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Misty River tune has appeared in an Oscar Award winning film ‘The Phone Call‘ as well on a recent award-winning Netflix documentary ‘A Secret Love‘. Having spent many years as a session musician for highly respected artists and touring with Sinead O’Connor, Corrs and others it is now original music of their own is being released – including the Single The Long Run.

On the line from the UK, Carmen Phelan from Misty River is our feature guest…

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Between chat recording and now another Single has been released called Rain.

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Feature Guest:

Next Feature Guest: Wheatus (2012) – From The Archives

Another recent From The Archives with Mick Hart from 2002, released to mark two years since his passing:

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TRANSCRIPT

First version provided by REV team member – check to audio before quoting wider

John Murch:
Huge radionotes welcome to Misty River’s Carmen Phelan.

Carmen Phelan:
Hi, thanks so much for having me. I’m so excited to talk to you.

John Murch:
Fiddle at the age of eight or nine years of age. Was that your choice or was that part of a family tradition to play such instruments?

Carmen Phelan:
It’s a funny one. My parents loved music and I think a lot of kids started off on the recorder and strangely enough, showed enough of an aptitude for that, that I was sort of given a lot of money and encouragement at the time they were encouraging kids with a talent for music. So I actually got to a very, very high standard as a baroque recorder player as a very young child and I think my parents just figured maybe there wasn’t that much longevity in being a baroque recorder player.

John Murch:
We’re not talking the descant, we’re talking about the tenor recorder, aren’t we?

Carmen Phelan:
Alto is my specialty the middle one. It’s beautiful. [inaudible] obviously that we had before the flute, so a lot of their repertoire is in that domain and I think they just figured maybe I should branch out. So that’s when I started playing fiddle and I didn’t really look back. With that said, I did have to have a lot of health and encouragement, and I definitely remember trying to quit playing music in return for horse riding lessons and that wasn’t allowed.

John Murch:
Can you talk to us, Carmen, about this heritage, I believe, where you’ve got the Irish music background, but you’ve also got this bluegrass leaning into alt-country type music?

Carmen Phelan:
Just one of those funny things about how life falls. My father’s from Dublin and I think pretty much everybody in Dublin is involved in some form of music. Everybody certainly from his generation sings and telling stories and passing stories down, so that folk tradition was a very strong part of my Irish family. And at that point, my father didn’t play, but a lot of my relatives were players. And then we moved to the states and as I had just started playing the violin at that point, which is classical violin, I was given a teacher from Virginia, from the Appalachians, who was a bluegrass fiddle teacher, so that’s how that came about. It was a very early introduction from already playing a bit of Irish music straight away into old times country tunes. And so that’s some of the earliest things that I’ve played and I think for me, I’ve always had of three traditions running at once through my music, I suppose, which is the classical tradition, which, I guess, we would come back to in a bit, the Irish one from my family, and then the bluegrass one just purely because that’s where I lived and those are the musicians that I was around. And again, I was very welcomed into that community. So for me, they’ve never been these disparate, separate elements, but they’ve always been really complimentary.

John Murch:
Classical. What was that journey through, I guess, the teenage years, maybe through the early 20s of classical music?

Carmen Phelan:
It’s a funny one. It’s only looking back now. I had always played in bands and I’d always enjoyed that, but what I love about playing in a band is what I loved about being a classical musician, is playing in an orchestra with 120 other musicians. I think, for me, it was a sensory thing of just being surrounded by this incredible sound world and I love playing with other musicians. And I think looking back, I’m not sure whether really it was so much about being a classical musician as just enjoying that experience. And certainly, when I got to, I worked really hard to get to music school, which is very competitive and when I got there, I just felt a little bit like a fish out of water. There’s a lot of practising on your own for six hours a day and it’s quite competitive and it felt a world away from everything that I had really learnt to love about music.
And obviously, it’s a different journey for everybody, but I think sometimes, for a lot of people that I know, if you have an aptitude for something you can end up doing that thing without really giving you an opportunity or chance to look back and say, “Actually, am I really love this? Is this exactly the right thing for me?” Just because wnjoy it and it comes easily, in that sense, being a full-time classical musician. It wasn’t the right fit, but it comes in other ways. I still really enjoy recording string sections and parts and that side of things, but it’s definitely gone more into the studio and definitely is the playing live and playing with other musicians and touring with other bands. And then on my own, I certainly don’t spend a lot of time, but one thing I would say is I think the tradition of the classical music and how you approach arrangements, just think about the whole sound world, I think, probably again is a fairly big influence in some of my tracks.

