Collaboration can be a challenging experience for any musician. Allowing other artists access to your darlings, giving them the right to change the things that you’ve built with love, sweat and tears over years, it’s not always the most comfortable place to be.
In many ways, Ennistymon musician Steve Wall, and the rest of The Stunning, were taking a creative gamble when they invited some of Ireland’s most talented performers to take part in a live recording of their music during the Covid lockdown.
But the risk paid off, and with inputs from the likes of Camille O’Sullivan, Niwel Tsumbu, Faye O’Rourke and Zoë Conway, the collaborations were both varied and a little bit special. So special in fact, that the recording has become The Stunning’s latest release, a live album entitled ‘We Come Alive’.
“We wanted to mix it up, so that it wouldn’t be predictable. It was exciting, we didn’t do any rehearsals. All the musicians that we got in touch with asked would there be a rehearsal and we said no. ‘We don’t want a rehearsal, we want your gut reaction to something’, and to go with that,” said Steve.
“We were limited timewise, we had intended in showing a lot more of the rehearsal process but there just wasn’t time. It was brilliant to get these people in and see what they would do. We had never met Faye O’Rourke [Soda Blonde] for example.
“I had seen her singing with Little Green Cars and with Soda Blonde. I saw her on a fantastic tribute to John Lennon with the RTÉ Concert Orchestra and she was amazing. I thought it would be great to work with her and then Covid happened.
“In a way, we would never have been able to get all of those people together for something like this had it not been for Covid. All of these people were available and eager to be involved in something creative.
“It was very off the cuff. We had Niwel Tsumbu for example, he didn’t know The Stunning’s music at all. But I had a feeling that ‘Romeo’s on Fire’ might suit him because it has that atmosphere to it, it almost has a West African or Latino feel to it.
“He absolutely loved it, he said that it was the kind of thing that he would have jammed to back in the Congo. That was the rhythm and the beat that he grew up with, he could have jammed that all day long and not repeated himself. He really enjoyed it.
“I think Máirtín [O’Connor] was the only one who really knew the song because Máirtín played on our first album ‘The Paradice in the Picturehouse’.
“Máirtín had played on ‘Roll and Tumble’ for that album but he had never played on ‘Men Without Souls’. That was something that he came up with on the spot, that beautiful accordion piece. It is a song about the punishment beatings which were going on in Northern Ireland at the time, back in the late 80s.
“There was awful stuff going on, that’s what the song was about, these men of violence and evil. Máirtín put this really chilling accordion on that, it was really beautiful. It was great to get this immediate reaction from people. Everybody’s contributions were fantastic.
“Even apart from playing live, people were thrilled just to meet each other. There had been no gathering like that at that time. When people arrived and there was food and a crew, everyone was delighted to be around other people and doing what they do best. It was a real thrill for all of us I think.”
The seed for ‘We Come Alive’ was an unlikely one, planted by the Government’s well meaning attempts to keep the music industry afloat during the pandemic. When the list of supports were announced, every section of the music industry appeared to be catered for, except the musicians themselves.
“The whole thing came about from the Covid supports which were being given out at the time in the music industry. They were open to venues, promoters and producers. So what was happening was the artists weren’t getting any kind of say in whether they were getting a gig,” said Steve.
“The money was being given to other people who were then choosing the acts. We felt disempowered by this, you would have to sit there and wait to see if a venue or promotor called you to do a show. Then, because of all the different regulations and restrictions, you didn’t even know if the show was going to happen.
“So you might do a show, it might be before 60 people or maybe no people and you would have a live stream. After a year of these live streams, I think people were getting fed up of them. You had people doing concerts from their house, it was too much.
“When they [the Government] came out with a second one of these schemes, it was called the Live Performance Scheme, we looked into it and thought that we could apply to the scheme as producers. We put our proposal to the board and it was accepted for us to produce a show. At the time we didn’t know if the show was going to be in front of a small gathering of people, it [the Covid rules] was changing every few months.
“It seemed like too much of a gamble to put on a live gig and not know whether we’d be able to perform in front of anyone. So we pitched the idea of filming it and making it into a documentary and they said absolutely, as long as we were employing lots of people. That was the whole point, it was all about employment.
