Picture This: from social-media stars to sell-out gigs

The dynamic of relationships can be a wonderful thing, but sometimes those opposites you think might detract from a satisfying association actually enhance and bond it.

Take Athy pop group, Picture This, for example. On the one hand you have 23-year-old Jimmy Rainsford, a recording studio boffin who has been drumming since the age of six. The youngest of a family of nine music obsessives, as a child he remembers that at the end of his bed were not clothes cupboards or drawers but Marshall amplifiers.

“My brother played guitar,” is the cheerful explanation. “He would play all day and all night – Metallica all the way! My brothers were into heavier music, and my sisters were into The Beatles and Queen, so I grew up with both styles. Music was the biggest thing to do in my family – you listened to it and you played it every day. If you didn’t do that, then there was nothing else to do – you get up in the morning and you play an instrument. It was pure instinct, and it was only when I was 18, when I was offered a job to play drums and get paid for it, that I thought I could do something with it.”

On the other hand, you have 21-year-old Ryan Hennessy, an (erstwhile) underachiever when compared with Rainsford's can-do/must-do character. With the Leaving Cert under his belt, he didn't make it to college. "I've never had a job," he says in a quiet, reserved manner. "Football was always my biggest passion. Music? I got into it very late; I sang for the first time in front of people when I was 18, and I started playing the guitar just over a year ago. I've been writing poetry since I was 10, though - my father and grandfather wrote pages and pages of poetry." Hennessy says that he's a "mood" lyric writer, and that he primarily writes songs about topics that he himself would want to hear. "Take my Hand was written because I wanted to listen to a love song about a summer romance."

Exactly a year ago, Hennessy – performing with an acoustic guitar, recorded by a friend on his phone – uploaded Take my Hand on Facebook. One of the initial few that viewed it was Rainsford, who was spending downtime at home having spent some years working with various producers and drumming in Ryan Sheridan's band. Jimmy messaged Ryan, asked did he want to go into his studio (then and now a kitted-out room in his parents' house) and make a proper song out of it. "That's how the band came about," deadpans Ryan.

Twelve months later, and Picture This is the snowballing Irish music success story of the year. In May, they announced their debut Irish tour. By the end of June, all shows had sold out (including one at Opera House, Cork, in October as part of the Guinness Jazz Festival, and three at Olympia theatre, Dublin, in November). The pair put their sudden success down to two elements: good pop songs and fan engagement.

"From the get-go," says Rainsford, "we have done things very differently and new. The first thing we put up online was Take my Hand; then every two months we uploaded another new song, and did a big social media build-up to it. We also post new content on social media every single day."

“It creates an identity,” says Hennessy , “and gives people an idea of what it is we do and who we are. The songs are uplifting and quick, not depressing and over five minutes long. They’re pop songs, although with an undercurrent of emotion to them, and a bit of nostalgia. Some people say that we’re becoming very successful because we have a good following on social media but honestly, if you haven’t got good songs, that will soon go.”

While the broader strokes of the band’s music may not appeal to fans of finer, hipper sounds, there’s no denying that it’s touching a nerve; ditto the bands deft DIY videos.

“You don’t expect it to take off as quick it has,” says Rainsford, “but you feel it in your heart that you want to make it happen. And when that happens, it makes you want to work even harder.”

- Picture This visit Opera House, Cork, Friday, October 28th, and Olympia Theatre, Dublin, Wednesday, November 2nd, Thursday, November 3rd, Saturday, November 12th. The band also visits Mandela Hall, Belfast, November 17th, and performs as part of the 2FM Xmas Ball, 3Arena, Saturday, December 3rd. Picture This EP is on release.