John Murch:
When you are describing your place within an orchestra, I felt like it was a sense of connection with what you are achieving live.

Carmen Phelan:
Somebody asked me recently why did I call it Misty River because I’m the sole songwriter or at least write most of the songs and it was to do with the fact that within the band as well, I just recognise that it takes a lot of other people giving so much of themselves and what you end up in the end is something much better than you would’ve had, I suppose. And I think in an orchestra, it’s that, it’s amazing to be able to play the violin, but to be able to play around 60 other violinists and all the other instruments too is just… It’s an incredible feeling and it’s a similar feeling when you write a song and then you get to play it with the band or record it and it’s just everything that you imagined in your mind and all your ideas come to life. That’s a phenomenal thing.

John Murch:
The name Misty River does come from a childhood memory.

Carmen Phelan:
It was actually a music camp I went on years ago called Misty River and it was just a really happy place and it’s where I go back to the first time just thinking that I just want to be a musician. This is just what I want to do if that’s possible because I didn’t know how possible it was to do that. And then coupled with the fact that my family often joked and called me Misty because I tear up quite easily at any sad story or anything happy or any of that kind of stuff. So it just felt like that’s the right thing to call this.

John Murch:
It brings us to the theme of the current at the time, the current single, The Long Run, and it is about that coming back to, I believe, in this case, a relationship or someone you really care about and you want to make work.

Carmen Phelan:
I don’t think it’s about faith exactly. It’s almost about just saying sometimes it’s just really, really hard and we have these preconceived ideas and relationships of what everybody should bring to the table and if you don’t get out exactly what it says on the tin, then you should run and leave it behind. And as time’s gone on a little bit, it’s just this thinking of sometimes when you’re really rooted in something it takes a bit longer to get there in the end and maybe you don’t have all the answers. You may not know what it is exactly that’s needed to get there in The Long Run essentially, but something keeps you going.
Underlying thing with long wind is really saying, “Maybe it won’t be okay, but we’ll just keep going anyway because hopefully, it will be worth it.” And I do think it’s worth sticking in there and I suppose that is often the theme in my songs, is to do with resilience, whether it’s to do with believing in yourself, and Long Run is to do with, obviously, believing in a relationship. And I suppose it was based on conversations I’d had with some friends who were struggling in some of their relationships and my own knowledge a bit about how that can work, that you really wonder sometimes how you’re sticking in there and why, but in my experience, it’s often worth doing.
I think that we can be very idealistic about things and sometimes that can actually serve as our downfall a little bit, I think, because you’re so idealistic about things that it stops you looking at what you’ve really got, which might be something really, really good, and maybe it’s a little bit… And again, I’m definitely a person that does this sometimes, I think we will do, but it’s that imagining the grass is greener, that there’s always something better somewhere else to run away to and I think we’ve all got that feeling of just wanting to bolt sometimes when the going gets tough and I think it was just recognising that, that actually, hang onto those special moments because they really do mean something and it really is worth working on things, sometimes.

John Murch:
You’ve had the chance to tour with some pretty big names over the time. I have been appreciating your voice for a long time, but to see you as a trio with another singer and some singer called she Sinead O’Connor live in front of hundreds of thousands of people really struck me as, “I’m right. This is acapella. This is one of the greatest singer/songwriters of all time.” Talk to us about the touring experience with Sinead O’Connor as both, I guess, the violin, fiddle, and backing vocalist.

Carmen Phelan:
That’s right, exactly. I had always done backing vocals and I think that definitely, touring with Sinead brought the vocals for me a bit more to the front, as you are saying, doing that acapella work. And obviously, she is phenomenal singer and so distinct, so I think I learned just so much. It was like you’re just instantly inducted into this new world. And I thought it was just very interesting with Sinead how every night was different in terms of it wasn’t that staged, rehearsed performance in that way, but it was very much visceral and real and reacting to the audience and how she felt. And that was really interesting for me because I think despite her technical ability, what really shown out was just the originality and the visceral just… The wanting to communicate and connect in that relationship with the audience.
And I suppose it’s taken me a long time to think about myself as a singer because I was an instrumentalist for such a long time. I think maybe that gave me a bit of confidence as a singer because I think what I thought was it’s not about being the best singer in the world because it’s more about how do I communicate this to you as the audience and take on, in fact your feedback. I don’t think there’s a name, but somebody should have a word for what’s created, I guess, between an audience and a musician, whatever that space is held between you and in a considerated gig, but that’s really what matters rather than you being the best singer in the world, I guess. And I find that interesting. So I suppose that gave me a little bit of confidence, funnily enough, even though I was with one of the best singers in the world. I don’t think that was the most important thing with her. I think the most important thing was how much of herself she gave and how much people took away from that.

