INSIDE STORY: 'I'm really writing for me here'

INSIDE STORY On the release of her eagerly awaited third album ‘Pothole in the Sky’, Ballyhaise folk singer LISA O’NEILL speaks to DAMIAN MCCARNEY about skydiving, mice dreams, meeting Peggy Seeger and having her dad make a cameo appearance on her record.

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The gentle tumble of strings, and meloncholic harmonium speaks of lost love, while the skipping of the double bass offers hope, encouragement to persevere. Then there’s that voice - at times vulnerable, winsome, others defiant, always her own. It casts spells. Half-embarassed I confess to have been really moved by the mood created by the title track of Lisa O’Neill’s latest album, ‘Pothole in the Sky’.
I’m not alone in being moved by her music. She says that it happens “from time to time” that unknown faces come up at gigs and remark of how her songs have struck them. It must be surreal to pen these songs alone in a room only to have them embraced by total strangers. 
Lisa first acknowledges her “wonderful band” and producer to “help me get the songs to that point”, and adds:
“It is surreal for people to come up and talk to me about them, but there is a difference, and I recognise the difference, in me sitting alone in my room intimately writing a private piece - there’s also my choice to put it on a record and put it out there. And I know what I’m doing when I put it out there - I want it to reach people. When they do approach me, it’s a wonderful thing, and it makes a song mean more. It is what it is to me, but people have their own ideas what it means to them, and that extends its strength, doesn’t it?”
She doesn’t wonder over what compels people to share this news with her. 
“I have done it - I’ve told people when I feel moved by their music, because it’s just expression isn’t it - it’s excitement. And they’re all individuals as well, so I can’t generalise. I’m always surprised, and it’s always a lovely feeling.”
However, what the listener takes from her songs may not equate with what Lisa has invested in it.
“I’m keeping some things to myself; I’m trying to reserve a bit of grace,” she says.
Proving the point, I’m way off the mark when I guess Pothole in the Sky is about a girl who’s fallen for the wrong man. Way, way off the mark!
“It’s about a skydive,” she corrects. “I took a skydive for charity. When I was sitting on the steps of the plane about to jump, I could see this black dot. Through all the white - all I could see was white, I’m 10,000 feet in the sky - there was this very faint black dot. And then off I went tumbling. 
“I thought I was dying for about thirty seconds. The freefall is terrifying. And then it changes - you’re flying and then you’re floating - then it was the most beautiful, euphoric feeling I’ve ever had in my life and I went so quickly from thinking it’s the end, to thinking it’s wonderful and it’s not the end. So it’s how things can flip so quickly and this song is very much about the moment.”

Class
Through her participation in the recent ‘Imagining Home’ concerts, as part of the 1916 commemorations at the National Concert Hall, and again this coming Friday at the London at London Southbank Centre/Royal Festival Hall, she has shared a bill with the likes of Paul Brady, Martin Hayes, Andy Irvine and Kevin Rowland. And of course she’s previously worked with David Gray, Glen Hansard and David Kitt - there’s plenty of big names for Lisa to get a buzz from, but she stops short of star struck.
“They are as human as you and I so, but sometimes in these people’s company I be lost in conversation and then I might give a little nip to myself and go: ‘This is really weird - he wrote Come on Eileen!’”
The one who most impressed was folk comrade Peggy Seeger.
“I felt very awestruck then, she was wonderful,” Lisa recalls of Pete Seeger’s sister, who was also married to Ewan MacColl. “Peggy Seeger must be 80 now, and she was touring Ireland with all these amazing instruments I’d never seen before, and in her gig before she played a song she would explain what the instrument is and how to play it, and then she’d play the song - it was like: class!
“She is so talented and so real, and every song had a message. And afterwards she took time and sat down with me and had a drink with me for an hour, and that was just... I was star struck absolutely, and thought this is surreal.”

