High hopes for second Seneca album

UP and coming band Seneca, with two of its members from Clare, are gaining significant recognition from the music industry ahead of the recording of their second album this winter.

Seneca is an alternative rock band with Darragh O’Loughlin from Sixmilebridge on drums, Brendan O’Gorman from Scariff on guitar, Yvonne Conatty from Galway on bass guitar and Rob Hope from Mayo on guitar and lead vocals.
Their debut album, Sweeter than Bourbon, produced the single Clarity, which broke into the Ireland Top 20. Seneca’s 2008 American debut was met with positive reviews and spawned a North American tour in 2008.
They have toured the United States three times in two years and have also toured Scandinavia, as well as Ireland.
Reviews have compared lead singer Rob to “Eddie Vedder on his best day”.
Sweeter than Bourbon dealt with Ireland’s social issues including domestic violence, which is evidenced by the lyrics in their single Clarity.
The band cite Jeff Buckley, Tom Waits, Nick Drake, Bjork, The Smashing Pumpkins, and Radiohead as just a few of their many influences.
“We’ve been compared to a number of different bands but we don’t like comparisons. To be honest, the bands that we’ve been compared to are so different from each other and it’s strange that people compare us to such diverse bands,” Brendan comments.
The band came together almost by accident. Rob and Yvonne were in Mary Immaculate College, Limerick doing arts degrees at the same time but not in any of the same classes. However, their paths crossed and they were in another band, Incognito, together. Darragh met them through mutual friends, “at a party, I think”, he recalls, while Brendan met Rob separately, heard him play guitar and asked him to join the band.
Seneca has been together for more than four years now.
Rob began playing music at an early age, when his parents forced him to take piano lessons, which he quit as soon as he was able to convince them it was a waste of money, a decision he regrets today. But he started playing guitar at age 16 and began to write immediately.
Brendan taught himself the guitar as a teenager. “There was music all around me in East Clare, so I literally grew up with music and couldn’t escape doing something with music. My mother was also a good singer and my father sang and played the tin whistle and played the bodhrán,” he adds.
Darragh learned piano for about seven years and admits that it’s a great foundation for all kinds of music. “I taught myself to play the drums as a teenager. I also played music in variety shows that my mother, Dolores, was in. My mother was also an Irish dancer and was very much into music, so it definitely passed on to me,” he says.
Yvonne is a qualified music teacher and the lads describe her as a very natural musician and a bit of an all-rounder.
The band writes all of their own material, with Rob the main man behind the lyrics. “He is a very good songwriter. Mattie Fox, Christy Moore’s manager, said Rob has a great ability to tell a story,” Darragh remarks.
The name Seneca came from Rob, who studied literature in his course. “Seneca was a Roman playwright and philosopher who recorded a lot of the tragedies and was a very interesting character. Rob was interested in him and the name of the band stemmed from that,” Brendan explains.
Sweeter than Bourbon was released in 2008 and they set up a label, West Pole, to bring it out. “The reason behind setting up the label was to focus our minds on where we were going. We don’t have management, apart from ourselves, at the moment. Touring has given us a great opportunity to meet other musicians and people in the industry. We are now getting guidance from a well-established legal firm in the United States. Everyone in that company knows the music industry inside out and they said that they believe in our ability as a band, so we have taken on their services and they have been a huge help to us. Through them our band name has been trademarked in the United States,” Darragh adds.
This year they’ve signed a number of licences. “Our music is going to be used in a fairly significant Hollywood movie called The Truth about Kerry, starring Stania Katiac. A film called Screw Cupid has also just taken on our music. And we also got confirmation this week that Setanta Sports are going to use some of our songs in a documentary about mountaineer Pat Falvey. This is all hugely encouraging for us,” Brendan says.
They have also recently got confirmation from Noel Hogan of The Cranberries that he will produce their next album, which they will start recording in November. Also, Kieran Hope, a relation of Rob’s, is going to score strings for the next album. “Noel included one of our songs on an album called Tonelist, that he brought out about a year ago. He handpicked some up and coming Mid-West bands and featured them on this album,” they add.
The band feel the next album is taking their music a step further. “It will have 10 to 11 songs, all our recent material, which we have not previously released.
“We all believe that the next album will reflect our creativity and commitment to the band. We hope a lot of people will like it.
“The songs we’re including on the album have proven themselves in live gigs and we think they will work on the album. We want to record them fairly raw, with lots of energy, and capture the atmosphere these songs have at gigs on the album,” Darragh remarks.
The band will play in Whelan’s of Dublin on October 28 and in Dolan’s Warehouse in Limerick on October 29. Just last week they played a smaller gig in the Mill Bar in Sixmilebridge and for anyone who missed that, they’re likely to play there again before too long.
Seneca would also like to do a UK and a European tour but it’s difficult, logistically. “We’d need to buy a van, bring equipment with us and it would take considerable funds to pay for such a tour, so it’s not on the cards right now but we’re not ruling it out for the future,” Darragh says.
The band has done small gigs and big gigs, up to maybe 5,000, in the United States.
At the moment they are mainly depending on filling their gigs and getting a lot of downloads of their tracks but even with that, it’s hard to make a living. “We know in many ways that the next album will kind of be make or break for us. We’ve got a good reception in the States and Scandinavia but it’s hard to make it in Ireland, which might sound strange, because a lot of the music industry here revolves around Dublin.
We really are a hardworking band and we are giving this our all. In the past four years we’ve done hundreds of gigs,” Brendan adds.
Last year, 350 radio stations played Seneca’s music, which was hugely encouraging.
“We also got to the top 100 in the US college charts, which isn’t an easy thing to do as we’re competing against all of the labels who seriously push the albums they produce. We also got to number 13 in the US industry charts, ahead of Muse, which amazed us.
We’ve already been booked to do workshops in a number of colleges in the United States. We’ll be going there again next February and to Scandinavia in December,” Darragh explains.
The band are making their way in the world of music, especially outside of Ireland and now they want to get the support of the Mid-West region and Ireland to help launch their career here.
“We’re getting near sell-out gigs almost everywhere we go in Ireland but at some stage to make it here, we’ll have to get into the bigger venues and fill them.
“We’re hoping that the opportunities for that will come after our next album, which all going well, be out by next summer, or even sooner. We’re hoping it will really work for us and that all of our hard work and commitment will pay off,” Darragh adds.