John Murch:
I believe that was exemplified by the footage I saw of her putting her arm out and inviting you into that third vocal part as well. She just seems to be a very inviting person in that way. Moving from that, as part of a question I have regarding the Promises album, her MD, and more throughout life, John Reynolds appears on some of the drumming. Which tracks do we need to have a listen out for John Reynold’s work?

Carmen Phelan:
Well, he’s on a few. He’s on Take This Dance, which is on the first album. He’s on Wishing on the Wrong Star as well. I think those are the two main ones and he also mixed Take This Dance, but he’s been very encouraging over the years and we’ve worked together on several other projects. So again, it was just a real compliment and a wonderful thing to have a friend and collaborator come in and work in that capacity again, so to [inaudible] my first release. So I hadn’t released this many albums in the first thing I’ve ever put out, ever. I haven’t changed names or tried other guys. So it’s been tremendous for me really to see how it’s been received and to have so many wonderful musicians come in and get involved with it.

John Murch:
So that’s one of the drummers, great, but the other drummer is something to do with Brandy Carlisle.

Carmen Phelan:
Yeah, Chris Powell is a phenomenal drummer. He works with Brandy. He works with a load of people, with Chris Stapleton and a lot with a producer called Dave Cobb. If you like Americana and Country, then you’ve definitely heard Chris across quite a few of those records and this was a really interesting one for me. So Adam had produced the record. He just loves Chris’s drumming and during lockdown, when everything felt like it was falling away and touring was falling away and we were locked down and obviously, for some musicians, that was quite a productive time, because you could at least be in the studio. It didn’t work out that way for everybody, but during a discussion, we just said, “Well, hey, people aren’t touring. Who would be the dream team for the record?”
And that was the name that came up and we really just approached him and just said, “Look, this is an independent project. We understand that you don’t do a lot of that, but have a listen. What do you think?” And he just immediately came back and said he’d love to be involved and he’s pretty much… I’m working really hard now on the next release and Chris is playing on pretty much all of that that the vibe is just so good and so right. Again, it’s an amazing thing. The person who’s listening to all the time you hear playing in your living room all the time when you wake up in the morning and you’re listening to your records to get to have the chance to… And for him to have made it possible for me as an independent musician to play on it, knowing that it’s not going through a label at this point, I think that’s another interesting thing about musicians just supporting other musicians in ways that they can. So I love Chris. I’m very tremendously grateful for his support and him being involved because he’s the real deal.

John Murch:
That must give you that sense of confidence that you both know each other musically well enough, you can go a little bit further. What’s happening with the second record, I guess, compared to Promises because of that working relationship?

Carmen Phelan:
So I think the first record for me, I often feel like it’s a little bit setting out your shop. You have all of these things that you want to do and can do. I feel like with that first record, there was some experimenting there in the different types of writing that I wanted to do and the different styles and I think there were lots of other people involved and it’s funny because now with Long Run, which will definitely be on the new record, I just feel like, as you said, I’ve got a confidence, but also, I just feel like I’m a little bit more seated in myself because having grown up around a lot of bluegrass and country, I didn’t feel completely confident, that said, that people would be happy to accept that from me in a way.
And it’s been really interesting for me that it’s been the opposite how welcoming people have been. So I think that also gives me the confidence to say, “Actually, it’s totally fine. I can do an Americana or a country record and I feel a bit validated in that respect. So I feel like with this new record, I’m a lot more confident and much more exactly what I like and what I like to listen to and I suppose has influences from the people that played a bit big part in who I’ve turned into, I suppose, as a writer and a musician.

John Murch:
What was that transformation like, becoming a singer/songwriter in just the last couple of years, I believe?

Carmen Phelan:
Terrifying.

John Murch:
Oh.