‘Rawer’
Lisa’s third album sees her further explore an overtly folk sound. David Odlum’s production on this is much more pared back than the more lavish second album Same Cloth Or Not under David Kitt. For example on the achingly beautiful Red Geansai, it’s just Lisa navigating the track with only a baritone ukelele to hand. It could have been dusted down from a centuries’ old song book. Likewise she’s alone for much of the tender Gormlaith’s Grieving. Many have a sepia hue.
It seems that, in the studio set in a 300-year old farmstead in the French country-side, Odlum met his brief in channelling this stark sound - Lisa nails it when she describes it as “rawer”.
“The microphone that I was using most of the time was from the ’40s, also we recorded mostly onto tape. There’s definitely creaks that you can you can hear and those creaks are from the harmonium pedal and we could have taken them out but I liked them.
“We’re going for a real sound. I wanted him to capture me like if you and me were sitting in a room together and I sang you a song. I wanted that intimacy that you get live and in sessions, and that the microphone is so wonderful that it’s invisible.”
Another wonderful touch on this album is the appearance of her father Bud, a former Anglo-Celt proof reader, playing drums on the climax of The Banjo Spell.
“That’s Bud O’Neill,” she says as if announcing him to a phantom audience. “That was very special.
“The time we had over in France... I only have one Dad and he’s a huge part of my life and it meant so much to share that together. To come and see us and join us at work, and for me to see him at work, and then record it - it will be there forever.”

Cinematic
It comes as no surprise when she explains that images come to her when she’s writing. For instance, in the superb Nasty she imagined “a very old cowboy movie”. 
“I do have images when I’m writing. A lot of them extend from memories of things that I have seen, some will come from dreams. As we go in and out and about our day, our mind is like a camera and we’re constantly collecting whether we know it or not. And because my work is very, maybe of a pensive disposition, I’m lucky enough to sit and stare out the window for hours, which I naturally did as a child, but now I know that there’s something to that, and after a couple of hours I start to write - because I’m waiting and seeing, things are coming up for me and I’m building stories. There’s a lot of ingredients involved. And one of those ingredients is my emotional status, and then other ingredients is just what I see, and some of them, they really do come to me in my dreams sometimes, which is completely understandable because that’s the subconscious building.”
Lisa insists she can remember her dreams; the Celt puts her to the test.
“Last night and this morning it was more real to life - I was dreaming about interviews, because that’s very much in my head, and the night before - this is often lately - mice! I dream about mice.
“Somebody told me that dreaming about mice means you’re over thinking the small things.”
Do you like them?
“They’re cute but I don’t want them in the bedroom.”

Peeping out
The promo photo of Lisa above shows her bare shouldered, in profile confidently looking ahead.
“I’m undressed so far as you can see me, and I’m covered up from there down,” she clarifies for the record.
The image seems to echo the intimacy of the album - Lisa O’Neill laid bare. On the cover art of Same Cloth or Not she remains half hidden amongst a golden cloth, whereas now she has fully emerged as if to declare ‘Here I am!’
“I think it’s a progression. Anyone’s career is a progression and you’re right, I was peeping out the last time a little bit and this time I’m coming out a little bit more on many levels - in my writing, in my singing.”
Was it the acclaim from the previous album that encouraged you?
“It helps, I was very happy with that album. It’s a great feeling to make an album that you’re happy with, and not long after you leave the studio the seeds begin to move within again where you’re thinking - I want to go again, what’s the next album going to be like?
“Then it’s life as well - it’s been three years since. I’ve lived since and new experiences and more travel and that all adds to confidence and belief. I’m definitely more sure than I was that this is a career that I think I should be confident to continue to put all my energy into.”
She’s right to be confident given the glowing reviews of ‘Pothole in the Sky’, and she’s done it by remaining true to herself. When the Celt asks about her shunning of a more commercial sound for this album she shoots back: “Commercial sense makes no sense to me anyway.”
Adding: “I’m really writing for me here, you know. And I’m not panicking about getting my music at speed to a bigger audience. I really want things to move organically, which they have been so far in my career.”
Her artistic integrity intact, Lisa has a publishing deal, but despite the wide-spread acclaim of her back catalogue has had to release her albums independently in Ireland. She hopes that a label will take it on in the UK.
The Celt is shocked that she hasn’t a host of suitors, particularly given her last outing won a Choice Music Award nomination.
“It went quite well,” Lisa corrects the Celt. “It’s not commercial music, and I know that - I know that fine well, and I’m okay with that. It’s a very slow road what I’m doing and I’m okay with that as well - that suits me. It suits the pace.”


‘Pothole in the Sky’ is available to buy in music shops and online now. Lisa’s Irish tour brings her to Cavan Townhall on Friday, June 10.