Global acclaim is what you can safely describe as the reaction to Oisín Leech’s debut solo album, Cold Sea. We won’t embarrass him by cutting and pasting the review highlights – suffice to say that from music critics to music fans, from booking agents to managers, from established musicians to emerging ones, all are chipping in with words of praise.
Relaxing in a coffee shop in his home county of Meath, Leech is taking it all in his lean-framed stride as he mulls over the latest phase of his life in music. Clued-in fans would know Leech as one half (with Mark McCausland) of The Lost Brothers, whose forlorn Americana has been winding its way down dustbowl-laden laneways since 2008. The brothers, clarifies Leech, are not separating forever, just doing their respective things, a situation initially brought on four years ago by the pandemic.
Leech explains that his solo songs were birthed during the running of his folk club in his hometown of Navan. “We had people like Willie Mason, Lisa O’Neill, Steve Gunn, Andy Irvine and Dónal Lunny there, and usually I would begin things with one of my songs and then welcome the first act. I was maybe doing a cover song, maybe a Lost Brothers song, and gradually I thought I should start to write and sing my own songs.
“That was one of the motivations, but after a few months of writing, the song styles went down a side road I didn’t expect. After a year, I realised there was a body of work in my hands that not only didn’t feel like Lost Brothers songs but also didn’t feel like anything I’d done before.”
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Leech wrote the songs without any goal in mind. With the benefit of hindsight, he understood the songs were only going to find a suitable home under his own roof. “I’m singing in a different key, playing with open tuning, and the melodies and structures are not as straight as Lost Brothers songs. I enjoy that, and even though some people will obviously hear similarities when I perform them, everything is looser.”
What began as something to pass the time in lockdown soon turned into an idea that Leech couldn’t ignore. Occasional visits to family in Co Donegal provided further inspiration for songs that have a distinct tang of sea air. “At night I’d find myself with a notebook and jot down what I had seen of nature, the sounds of the ocean – anything I had experienced during the day. Gradually, I decided to use the sea and the ocean and the kind of barren, terrifying landscape in and around Carndonagh, which is on the Inishowen peninsula. There’s one place between Buncrana and Carndonagh that is hundreds of acres of bogland staring out to the ocean – it’s beautiful. Other natural influences include Trawbreaga Bay, which our recording-studio set-up looked out over.”
Leech is a fan of poetry, particularly of works by Seamus Heaney and Patrick Kavanagh. “They were two poets I was reading when I wrote the album. I fell into a routine of waking up, having a coffee, and reading. I was going through Song Lines, by Bruce Chatwin, and then I would read Heaney. It’s almost like I get a nurturing feeling from it. I love how Heaney is very… careful is the wrong word, but the way he structures his poems, it’s almost like a very cautious walk along a rocky coastline. Every word seems to be in a brilliant place.”
There is a solitary air to Leech’s songs, but not to the man himself. He says (with a hint of a guilty blush) that “waking up and having a coffee and reading doesn’t always happen, because with two kids I need to whip myself into gear to do that!” The look of a harried parent crosses his face. “Sometimes I wish I’d had the discipline of a Bob Dylan or a Mike Scott to be able to do that every day, but I don’t… Don’t get me wrong: I’m actually a much bigger dosser than you might think, but when I was writing these songs I worked incredibly hard for one year, because I knew that time would pass all too quickly.”
It all depends on what your ideas about success are, because even if there are, say, 50 people in a room just there to listen, that’s success to me
— Oisín Leech
He agrees that his songs are solemn and melancholy (we could also add immersive and striking), but points out that he isn’t as serious as some people think. “A lot of my favourite songwriters have written sombre material. I love songs by Townes Van Zandt, and all of Phil Lynott’s sad songs: the titular ballad Dublin is beautiful, as is Sarah, the one about his daughter, and A Song for While I’m Away is terrific. I’m drawn to sadder music because I find a lot of solace in the moment – and, ultimately, a joy.”
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Now in his mid-40s, Leech says he started making music when he was a lanky 15-year-old. From his Navan punk band The Vermin covering songs by The Clash, UK Subs and Stiff Little Fingers, to time spent busking in Naples, and then getting record-label attention in Liverpool, he has managed to forge a career by blending skill, luck, personality and determination.
“From the moment I connected with punk rock,” he says, “music had the kind of power over me that spurred me on. I don’t know what it is, but it has always been a lifeline, and the more I do it the more ambitious, artistically, I become. That said, it all depends on what your ideas about success are, because even if there are, say, 50 people in a room just there to listen, that’s success to me. I believe if magic is stirred or created in a performance or a gig I do, then that’s success. I’m ambitious in that way, but I have no illusions that I’m ever going to be massively commercially successful.”
Perhaps, perhaps not. Having recently signed with the notable US agency Paladin Artists, there is more certainty of long-term work than not. The strumming of guitars looks set to continue, even if his irregular morning routine of waking, coffee and reading might not. “I’m always quite humble about my songwriting abilities,” says Leech, on his way back home to Navan. “Even if I did write a great song, there’s always more to learn, and never for a minute do I think of the words ‘rock star’.”
Oisín Leech plays the Sugar Club, Dublin, on Thursday, April 4th; An Taibhdhearc, Galway, on Friday, April 5th; and Regional Cultural Centre, Letterkenny, Co Donegal, on Saturday, April 6th. His tour continues until Friday, April 26th