Carmen Phelan:
It’s funny, though. I think I didn’t do it before also because I’m not sure that I felt like I had so much to say and I just reached a point in my life where I was like, “Hang on a minute.” I have all these songs just coming into my head all the time and I want to get them out there. So I felt like I didn’t have a lot of choice, but it’s been a bit of a process, I have to admit. Definitely the first few times out there have that bit of imposter syndrome of thinking, “Is this okay? Is this valid? Should I do some cover tunes or something?” But again, it just comes back to that little bit of the more radio support you get or the gigs you get offered, positive feedback that you get from people that just little by little because it does…
I think when you swap in the way that I have, I do feel like I’m starting from scratch in that regard because I hadn’t written before. I hadn’t sung before at the front. I’m not a singer that was doing wedding bands. I hadn’t done any of that stuff. I’d always sung, and a lot, but just not in that capacity. I’d taken a little bit of time, definitely. I am that sort of person. I am really, really influenced by other people. So had there been a lot of negative feedback, that probably would’ve been it, realistically. And in fact, I noticed on The Long Run, particularly on social media where you can get some really strange comments. I noticed the only proper troll comment this time was about my hair and in fairness, I hadn’t actually brushed it when I posted a video so I think I felt like I got off lightly there.

John Murch:
When you were being interviewed by Prompt Queens, you said that co-writing is a new space for you and that the mentor said coffee first, then that gives you the space to work with. Can you talk to me about the co-writing experience and what that’s doing for you?

Carmen Phelan:
Sure. Again, that’s something that’s super new to me and I think it’s funny. I think that I had a bit of a prejudice or a bias against it because I just thought when you see 20 names on a song, I just had an instant recoil of just thinking, “No, you want to see one or two names on a song. You want to know who it came from”, and that was a bit silly, actually, because back to that collaborative thing, I’ve really come to realise a good co-writer brings out the best in you and takes you into some place ever so slightly different and challenges you, but it shouldn’t be an unpleasant or a negative challenge and I think that’s what that comes back to. It has to be a good personality match. I don’t think necessarily a personality match as in you have to be best friends, but obviously, a musical match in that you have to be talking the same language and they have to have a song or something. I think, for me, the measure of it is, “Are you a really nice person? And have you written a song that I really wish I’d written?” And then normally that’s a pretty good starting point for a songwriting session.

John Murch:
Has that made it easier the fact that The Long Run is co-written by someone that you, I would think, trust in their musical views and other views of life?

Carmen Phelan:
Yeah, absolutely. It does and I think I’ve slightly learned the hard way. My first few co-writes weren’t in that space because other people had arranged them. So I think having a bit more agency in terms of reaching out to people or ask my managers to reach out to people and say, “This is who I’d like to work with because they seem like they’re the right guy.” But Adam and I have worked together four years and I just think it’s also, there’s a sense of relief because I think sometimes when you’re a writer, things come very, very quickly to you. Often with me, most of the song is there within five or 10 minutes. It’s not always, but a lot of the time, the songs I really trust in are the quick-delivery ones. And then you get to a point where you saying, “I don’t know where to take this now because everything tumbled out really fast and I’m not sure what to do.”
And that’s an amazing thing to have a co-writer than to have somebody who says, “Actually, I’ve got a really good idea for that.” That’s what I love about that. And also, I think there’s also the niggling thing in the back of your mind quite often where you’re thinking, “I’m not sure if that lyric, if I’ve expressed myself very clearly”, or, “I’m just not quite sure that core sequence is quite right”, and you leave it and then somebody else comes along and raises that with you and you think, “Oh, actually, I do need to change that”, or, “I haven’t been clear. It’s not completely clear what I’m talking about.” So I think there’s loads of different facets to working that way around in terms of having someone come in and edit and expand on what you’ve done a bit. Also, a really nice thing is sometimes, someone will bring you a groove or an idea or a vibe and that’s a really nice jumping off point as well. So I think you’re going to see a lot more of that in the new record.

John Murch:
We’re currently speaking to Carmen Phelan who is part of Misty River. The latest single is called The Long Run and that’s a co-write with Adam, but I got very excited because doing my research, I found out that you actually did backing vocals on a fave tune of mine, but more importantly, part of doing the violin of a song that was written in the studio, or so says Kate Ceberano, let’s talk about Champion. How did that come about?

