It took three years – and €25,000 of his own money – but the new album from Jape (aka Richie Egan) is mighty. He tells JIM CARROLLwhy he ditched George Bush for the honest – if economically challenging – life of music
RICHIE EGAN knows this ritual inside out and back to front. A new album means afternoons in city-centre hotels answering questions, when he could be making music and tinkering with the new software he has just acquired.
The reason for today's conversation is Ocean of Frequency, his mighty fine fourth album as Jape. Add in another four albums with The Redneck Manifesto (plus his VisionAir adventures with fellow Redneck Niall Byrne) and there's been a lot of music from the Egan department in the last decade.
For all that efficiency and output, the new album went through three different iterations before Egan was happy. “It has taken three years, which is a long enough time for me because I work fast and I write a lot of songs,” he says.
“But I wanted something which sounded right and that took time. I thought I finished it twice, but there was a niggling doubt in my head. I went away and did Redneck stuff and VisionAir stuff and came back to it.”
When you’re working on your own as Egan does with Jape, any such “niggling doubt” needs to be worked out. “You do get a bit of snow blindness and don’t know if something is good or bad. But when I work with the Rednecks or Niall on VisionAir, you have someone to tell you when something is crap and help you get your focus back. That’s why it’s important for me to have other things like that.”
Ocean of Frequency's predecessor Ritual transformed Egan from an underground favourite to an act who could play bigger rooms and draw larger crowds. He could always write infectious pop tunes – Jack White and Brendan Benson's Raconteurs cover of Floatingwas proof of that – so it was a matter of getting these tunes to the masses.
Yet for all its successes, Ritualsuffered from a lot of "label bullshit", says Egan. "The album did well in Ireland, but outside of Ireland, it did nothing. Co-Op [Egan's then label] put out so many records. It's like throwing 100 socks at a wall, two of them stick and they throw everything at those socks. The rest of the socks are binned and Ritualwas one of those binned socks."
While Ritualwon the Choice Music Prize in Ireland, Egan found that "the wind went out of the sail with the whole English thing" afterwards. "It does affect your confidence," says Egan about such business machinations.
“As much as you try not to let it get to you, it gets in there and eats away at you. It’s really hard, especially if the record isn’t getting promoted and you’re looking at trying to put a tour together and you begin to ask yourself ‘what am I doing here?’
“It forces you to decide why you are making music. You have to go through all this shit in your head and come out the other end, where you either get a job in Google or you continue to make music for the right reasons.”
Egan had already removed the safety net of a decent job to go full-time with his music. “I had a very good job working as an audio-visual guy. I did sound for George Bush when he came over and I did sound for Prince Charles too. It was well-paid, but it was taking up too much of my time, so I left.
“My dad said it was a big mistake but I knew I had to do it and it was the best thing I ever did. It has been difficult, but you have more focus if you do it. You don’t have a safety net so you have to make it work.” Making a living solely as a working musician is difficult, as Egan knows only too well.
“This Jape album will cost me personally €25,000 at least. It’s expensive, but the pay-off is that hopefully people will get to know the album and I’ll be able to do bigger gigs by Christmas and make some money out of it.
“The economics of being a musician are hard, but it is coming more out into the open. Richard Russell from XL Records said it right: you can survive but you have to be clever. You can’t sit around all day drinking beer or smoking grass, you have to be focused.”
Unlike many of his peers, Egan is relentlessly upbeat and positive about what lies ahead. “When I look at a lot of Irish musicians my age and the younger guys coming up, sometimes you see these guys in black leather jackets taking cocaine and they clearly hate music and they’re completely washed up. That’s a thing you can’t do. You have to remember why the fuck you’re making music in the first place.
“That’s why it’s important to see new bands and, I know this sounds cheesy, see if you can feel some honest emotion coming from them. That honesty is the most important thing in the world. That’s what makes me excited, that’s what keeps driving me.”
Egan’s enthusiasm about new bands is refreshing, even though he points out that the lust for the new is often to the detriment of established acts like himself. “You know that Robert Anton Wilson phrase, the neophile? That’s what it seems to be about at the moment. You have to embrace the new, but don’t kill the horses who have run the races in the past.”
But the last thing Egan intends to be is bitter. “Getting bitter is pointless. I’ve always said that, even when I was a kid.Look at that movie Benda Bilili and what they’ve gone through. I cried about five times watching that. That’s what music is about. It’s amazing to think that you can sit in a room with a guitar and make shit happen.But people don’t see that. They see the good shit, they don’t see the hard shit, but it’s how you deal with the hard shit that gets to the good shit. It’s a lot to do with positivity. You have to keep going and doing things for the right reasons.
“There are times when people will think you’re cool and will pay attention to you and there are other times when you will be ignored. I mean, it happens to everyone. Johnny Cash had to dress up as a chicken in the 1980s to get noticed.”
Would Egan dress up as a chicken? “I would totally dress up as a chicken for money. I’d be the best fucking chicken ever.”
Ocean Of Frequencyis released today on Music Is For Losers. Jape plays Cork's Cyprus Avenue tonight, Dublin's Button Factory tomorrow and tours Ireland throughout October. See japemusic.com
