CPI - Clare People Interactive

In late 2006, Clare People Interactive (CPI), was born. It was one of Ireland's first dedicated podcasting sites, and the first Irish website to offer free audio and video content to accompany article written for the traditional print media.

Over the following four or five years, I recorded and edited well over 100 podcast interviews, mostly with Irish and international musicians and authors. When the site wound down in late 2010, I had accumulated nearly 48 hours worth of audio podcasts, not to mention a handful of video podcasts, scores of online album reviews and hosted Ireland's [and maybe the world's] first podcast festival, Podfest 2007.

CPI was shortlisted for a Golden Spider Award on three separate occasions, twice in conjunction with the main Clare People website and once in its own right. It was also shortlisted for a Digital Media Award and was even nominated for two radio awards [go figure].

This blog is a growing archive of the now defunct CPI site. I am slowly [painstakingly slowly] uploading all these podcast interview to various audio clouds and linking them all here - sometimes also including the text which featured in the original article.

This is slow going. Any of the interviews listed below with active links [that would be the ones with bold blue links] can be listened to right now for free. The rest will come in time. If you spot a particular interview that you are dying to listen to, please drop me a line to andrewhamiltonwork@gmail.com and I'll see can I get it online asap.

Also, if you spot any broken links, or anything that is not as it should be, please do let me know.

Also also, Virgin Records have taken issue with the sample of Air's Sexy Boy which I had been using as the shows intro. So I've recorded an a cappella version to use instead. It's a big goofy but I kinda like it...

Also, also, also, I'm since grown tired of the a cappella version and have gone instead for a little jingle myself and my daughter Claudia recorded - me on guitar and Claudia on the melodica.

Thanks, enjoy the podcasts and please forgive the occasionally dodgy sound quality,

Cheers,

Andy


A

Professor David Acheson

Adam and Darcie

B
Balcony TV

Clive Barnes 

Dave Geraghty of Bell X1

Ken Bruen

The Beautiful South (Dave Rotheray)

Tom Baxter

Bell X1 (Dave Geraghty)

The Blue Nile (Paul Buchanan)

Paul Brady

Breakdown Rambler

Baum

Nell Bryden 

C

Paddy Casey

Carlene Carter

Paddy Casey

Adrian Crowley

Mary Coughlan

CPI Music Awards

The CMC

Cuckoo Savante

Eoin Coughlan

D

Dark Room Notes 

Duke Special (2006)

Duke Special (2007)

Marie Doyle Kennedy

Damien Dempsey

The Dandy Warhols

The Dandy Warhols

Drugzilla

Drugzilla (2009)

Donncha Ó'Dúlaing

Dead Cat Bounce

Cathy Davey (2008)

Cathy Davey (2010)

Dire Straits (John)

David O'Doherty

Director

Delorentos  

E

Joe Echo

F

Mick Flannery

Frank and Walters (Paul) 

The Flaws

Frank and Walters/FIFA Records (Ashley)

Fight Like Apes (Jamie)

Fight Like Apes (MayKay)

Mick Flannery

Fred

Jerry Fish

Froud 

Julie Feeney

G

Gorbachov

Nanci Griffith

Grand Pocket Orchestra

Julian Gough

Julian Gough

Rory Gallagher

Stace Gill

Rory Grubb

Dave Geraghty 

H

Richard Hawley (PULP)

Gemma Hayes

Lisa Hannigan

Lisa Hannigan (2009)

Home (Alan Cooke)

Horslips

David Hope

I

I'm From Barcelona

The Infomatics

Rick, Bruce and Paul Weller

Andy Irvine

J

The Jam (Rick Buckner)

Mark James

The Jimmy Cake (Jurgen)

K

Phil King (Other Voices)

Kila (Rónán)

Dan Kennedy

Jon Kenny

Spider John Koerner

Jinx Lennon

L

Jinx Lennon

Daniel Lanois

Lilac Blue

The Lightning Seeds 

M
Pearse McGloughlin

Erin McKeown

Mundy

Mundy (2009)

Ronan Moloney

Mp3 Hugger

Muggar Dave

Jim McKee

Mumford and Sons

Mumford and Sons

Mail Order Messiahs

Eleanor McEvoy 

Lou McMahon

O

Simon O'Reilly

Declan O'Rourke

Declan O'Rourke (2009)

Maura O'Connell

Ocean Colour Scene

P

Pier 19

Ocean Colour Scene

R

Eddi Reader

Red Stick Ramblers 

RSAG

Fionn Regan 

S

The Stunning

Skazz

Sanzkrit

The Speks (Quince)