Carmen Phelan:
Yeah. So it’s funny because I’m not a very business-like musician. Sometimes I wish I were more so, but nearly everything that I’ve done has come about by chance and that was really, again, by chance. It was her producer, songwriter at the time. A Canadian writer called James Bryan was living in London and his studio was opposite mine. And again, it comes back to that sort of just getting on with people, having coffee. James had heard a lot of the Sinead stuff, I think, at the time and we were just friends, really, and he was just listening to what I was working on in the studio. And then one day, he just said, “Look, I just have the perfect match for you. Come and try it out.” So a time and a place and a friendship and coffee, that often seems to be how things work out. And it’s a really cool track. Yeah. I loved doing that and I think that was probably maybe fairly early on when I started doing backing vocals, recorded backing vocals for people as opposed to just strings. I loved that. I love the vibe of that whole record.

John Murch:
You’ve said of Kasey Chambers that she’s your favourite. I think I know why, but why are you such a big fan of Kasey Chambers?

Carmen Phelan:
I actually remember precisely the first time I heard Kasey Chambers singing was in a local world cafe bar near me. It was owned by a radio DJ, so they used to always put the record or the CD up on the wall so you could see what was playing. It was a nice thing and they’d play the whole album. I think I was just really taken with her voice and with the delivery and I think a lot of the things that we’ve discussed, just her beautiful voice and how truthful, I guess, she was and her songwriting. Yeah, a big part of it.

John Murch:
What’s some of the new themes that you’re picking up on now that you’ve got that confidence as a songwriter?

Carmen Phelan:
I think it’s funny. I’m quite keen. I think I was saying to you, the Irish tradition that I’m from is very much about storytelling. So beyond stories about romantic relationships, I think I just found that covered a lot. It’s been done a lot. People have said a lot about that, almost everything that could be said and I just love stories about people’s lives and the songwriters that I grew up loving, listening to, like John Prine and people like that. I love those kind of stories, so I think this next record is looking a bit at my own life and that of my family and friends and just talking about those natural journeys of life that people go through, I suppose. And I’m quite excited about that because when you start thinking about that, there’s an awful lot to say, actually. A lot of the voices that I really love now, like Laurie McKenna and people like that, that it’s very much that journey through life. I love those stories.
My route into traditional country music, I suppose, was when I was in music school and somebody sent me the Dixie Chicks record, I guess because of the fiddle side of things and songs on that like Travelling Soldier and I was just like, “This is amazing.” You go on a complete journey and you feel completely nostalgic. You feel like you went through it by the end of their songs. And I think definitely country, Americana, and bluegrass, Irish track, they all held that space for you to have the time to take people on that journey with you. And I never make up a song in that respect. It’s normally something I’ve been mulling over for a long time and maybe something I didn’t say, a letter, I don’t know, but I feel like if I hadn’t become a musician, I have a master’s degree in psychology as well. I love stories. I love people’s stories and that’s probably why for me really being a songwriter, it feels like the perfect landing spot because it’s thinking about other people and how we all fit together and how our stories fit together and how they evolve. I think that’s going to be the next record.

John Murch:
Can we take that track from the debut album Promises? The song I want to talk about is Wishing on the Wrong Star. Is that about someone now close in your life?

Carmen Phelan:
Yes. Wishing on the Wrong Star, I suppose it’s probably the most nostalgic one on the record and actually, in reality, it’s looking back over a couple of relationships and definitely, there’s a line in there about my husband now because I knew him when I was really young and when we were in our early 20s hanging around and he would come around to my family house and bring all his friends around when my parents had gone away. We’d party in their house. There’s a line that I suppose is a bit obscure, but it’s to do with the fact that I was trying to show off. I was a bit younger. They were in their 20s and I was late teens and my father had all his spirits hidden away, so I got all the spirits out and obviously, because you’re a stupid teenager, I just served them up all to these guys partying.
And it was all with mixes and it was at the end of the night, somebody said, “You know what? This doesn’t taste very alcoholic,” but actually, my dad had drunk the spirits and then I think in an effort to let my mom know he hadn’t done that, he’d filled them up with water so it looked like he hadn’t had the whiskey. And then I, not knowing really much about alcohol, had just served that up. So in my showing off, I just served a bunch of water instead of whiskey. So that was one of those lines just for my husband was drinking water from a whiskey bottle was just related to that. As I say, sometimes it’s an overlapping of a few different stories and again, I think maybe not a million miles away, I haven’t thought about this, but from long run actually, of just sometimes looking in the wrong place when you have what you need quite close by.

