An Interview with Lisa O’Neill (at Cambridge Folk Festival)

Lisa O’Neill is a name you may well already be familiar with. Whether you’ve been with her since 2009’s debut Has An Album or whether she’s only just come to your attention a decade on, one thing is for certain: once you’ve heard that voice of conviction, it doesn’t leave you. The County Cavan songwriter is a singular, bracing talent.

When we talk she’s evidentially taken aback by her recent nominations for ‘Folk Singer of the Year’ and ‘Album of the Year’ at the BBC Folk Awards, as a fan they hardly come as a surprise. Her slot at 2019’s Cambridge Folk Festival wasn’t just one of the weekend’s best, it remains one of the most captivating live performances I’ve witnessed in memory.

On record and in person, there’s an incredible intensity to O’Neill, steered by an open-eyed inquisitiveness. During our interview, she’s exact and careful to make sure both her answers and my questions, are properly understood. Her 2018 River Lea debut, Heard A Long Gone Song is a work of such remarkable depth that speaking honestly, I’m still only just getting my head around it. The brief glimpse that I got into O’Neill’s world certainly left me with a lot to reflect on.

So last time you were here was 2016 right?

That’s right, just after our third album.

Folk Radio last caught up with you in November 2018 and you’d yet to tour ‘Heard A Long Gone Song’. How have you been faring since then and how has the reception been? Obviously, you’ve had these award nominations.

It’s been a really good reception. We have noticed the difference this time, particularly in the UK. There are bigger audiences coming to see us and you have to realise this is an audience of strangers for us as well. Why should they come? How should they know? I’ve been coming over to the UK for the past eight or nine years. It’s been a very slow process and slowly it’s been gathering. But with this album, it was a significant difference.

Previously, of course, you self-released records and now you’re signed to River Lea

I think with the exposure of releasing with River Lea and officially signing to a label in the UK – we’ve had good reviews as well – all together it’s been great and it’s been busy.

And you’ve been nominated for four awards with the BBC Folk Awards!

Yeah, it’s nuts!

I know at one point you’d spoken about having reservations about award ceremonies because of the competitive aspect of them

Well, more that I think, I don’t consider it when I’m making music, when I’m writing a record. Of course, I’ve attended those awards because my friends have been nominated and I’ve had the feeling, you know it would be really nice someday to be recognised somehow amongst this award affair. So it feels great.

Everybody that you’d be up against, I believe everybody made the album they wanted to make. So mine is as good as it can get for me, and John Joe next door, he made the album he wanted to make. The competitive side of things, it’s very important not to take it to seriously and to take the good news with a pinch of salt, as much as you take the bad news with a pinch of salt.

It’s very exciting. It’s a lovely feeling to have my work and the work with these great musicians I’ve been writing with recognised. Again, I can’t stress enough, what a lift and a compliment it is to be recognised outside our own country.

And of course, Heard A Long Gone Song is the grand debut for River Lea as well

Certainly not the first for Geoff Travis!

When Kathryn Tickell recently spoke to you for Music Planet she mentioned that there seemed to be a sort of through-line in regards to the releases on the River Lea rostra so far. That there felt like an authenticity across the releases. Is this something that stands out or you recognise?

I’ve yet to listen to Brìghde, I haven’t seen her live. But Ye Vagabonds, Brían and Diarmuid are good friends of mine. We’ve all been in and around the same scene for the past four or five years. I trust that the heads at River Lea records have chosen and feel that there’s a common thread around the records. We’re all tapping into old traditions.

With Heard A Long Gone Song they were keen for it to be presented as half originals, half traditional. It’s interesting how the lines blur between the introspection of your own songs and the traditional material here. In the past, you’ve cited influences such as Nick Cave and Bonnie Prince Billy, who explore this darker side of songwriting.

In terms of songwriting, they’re extremely strong songwriters. They write songs that I think will definitely weave themselves into tradition as well because they’re writing about their observations of the present day. I hold them very highly as writers.

When I listen to – and don’t get me wrong they’re nothing like each other – so I’m not putting them into the same place at all, but when I listen to Nick Cave, I’m gone. Transported like. And he achieves that with his listener and that is a gift to me. I like to go to that place. I also like to go to that place with Dark Side Of The Moon, Pink Floyd’s album and Kate Bush’s work as well. The traditional songs are just another wonderful area of music, to which I like to be transported again.

