were asking themselves what can I do to keep myself busy that isn’t touring and gigging. We all started to nurture those different parts of ourselves and when we got back gigging afterwards we kept it on. It suits us down to the ground,” he said.
“It maintains our relationship well with each other and the band. Being in a band that stays going and stays successful and stays together, you have to nurture it like you would a marriage.
“You have to listen to each other, you have to respect each other, you have to respect each other’s interests, styles, hunger to do things, all that kind of stuff. It’s about getting all of that right.”
The fourth season of the Potholes and Penguins podcast is about to start, and he really enjoys making it.
“It’s available on Patreon, it’s a humourous comedic deep dive into rugby in Ireland and across the world. It’s fun, it’s light hearted, but obviously Barry and Trimby have great rugby brains,” he said.
“Denis Fogarty also features on it as well, the former Munster and Ireland player.”
He works hard and painstakingly on the production, and really enjoys getting it right.
“I’m a complete audiophile. I hate when people half-ass podcasts, stick them up and it sounds like it was recorded in a toilet.”
It has been a success and it took a while to get it to where it is now.
“We have maintained a good following on Patreon. It’s hard to get going on it, we did it free to air for a good number of years, we had advertisers on, then we went all in on Patreon and it has worked out well,” he said.
“We have a fan base that listens every week. It’s broadcasting on your own terms, it’s gas.”
Coming back to the album, which people will hear for the first time this weekend, he says. “The energy is contemplative. It’s uplifting, it’s good craic and it’s probably cathartic as well. It’s all about the joyous connection we share together.”
Owen Ryan has been a journalist with the Clare Champion since 2007, having previously worked with a number of other publications in Limerick, Cork and Galway. His first book will be published in December 2024.