John Murch:
Which is interesting, because you say you have a psychology degree and a lot of that has to do about placing thoughts and where they go. So without the degree, you may not have had these songs at all.

Carmen Phelan:
They may not be there, but I think it’s funny. I just think that’s part of my personality. A lot of my friends would say I’m a very private person. I’m not in my songwriting. I put everything out there that it takes a while for me to share things with people, but that said, I’m really interested in people. When I meet people, I tend to ask a lot of questions, so sometimes I really get caught out. I could be hours talking to somebody that I’ve only just met because I am genuinely interested in how people came to be, where they’re at and what they thought about something. And sometimes, I wonder if they’re slightly inappropriate questions that I ask, but people have always told me things. So I think it wasn’t too inappropriate and I’m really interested in people. I really am. I think as well thinking sometimes we think that we have a feeling or thinking a certain way, but what’s driving that interest and is that really how we’re going to end up in the end? Will we feel the same way in six months down the line or a year down the line? I still listen to a lot of psychology stuff and read a lot of… I can imagine in my old age, I’d like to go back to that at some point.

John Murch:
You’ve said once that you’ve known your husband, Adam’s family, since you were a kid which makes me think you might have known the family before you knew him.

Carmen Phelan:
When I moved back from the states as a kid, I felt very out of place in my new school and one of the kids really took me under her wing and in fact, made sure we were friends. I think I wasn’t as keen in the beginning, I’m not ashamed to say, but she pushed it through and rang me and came around, which is sometimes what most of my good friends need to do with me. That’s Adam’s younger sister. So I’ve been best friends with her since we were 10 or 11, but Adam was just always there. He’s a few years older so he was at college or teenagers don’t really want to hang around with 11 year olds. So we didn’t really come to know each other till much later, but I certainly grew up around his family and his sister around mines.
It’s a very unusual thing, I suppose. We used to joke that she would marry my brother, but in the end, I married her brother. We got what we wanted, was we got to be sisters, which was the main thing. I will just mention his sister as well. She’s an amazing person and she works in charity. She’s very prominent over here at the moment. She’s leading the appeal for Ukraine, but she’s also probably the best singer I’ve ever met in my life. She doesn’t do it professionally in any capacity. I bullied her into singing on the record at the last minute, and again, something that would not have been possible pre-lockdown because I don’t think we’d have ever found the time. She wouldn’t been able to, but I was in the studio and just called her and said, “Have you got an hour?” So Wishing on the Wrong Star is one of the ones and Walk Me to the River that I’ve called his sister in. So it’s a bit of a family affair.

John Murch:
Back to people that you’ve mentioned recently and then I’ll move through. Not to get confused with Vance Joy but Foy Vance, when were you first introduced to Foy Vance? Because I get a feeling you were an early adopter of their music and what struck you about Foy Vance, not to get confused with Vance Joy?

Carmen Phelan:
No, I’m just a big fan of Foy’s, actually, really. I don’t know him so well. He was opening for some gigs that we were doing. It’s an interesting thing, I think, with certain songwriters when you can see that they can command a whole room, just them and a guitar and he very much just has whatever that thing is of, he really just took the audience on a journey and everybody was just enraptured. I’m definitely a fangirl in that respect as opposed to someone that I know very well, but I think he maybe… I’m trying to think. Maybe he was opening for Sinead. I think that could have been the case.

John Murch:
Who do you want supporting you or maybe who do you want to support when you tour the Promises album and maybe the next album in full when you get that chance to really hit the road, travel throughout America quite extensively or through the UK quite extensively?

Carmen Phelan:
The ones that I’ll never get the dreams sort of people that I love to support would be people like… I love Chris Stapleton’s band. And again, I suppose it’s another family band. I listen to a lot of his wife’s singing, actually. Obviously, they’re amazing together, but I just feel like that would be a really, really fun gig to do because it’d be a cool crowd. Anybody along those line. And in terms of who would support me, I’m not too sure, I suppose, because that’s a funny one. I do feel like some people have started to bring me along on their journeys and I’ve really appreciated it. So I suppose if I was in a position to be bringing along a support act, I’d just be looking for someone based purely on merit, I guess.
I wouldn’t care about their social numbers or what they’ve done or who they’ve played with, because I do think that the chances that I’ve gotten working with Kate or with Sinead or having songs in the films and that sort of thing, it’s all come about by people just… Not exactly by chance because obviously, you’re roughly in the same areas. There’s people that friendly connections and people who like you and just give you a chance actually because maybe you don’t have all the same credentials as somebody else. I suppose that’s always happened for me.` So that’s, I suppose, what I’d be hoping for is to just give somebody else a leg up and a chance. That’s a lovely thing about music, because you can do that and I’ve certainly benefited from that so I’d hoped that I was able to do the same for a new act for sure.

