Rage against the machine

There is a pigeon on Don Mescall’s new album.

An actual pigeon. All feathers, beak and claws.

Not metaphorical.

It is outside Mescall’s home at Quivvy church near Belturbet while he and long-time collaborator, guitarist James Shannon, were recording the track ‘Northern Star’.

“It was very vocal that day,” Mescall recalls with a laugh.

It’s a small detail, but tells you almost everything you need to know about ‘Trip Around the Sun’, Mescall’s third album and first since 2018’s Lighthouse Keeper, due out the first week of October.

At a time when an AI prompt can generate a song in seconds, algorithms silently code what millions listen to, and streaming services have reduced the value of music to fractions of a cent, Mescall has chosen the inconvenient route.

He wants the human stuff left in.

The learned from mistakes. Cherished memories. Happy accidents. The feeling.

“I’ve realised now at my time of life is, everything is a little story,” he says. “Lives are these stories, and they’re to be enjoyed.”

LIVED EXPERIENCE

Mescall has lived enough lives for several albums worth. The tenth of 11 children raised in a small Limerick hurling parish, he moved to London in his twenties, playing the pubs, opening for Frances Black and Richie Havens, and lived above a pub with members of The Pogues.

But his first album, ‘Innocent Run’, left Mescall with a warning about the machinery of the industry.

Admittedly he was young, newly signed, and “totally unprepared”.

“I ended up looking at the album thinking, ‘Who’s the artist?’”

The killer line is: “Everything they loved about me on the night I was signed was everything they changed about me when I made the album.”

Nearly two decades later, ‘Trip Around the Sun’ is the polar opposite.

“It was an apprenticeship in a lot of ways,” Mescall remembers of those early London years.

Opening slots turned into bigger opportunities. Frances Black heard him and recorded one of his songs.

“That was the beginning,” he says.

Another breakthrough came with ‘Road to Glory’, written while homesick and living in leafy Greenwich.

That memory would return again years later in ‘Sunday Drive’, eventually recorded by American country star Brett Eldredge.

REVELATIONS

Yet ‘Trip Around the Sun’ wasn’t planned.

He laughs again, louder this time, which echoes into the high raftered ceiling, when it’s suggested this was an “unexpected pregnancy”.

Jokes aside. Mescall was going through a difficult period at the time. He is surprisingly open about this, having lived and coped with the blanket of depression for years.

It was one morning, sitting outside again, the dappled apricity breaking through and the bitterness of fresh coffee refreshing his palette, that Mescall had a revelation of sorts.

“The sun was blasting, the birds were singing. The sky was blue. I just thought to myself, ‘Whoa, what have you got to worry about?’ You know what, I’ve got to enjoy this little trip around the sun. It’s a one-way ticket.”

The song which bears the title came quickly.

Others followed.

ALL BUSINESS

The album is full of life’s footnotes: the support of his partner Morah Ryan, the loss of a beloved kitten, an old song he never properly recorded, a French love story, a children’s song.

Mescall’s decision not to put ‘Trip Around the Sun’ on Spotify is no stunt.

He fundamentally objects to the notion. Visibly bristles at the mere suggestion even.

Mescall estimates his songs have generated upwards of 40 million streams for the digital music service.

“Out of all of those 40 million, I haven’t seen €40,” he laments. “The songwriter is the lowest rung on the ladder.”

If there is no song, Mescall argues, there is no music business.

Now comes the AI question.

Mescall isn’t pretending that technology is all rubbish. His recording suite links to the cloud, while much of his daily engagements are online with fellow artists scattered across the globe.

“I’ve heard [some],” he says of AI written songs. “What worries me is some aren’t half bad.”

Mescall meanwhile won’t even use a thesaurus.

“I’ve to allow myself the time for my brain to work in such a way that I can do it on my own.”

If it sounds stubborn. It is.

But there is a story from the making of ‘Trip Around the Sun’ that explains Mescall’s position better than any argument about AI.

HUMAN TOUCH

He was working on the track ‘Sunset of Gold’ with engineer and friend Miguel Bazdragi. Mescall had recorded the vocal and Bazdragi was working away when he decided to add something of his own.

“‘I hope you don’t mind’ he said. ‘I just wrote a string part for the end’.”

Nobody asked him. He simply loved the song.

When Mescall heard it, he was stunned.

Then Bazdragi explained why he’d done it.

“I had to. I had no choice. It just made me do it.”

Mescall smiles.

“That’s the human thing.”

A machine can generate a song about grief. “But It didn’t grieve,” Mescall points out.

It can write about childhood. Yet the computer never sat in the back of a car with 10 brothers and sisters on a Sunday drive smelling the sweet summer breeze with the window wound down or the feel the knock of the Hillman over ruts in the road.

It can imitate a voice too even if doesn’t something to say.

No songwriter. No memory. No accidents. A perfect take. No pigeon outside the church.

Mescall says he appreciates his songwriting gift more now than ever.

“Given by God and the universe,” he says. “And now I’m more careful with it.”

‘Trip Around the Sun’ is available to pre-order online from donmescall.com, and is due for release in early October.