Never miss a beat
Evan Walsh is just 25 but has played Electric Picnic almost a dozen times already.
Evan Walsh former Strypes and Zen Arcade drummer, now of The Savage Hearts, appears wise beyond his years. Battle hardened by a music industry that so often writes its own history, Evan is determined and as ambitious as ever to dictate his own narrative.
When Evan sets up his Ludwig Keystone kit at this year’s Electric Picnic (September 2-4), it will be at least the tenth time the 25 year old has played the famed Stradbally arts and music festival.
It’s an extraordinary achievement. As a fresh-faced 15-year-old riding a wave of excitement to become one of Ireland’s biggest musical exports, he and his bandmates were invited to play two and even three times a day, attracting huge audiences.
The announcement The Zen Arcade, which superceded The Strypes after they broke up, had also now split, was shared earlier this month. The social media message was succinct and to the point: ‘Hello folks, we’ve decided to break up. Thanks for listening, watching, reading and caring’.
The writing had been on the wall for a “number of months”, admits Evan.
Despite best efforts to design a lasting identity, signing to faux record label ‘Dental Records’, or championing their efforts via a DIY fanzine and popular podcast, Zen couldn’t shake the uncomfortable “lockdown era project” feeling.
For a group of musicians in their early to mid-20s it was hard not to be frustrated by the pandemic. Each new apocalyptic health warning may as well have been written as ‘what could have been’.
“The function changed [because of Covid] from being a much more straight forward follow up to The Strypes where we’d do gigs, go the conventional route, to instead doing spin-off things. We’d record singles, but even our gigs were live-streams.”
Had Covid not occurred, would the band have moved in a different direction? “Maybe the focus would have been different;” guesses Evan. “It was only really last year that we actually got out and did some live stuff, played the Netherlands, gigged around Ireland. But Covid changed the landscape so dramatically that I think once life resumed, and I don’t want to speak for anyone else here, but things got really busy and you’ve this group of people and maybe not everyone’s lives are moving in the same direction anymore.”
At Zen Arcade’s height there were plans for an album. It remains a possibility, but for now such musings are filed away under ‘For Another Day’.
“It’s not out of the question, but for now I think it’s too complicated. There’s a lot of material and ideas in there that might see the light of day in other life-forms, just not in the confines it once was,” says Evan, whose focus has always been on the live performance element.
The Savage Hearts is therefore an immediate departure from what he’s done before, and pairs Evan (drums) with Danny Gallagher (lead vox/guitar); Brandon Carrig, guitarist with Emily 7; and ex-Mirror Talk bassist Ben Spelman.
“I knew them from the various bands and just playing around,” he says of his new bandmates. “I’d be chatting to them independently and it just sort of happened from there, lads up for a jam. I’d been writing songs in the background as well, not knowing if they’d end up as Zen Arcade or whatever.”
With Blessfest on the horizon, Evan pulled the band together, gave it a name, and wrote up a setlist, all in double quick time.
“It was that classic setlist, a couple of originals and then a few easy garage rock tunes. We could’ve sat around for six months practising and done nothing, but I was ‘let’s make it happen. Let’s do this thing in two and a half weeks. Let’s whip this into shape’.”
For influence Evan looks to contemporary punk and psyche rock acts like Australia’s King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard, or any number of acts to emerge from American West Coast, like California’s Ty Segall.
“I think they’re the most inventive bands going at the moment,” Evan gushes of King Gizzard, whose prolificacy for releasing records is only matched by their avant-garde approach that veers from recording in quarter tone tuning to releasing an entire album under an open source licence for anyone to use. “If I could sum up what I love about how they sound is that they sound like Hawkwind covering Dr Feelgood.”
A self-confessed superfan of Ty Segall too, he adds: “That whole combing garage rock, punky sensibility, that’s what I’m attracted too. There’d be a big influence from Roy Wood from the Move, quite classic influences but with a slight bit of mind-bending in the process.”
Between The Strypes and Zen Arcade, Evan broadened his horizons playing with a host of other acts, from Classic Yellow to Lilac, recently renamed Spear Side. However, he’s now happy to centre himself with The Savage Hearts.
“It was very much a pre-Covid thing hopping from band to band, that craic, but [Covid] was very much a time for refocusing. I like being this age, being in the music game we’re all in, yet feeling further on in your head given the experiences I’ve had. Your functional practical attitude towards things certainly takes priority over, let’s say when just starting out, everyone’s so wide-eyed and legless. I might be wide-eyed and legless about lots of other things in life but not this.”
The Savage Hearts agrees that perhaps The Savage Hearts “mean more” because it’s the first time he has formed a band “from scratch”.
Evan meanwhile is working with Joe Keenan and the Cavan Townhall on hosting a song-writing workshop alongside Cavan Big Band’s Daire Reilly and others. It will coincide too with The Savage Hearts EP launch and gig in the Townhall on October 2 (8pm), with tickets available from the venue website (€5 plus booking fee).
“It’ll be good to play locally again,” says Evan. “The Blessfest show was a good way to dip our toe into seeing what we actually had and could do live. Hopefully there’ll be more to come following that as well.”