John Murch:
I know that you’ve been enjoying an album for which I was quite obsessed with when it came out and thanks to you, I really listened to it and I went, “I know why I really like this album.” Can you talk to me about your thoughts, not my thoughts, they don’t matter, your thoughts on the album Outside Child by Allison Russell?

Carmen Phelan:
Impactful. That’s an interesting one because I followed her band with her husband, Birds of Chicago, anyway for a ong time and there’s just something else in that album, isn’t there? There’s just some other force. I don’t know how to explain it, really. It’s that beautiful bringing together, I guess, of poetry, I suppose in a way and beautiful arrangements, and usual that she’s managed to put such difficult things and still make them so beautiful. I think that’s quite a challenge, isn’t it? To write something so hard for people, but make it accessible and listenable and to bring other people in. She’s a phenomenal talent. And I think I was just in Kansas City at Folk Alliance and they had the Folk awards. She won an award there. I think one thing that really came across is she’d been part of that folk community for really a long time. So I’m just so pleased for her as a musician and as a woman that she’s found that space to really flourish and found that support really to be herself completely herself. I suppose there’s a great validation in that to write such a vulnerable and useful piece of work.

John Murch:
A demo of Take This Dance was so good that it was featured in the phone call that won the best live action short at the 87th Oscars and more recently was the tune featured in a very topical and award-winning Netflix documentary, A Secret Love, which I think was Chris Nolan’s effort, a story of Terry and Pat’s 65+ years together. The short I saw trying to get into a nursing home and such the passion of like, “Well, you better accept us for who we are because we’ve been here a while.” Six decades, how did it end up on this documentary?

Carmen Phelan:
I’m very cynical and I totally think these things never happen, but this really was just that he was making the film and he came across Take This Dance and the really weird thing about it was, I assume he would’ve heard it from the other film or somewhere else like that, but he hadn’t. He had just been searching through the internet for something that he felt like was going to be the perfect match to the story of his relatives, and so he got the music supervisor to reach out. That’s interesting too, for me. So the version of Take This Dance that’s in A Secret Love is the fully produced one with John Reynolds, who we mentioned earlier who’s produced that and played drums on it. And then the one other film is a demo so that was fascinating for me. It’s two ever so slightly different takes on the same song and I am delighted but interesting for me that the themes that I’m interested in seem to match up to a secret love as they were saying it is.
It’s a love story over 65 years and a story of resilience and acceptance. Actually, The Phone Call is exactly the same theme. It’s a love story. So it was really interesting to see my music being taken on and used in that way and I’m tremendously lucky, actually. So somebody did actually ask me the other day, a friend of mine, for some advice about how they might go about putting their music out there for film and TV and unfortunately, my answer was, “I don’t know how that works. I don’t know.” I’ve just been really super lucky in that respect.

John Murch:
It was a demo that Matt Kirby and I guess James Lucas together wandered in the film. How did a demo..? Because I’m thinking a demo should never get to that stage.

Carmen Phelan:
And I quite agree. I didn’t want them to use a demo in the slices. To be honest, even using the word demo, that’s being generous. It was pretty much the first of I thought of the song, we came in real quick, I wrote it, I just recorded it really quickly, just as a… Some people call it a work tape, just a sketch of the song, of what the songs should sound like. That’s what they wanted and I did, I pleaded with them to rerecord it. They were working in a beautiful legendary studio. I pleaded, come and replay it and I re-sing it, and I think I actually did try to give them a different version of it, but they just refused. I think for them, that really late night, whatever space I was in as I’d just written the song and recorded it, whatever came across, I think, in that version was what they’d really committed to for the film and they weren’t willing to budge on that, but just as well because I think they were right.
I was working in the studio with a friend and had asked him to come and have a lesson to that. It was the first song I’d written and he was a really good keys player, so I’d said, “Will you come in and have a listen? Can you think of anything that you’d maybe organ or something you’d like to add to this song?” And he said to me, “Oh, send me the song.” And he was working in the studio with the film producers for Riddy Scott and he just said to them, “Hey, you’ve got to hear this song that I just heard yesterday”, and that’s how it made it in, which beggars belief again as a bit of a strange way for things to work and I think they had a track in place and they replaced it for Take This Dance. And so it was one of those things that you just think, “That’s never going to happen, but I’m complimented that they’re listening to it.” So for it to go ahead, I think that was absolutely the first thing that made me think, “Oh, I think maybe I could be a songwriter. Maybe that’s not just a daydream.”