I recently caught Nick Cave touring his ‘Conversations with’ series, where he opened up to questions from the audience and it was amazing seeing how humble and open he was. He said it brought back the fear to live performance for him.

And brave! You don’t know what they’re going to ask. I’m sure that gave him a lot of edge. Plus you’re always going to get the odd person in an audience like that wants to be up onstage. Then their question is going to be outrageous for the sake of being outrageous. And for him to challenge himself like that is very impressive.

‘Heard A Long Gone Song” included “Along The North Strand”, which you heard sung by Kitty Cassidy and you’ve been likened to Margaret Barry in the past. Do you feel an affinity towards travelling singers?

Margaret Barry wasn’t a traveller, that’s a misconception. She released an album and they called it Queen of the Gypsies and far as I know, that was a move that the record label pulled at the time and she regretted that. Not that she would be ashamed if she was a traveller, but it’s good to be correct isn’t it? She spent a lot of time with the travelling people. If we’re going to talk about the travelling community, their songs are so rich. They’re carrying songs that rest of us are not carrying. It’s a different culture again and I hold them really high too.

But then Margaret Barry, she was moving in and out of all different worlds. Barry’s grandmother was a Spanish woman, a guitar player and singer, her Grandfather was a very famous Irish piper. They were all composers. I feel very strongly about her. I’ve listened to a lot of her music and a lot of her interviews. I hold her very dear. I dream about her sometimes and once in a dream she somehow told me, “We are two different people”. I woke up and said, “Thanks Margaret for reminding me” It’s important to remember we are individual and not to become our influences.

Ah, I suppose in interviews as well that can happen a lot as well, you get someone trying to pinpoint you for easy categorisation…

Because they’re lazy!

I know in the past you’ve mentioned blocking out TV and generally limiting your exposure to technology. Do you feel you have to put yourself in this space – removed from distractions – with time to daydream?

It’s funny you ask me now. That was a very natural way for me all the years, until recently I bought a smartphone a couple of months ago and I moved into this place where there was a big television and all this change happened for me at once. And now is the time where I realise that I need to keep my eye on that. The dreaming is very important. The dreaming doesn’t happen if we’re not gathering.

I need to continue to investigate my interests. Read a lot, listen to new music or else my dreams will be made up of maybe the same stuff, that’s not what I go for. You need to continue to stimulate the imagination and the television, the phone; screens are not good for that. They’re hypnotic. I’m worried about them; they are not a good thing. For now, for me – it’s a social experiment. But as I say that, I’m addicted like the rest. I don’t like it because the change is abrupt. I’m going to make a small change, next week I’m gonna buy an alarm clock, so the phone doesn’t come into the room with me. Because it just feels like my mind doesn’t separate from the rest of the world and it used to so naturally.

You’ve said onstage and during interviews you want to be understood, is songwriting an effort for you to find a sense of clarity?

Of course, no one understands everything. I think that I definitely get a drive from my questioning, there’s a drive there. We’ve all got questions. I’m more likely to write about something that I’m frustrated about, than something I’ve sussed and understand. That would be merry and it’s sorted, I don’t go there, I get it.

The record’s title is taken from Shane MacGowen’s ‘Lullaby of London’ – this “Long gone song, from days gone by, blown in on the great North wind” – is this the same ancient music or feeling that you sensed on songs like Bobby D, when you spoke about hearing Dylan for the first time. Are you trying to get down to that essence?

It’s quite nostalgic those lyrics, “Heard a long gone song, from days gone by, blown in on the great North Wind” What I get from that as a songwriter is you can be out for a walk and you can get a sense of a couple of notes in the wind. And I imagine Shane taking a walk down the Thames in this situation – if I get a chance to ask him someday, I will, but I haven’t got that close to him yet – but yeah, I picture the young lad walking along the river and it does happen to poetic and musical people, a few notes come in a row and it reminds you of something. It reminds him of music from the past and when he’s writing his own piece. Ah, I can’t say it’s only speculation. He’s amazing.