Stiff Little Fingers

Seneca

Saw Doctors

Candi Staton 

Spiritualized

Stereo MCs 

Size2Shoes 

The Stunning

T

Sean Tyrrell

Travis (Neil)

Sandi Thom

Teenage Fanclub

U

Unseen Sounds: Aileen

Unseen Sounds: Breakdown Rambler 

Unseen Sounds: Fia Rua 

Unseen Sounds: Kiernan McMullan 

Unseen Sounds: Meadhbh Boyd 

Unseen Sounds: Serious Mischief

Unseen Sounds: Van Diemens  

Stiff Little Fingers

W

Garrett Wall

Walter Mitty & the Realists

The Walls

Y

You're Only Massive

#

28 Costumes

The Teenage Fanclub Podcast

It shouldn’t work but it does. Andrew Hamilton chats to Gerry Love about the multiple-personality-disorder which is Teenage Fanclub.

Gerry Love has seen his share over the last 20 years. From those big- label days, when even Kurt Cobain thought they were the best band in the world, to their more recent endeavours, when the Scottish three-piece-plus-a-drummer began to live less in each other’s pockets and more in each other’s work schedules. That’s why, when he says that the band is still close - and it’s the music and not their personalities that keep them together - you’re inclined to believe him. “If we are touring, if we are in each other’s close proximity for a while then we do share music and talk about what we are into now and things like that. And more often than not it turns out that we are still into the same things. But we don’t really communicate, in some ways, in terms of actual words. If someone just puts down some music, then the rest of us know they are doing okay. We don’t really sit about talking - we talk about football and world events - we don’t really ask each other how we are getting on. But somehow we each know how the rest are getting on [without talking]. It’s sort of a weird, intuitive sort of relationship. Although Norman is living in Canada now, it doesn’t really feel that he is that far away. I live near Raymond and Francis but I probably see them as much as I see Norman. But that’s fine, we all have our own lives now. When we meet up in a place to do what we do, it still feel very natural. I think even the fact that we can still make music and people still like it tells its own story, regardless of whether we go for a pint with each other or something. The fact that we can have a harmonious relationship together in a musical sense is quite a deep feeling," he said.

cpiarchive2010a@gmail.com · #130 The Teenage Fanclub Podcast

The Adrian Crowley Podcast

With a growing reputation and a Choice Music Prize-winning album under his belt, Adrian Crowley is an artist on the rise. Andrew Hamilton chats to the late-bloomer of Irish music.

By the age of 25 most people are packing in their teenage dream. Too old to play for Man United, too lacking in star quality to be an actor, too much of a grown-up to be a rock star. Yet it is at just this age that the world first began to hear the name of Galway musician Adrian Crowley. While Crowley is certainly a late developer from an “industry” point of view, his music and song-writing is something aged and matured over many years. It was a long journey, but one that, according to Crowley, that had to be made. “I think the music brought me there itself. I didn’t start out with too many great expectations of making a career out of it. The way I approached it was that when most people would have been out there looking for gigs I started working on my first album. I took an unusual approach to the whole thing. So, the momentum started growing slowly over a few years so when I finally decided to go full-time it just happened by itself. I wasn’t really a decision that I would try and make a go of it but there was one year when it all just started coming for me and I went with it. I was doing music to satisfy something that I was striving for - I had no idea what people would make of it and I wasn’t trying to sell it to anyone. I think that had an influence on the music that came out on the other end. People are always telling me how unusual my music sounded and different from what they might have heard before.” 

cpiarchive2010a@gmail.com · #128 The Adrian Crowley Podcast

The RSAG Podcast

Andrew Hamilton chats to Jeremy Hickey aka Rarely Seen Above Ground (RSAG) about success from the sidelines and his latest album, Be It Right Or Wrong.

Jeremy Hickey never set out to be a one-off. After learning his trade behind the kit, the Kilkenny drummer plied his skill in small venues around the southern coast of Ireland, learning and experimenting as he went. When a borrowed four-track recording presented him with a window into life as a solo recording artist, a giant light-bulb went off in his brain. He hadn’t got there yet, but with this new discovery - and the new moniker of Rarely Seen Above Ground (RSAG) - he finally knew what road he had to take. When his second album Organic Sampler was short-listed for the Choice Music Prize in 2008, he knew he had almost made it. But despite his success and critical acclaim, there was still a large slice of doubt in his mind. It took 10 long years to get there, but there was still a very real chance that people just wouldn’t get it. “I probably still get a lot of that, I’d say. Definitely. When I started out, everyone thought that it would work. Some people backed away from me going ‘I just don’t know about this’. There was a long, long time when people were very stand- offish. But when it really started to get going and we got happier with the visual side of RSAG, then it changed. The music was always there but the idea of presenting it live was the tricky one. I think after a while people just got used to it - you know, the idea that what I was doing was a little bit different,” he says. 

cpiarchive2010a@gmail.com · #127 The RSAG Podcast

The Walls Podcast

Five years after the release of New Dawn Breaking, The Walls are back with a new strut to their step. Andrew Hamilton chats to Steve Wall about protest songs, fresh plans to conquer America and the problem of being your own worst enemy. 