John Murch:
What’s been one of the most educational experience you’ve had with a fellow musician?

Carmen Phelan:
Let’s think. I suppose let’s look at live. I think just thinking about this summer has been really interesting for me because as you said, I wrote the record and put it out during the pandemic, so touring at that stage was off the cards and I have toured. I’ve been really, really lucky to tour a lot of the world with different bands or with orchestras. I played in a lot of places, so I feel like I had that experience of that side of things coming back in my own right as the artist, put a completely different light on it. And what’s been really fascinating for me now during the summer, which started off in Kansas, has just been seeing other artists, I suppose, and how quickly they can turn a room around. I think it’s phenomenal. And I think people are very, very receptive at the moment.
Quite a lot of people came up to me at the last festival I played at a couple of weeks ago and said, “This is the first live music I’ve seen.” And then other people saying, “Oh, I’ve been listening to your record, but this is the first chance I’ve had to come see it.” So there’s a lot of that but I think I saw a band the other day. They’re from the UK, but they’re a bluegrass band called Midnight Skyracer and the whole room was just completely electric when they were playing the other day. And then on the other side of things, there was a singer at that festival, Courtney Marie Andrews and it wasn’t that leaping and jumping about things. It’s a much more intimate set, but to watch a whole field of people completely engaged… So I’ve just been loving that.
I would say right now, I’ve really just enjoyed being at festivals around other musicians and contemporaries now as a family [inaudible], I suppose, but I’ve just loved… People may not necessarily have heard of you. They may not know your music, so I think it’s a really interesting way to see how people connect in that space, as opposed to, obviously, if they payed a ticket and they come down to your gig, they’re there for you. But I love a festival because I love to see a band that nobody’s really heard of turn the whole place around and it’s magical.

John Murch:
Are you also looking forward, with your own material, to have that intimate sort of gig where you can actually see and sense the reaction to the lyrical content?

Carmen Phelan:
I can’t wait. And I’ve been recently doing some warm-up gigs in theatres. Everything feels very emotional at the moment because as I say, it feels like a first time, a lot of the time for people and that’s been really a beautiful experience. And often, in those theatres, you have time to meet people and talk to them afterwards and that’s been a really interesting thing for me. I’m loving talking to you. It’s interesting to hear how people are feeling about the record and people who’ve thought about the music bought a ticket, made the effort to come down and see you. It’s absolutely lovely and it’s a privilege. It’s a complete privilege.

John Murch:
The artwork for Promises, and there’s a stop motion of this as well, is done by Kelly Wills. Can you talk to me about the decision to get this artist on board for this album? Because it is an album that you should get the cover for and maybe get on vinyl one day.

Carmen Phelan:
Oh, sure. Yeah, the vinyl is definitely on the way. Again, she just came into my orbit, I suppose.I just kept seeing these other people’s vinyl records on social media and just thinking, “What? This is beautiful.” Eventually, just thought it’s a music artwork style, but I hadn’t realised it was just this one person. I was like, “Oh, everything really looks pretty similar.” And then I did my research. Her company’s Brain Flower Designs, and I just thought it had a really cool, almost… I don’t know. Some of it’s a bit like some of the tattoo art.
It’s beautiful and intricate and has a little edge to it. Some of it’s quite acentric. So I just love what she did. It’s the first time I’ve worked with an artist, so I gave her quite a bit of leeway in terms of what she came up with, but she really put in things that after talking to her about the record, I felt you can really see the roots of the plants. We talked a lot about the roots of song and of story and we put a hummingbird in, which is just a little nod to Trinidad where my mum is from and the storm clouds coming over. It really encapsulated the themes of that record. I loved it. It’s one of those things you can’t really imagine it. So you just find the person that you love and brush your fingers and hope for the best, but I was absolutely delighted. I think she’s just so talented.

John Murch:
Carmen, thanks very much for joining us on radio notes today.

Carmen Phelan:
I’ve absolutely loved it. Thank you so much for making time for me.