“We hired in a big crew. I think we had four camera people, we had a lot of people and we spent every single cent that we got on wages. We ran out of money in the end, but when RTÉ took it off us they gave us a few grand to license it for a few years and that was enough to finish the last few technical elements of the film. We scraped through in the end.
“There were all of these entities apply for money, some of which I had never heard of before. We [the artist] weren’t in a position of strength sitting there hoping that some venue or promotor would come and call us, so the best thing for us was to go and do it ourselves.”
The album is available on all streaming platforms but, for the first time, a record from The Stunning will not be available to purchase in a physical format. Something that Steve is not happy about.
“It is a forced extinction of a format. There are lots of people who would buy a CD but where can you play it?” he said.
“I always loved having CDs in the car. I had a CD wallet in the glovebox. And every so often I would change them all. But you were listening to full albums, it was really nice. I know you can stream full albums but people tend not to, where as if you put a CD on, you have a tendency to let it play all the way through.
“Also, if you are buying a CD, some of the money is going to the artists themselves. It is great for artists to have them there to sell at gigs. That helps with the recording costs and things like that.
“In a way, I am quite resentful to the industry for taking that away from us. It is the tech industry, not the music industry. They are responsible.
“I do feel we have been denied an income. This change has happened and the musicians have had no choice in the matter.”
Away from the music, this year has seen Steve Wall take on a number of high profile acting roles including an appearance in Dune 2 and a major theatre role in John B Keane’s ‘Sive’ in the Gaiety Theatre.
“I really enjoyed it [Sive] but I was terrified. I don’t have any theatre experience except for a few walk-on parts back in the 1980s. I loved the rehearsal process and watching seasoned stage actors like Denis Conway and Norma Sheahan and Fionnula Flanagan, they were just amazing. I learned an awful lot watching them,” he said.
“Then, when we started doing tech rehearsals on the stage in the Gaiety, it was amazing coming in and standing on that stage, it is such a beautiful theatre. Then it was great to get these little tips, Denis Conway was great to give me these little titbits of knowledge.
“I was really terrified by it. It’s a different thing to music. When you are standing there on stage with the band, you have Cormac on the drums who is like a train driver. If you forget a lyric or something like that, the song keeps trundling ahead.
“But it is not like that in the theatre, there are people who need to hear your line in order for the play to move along. I think, at the beginning, I was slightly paranoid. I didn’t know if it was something that I could do. The challenge of it.
“But once we were up and running and through the first week of it, it was great. I enjoyed the focus of trying to make every performance as good as possible. To give every audience member the same kind of experience and level of performance as the people got on opening night.
“There were 56 shows and I wanted to make sure that the people who came to show 50 or 52 got as good a performance as the people who came to the first night. That was a discipline as well, every day.
“We had three matinees each week and to do a full show in the middle of the day and then do it again that evening, and to make sure that each audience got just as good a show.
“I really enjoyed the discipline. I enjoyed the routine as well, being in the theatre an hour before [the show], in the mid-morning and then again in the evening. I really got into the flow of it and really enjoyed it.”
Fresh from his role as Bashar in Dune 2, Steve will take on another major science fiction role later this year when he appears in Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, a prequel to The Game of Thrones.
“I am going to be doing something over the summer which will be filming in Northern Ireland, by George R Martin who wrote Game of Thrones and all of that, it is called Knight of the Seven Kingdoms,” he said.
“In terms of film work, the last two years have been really quiet, right across the board. The industry still hasn’t got back on its feet properly since the writers’ strike. The writers’ strike actually caused a lot more of a backlog than the actors strike, especially coming after Covid.
“An awful lot of projects that were earmarked for production just didn’t happen. Lots of things were put on the back-burner, lots of things just got cancelled because interest waned. It is only just starting to kick back in again.
“Then you have to hope that productions will come to Ireland. Dune was in Europe and The English was in Spain, I do travel for stuff.”
The Stunning have a number of major concerts coming up this year including Forest Fest, Revival Festival and two sold out shows in Kilkenny in December. We Come Alive is currently available on all streaming platforms.
Andrew Hamilton is a journalist, investigative reporter and blogger who has been working in the media in Ireland for the past 20 years. His areas of special interest include the environment, mental health and politics.