Somewhere over the Indian Ocean, a book caught hold of Joe Wall. When he had finished, he passed it to his brother Steve and before they touched down in Australia, both had walked The Road with Cormac McCarthy. That book, like every great piece of art, has a way of lingering. Three years later and the shards of The Road began to resurface. Mingled with thought of recession, and the generations of Irish who carried their fire to every corner of the world, an idea sparked at 30,000 feet became the hopeful, up-temp song of the summer. “We went to Australia three years ago to do some support for Crowded House and it was on that long flight that we all read The Road. Joe read it first and then passed it to me and I remember not moving out of my seat until I closed the last page. Joe took that line from the book - the idea of carrying the fire. He must have made a mental note of it and it came over into the song. One thing which is interesting about it is that he has taken the phrase and brought it into the Irish context. The lyrics are about the Irish diaspora post-famine. I don’t know of many other Irish pop songs that namecheck Oliver Cromwell or the people in the coffin ships. So it’s
a bit like Cormac McCarthy’s The Road meets Joseph O’Connor’s Star of the Sea but in a pop song - that’s the best way I can describe it," said Steve.

cpiarchive2010a@gmail.com · #126 The Walls Podcast

The Ocean Colour Scene Podcast

There was a time when Ocean Colour Scene was the hottest band in the world. Andrew Hamilton talks to frontman Simon Fowler about the new folk revival, being happy on the fringes of Britpop and how being unfashionable has become the key to their success.

Down the years, the sleepy village of Knebworth has become accustomed to a certain amount of action. Sat lazily in the northern end of Hertfordshire, just to the south of Stevenage, Knebworth is a village unremarkable in just about every way. Except, that is, that every so often it plays host to some of the most important concerts ever. It started in ‘79 when Zeppelin came to town; Queen soon followed and then Deep Purple chose it as the venue for their first gig in more than 15 years. But there was no bigger night than August 11, 1996. On that day, Oasis were joined by Ocean Colour Scene for the second in a set of two concerts that would re-write history. Close on 400,000 people saw Ocean Colour Scene perform live over those two balmy evenings, but more - 2.6 million more to be exact - requested tickets for what has since been recognised as the largest free concert ever to take place. But that was just the start for Ocean Colour Scene. Eight months later, their third album Marchin’ Already would push their mentors Oasis off the top of the album chart, making them, for a while at least, the top dogs of Brit pop. Yet despite the massive help that it gave his band, Britpop was never something that sat easily with Simon Fowler. “I think Oasis changed the perception of what popular music really was at that time. We had been doing the same kind of thing for years and then suddenly they come along and say that, actually, they do like The Beatles and they don’t have to make excuses for it. So we would have been in their camp and in Paul Weller’s camp but really I would have seen Britpop as more about Blur and Pulp and the NME, and we weren’t really linked with that. We certainly weren’t welcome in the NME club,” he says.

cpiarchive2010a@gmail.com · #125 The Ocean Colour Scene Podcast

The Cathy Davey Podcast [2010]

After releasing one of the Irish albums of the decade, no one expected Cathy Davey to be dropped by her record label. Ahead of the release of her third and most implicitly personal album ever, she spoke to Andrew Hamilton about getting over her musical embarrassment and being forced to really sing for her supper.

The gloves have finally come off. After eight years of writing very personal yet heavy veiled music, Cathy Davey has found a way to be herself. While the confidence garnered from the success of Tales of Silversleeve was certainly a help in this new awakening, more important was her new method, or even the concept, behind the making of this album. Make no mistake, Cathy Davey’s third album, The Nameless - due for release this week - is a concept album. While concept albums have often been used as a means for the artist to take an alternative look at the world, the journey of this record is one of self-discovery, of finding a way of describing what in the past has remained, well, nameless. “I think I’ve always been personal [as a songwriter] but I probably didn’t have as much experience. Interesting things happen as you get older and it would be a shame not to be as candid as you can be. With this record, I was able to get past my own censorship because of the theme of ‘The Nameless’ which I had running through it. The Nameless is the woman in these songs and she is always an exaggerated version of me. So whatever I was going through, I was able to multiply it by 10 in order to go along with her story,” she says. 

cpiarchive2010a@gmail.com · #124 The Cathy Davey Podcast