By GRAHAM REID
Paddy Casey is in a Dublin street outside a friend's party. Not the ideal place from which to do a phone interview, but appropriate for someone who spent some of his early years busking in his home town.
He's laughing about doing this gig on a cellphone because the power has been cut off at his house.
"I refused to pay my electricity bill," he deadpans. "Actually I didn't. You see, I never spend a penny in my life so I was stealing it from someone else's electricity box. Actually no, I wasn't that either."
Casey is in a good mood, as well he might be. His excellent debut album Amen (So Be It) went top 20 in the Irish album charts, earned him best album at the Irish World awards and nominations for best Irish songwriter and best male singer at the Hot Press awards.
It's also selling well and it's largely profit because Amen, which has turntable scratching propping up its hard-edge folksiness, was done on the cheap.
"It wasn't actually meant to be an album. It was more just demos to see if the record company wanted to sign me, and then they said they'd release just that."
You can hear why a record company would be enthusiastic about these tough-minded tracks which have addictive pop hooks and even a touch of funk.
Equally acclaimed by folk magazines and the rock press ("a gifted artist," according to the NME; "world domination is just around the corner," said Melody Maker), Casey's debut was also hailed as "coherent despite its diversity ... an exceptional, uncategorisable album" in these pages recently. It's had him voted most promising act and the album best debut in Ireland's Hot Press reader's poll. He was nominated in seven other categories.
"Yeah it's sold well, but I was hoping that it would do better, actually," he laughs. "I was hoping to outsell Britney Spears by about 10 times over."
The success of Amen was in part a result of his upturning expectation by taking the folk-framed songs and using a DJ, embellishing with samples or straight-ahead rock manoeuvres.
"I was more surprised there was so much acoustic guitar on it, but because we were making demos, I'd lash down the acoustic. It's not a bad album, I just wanted to play with different things and have fun. There'll be more beats on the next one."
Casey is recording again ("I've done about five with a DJ") and admits to briefly feeling some trepidation after the success of his debut.
"I haven't a clue what I'm doing. I have a load of songs already recorded but when I go into the studio properly I'll still be writing, so it could turn out to be a disco or cajun album."
By his own account, Casey grew up on an overcrowded housing estate with "loads of brothers and sisters; my mother was trying to make a football team."
"There was no music in the family, I was the first. But there were a lot of artists - they all drew the dole. Sorry, I've used that before, but it's a good one."
He wrote his own songs from an early age, eventually got a pawnshop guitar and started playing bars and folk clubs.
And then came Amen, on the back of which he has toured the States, Canada and Europe, done showcases in Sydney, opened for REM, the Pretenders and Ani DiFranco.
"Anywhere I've played in the world I mostly end up with about a hundred Irish people in front of me going mad. In the States I was thinking, 'I'm not getting to Americans.' It's funny, if you are in America and playing a rough area or a ghetto, everyone is black until 9 o'clock and the gig starts. Then about a hundred white people arrive, last the gig then leave. And they are all Irish. It gets on your wig a bit, I wish it were broader."
Casey's album has been getting good radio play in the States ("sold a few thousand and that's a start") but "the record company's fantasising they have the next Bob Dylan. I think they are all reliving their youth. But where's the old one gone, and all other Next Bob Dylans?"
"But you get that when you play acoustic guitar, regardless of what you sound like." And Bob certainly hasn't worked with turntablists.
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