Jape's fine new album, the Thin Lizzy- inspired Ritual, moves Crumlin boy Richie Egan firmly out of the shadow of his other band, The Redneck Manifesto, writes Tony Clayton-Lea
SO, THERE we are, the Japemeister (aka Richie Egan) and The Ticket, upstairs in Bewley's on Dublin's Grafton Street. We're watching the world stroll by below us and talking about such first-world concerns as how frustrating it can be when scheduled release dates for albums get thrown out with the rubbish, how confidence can be eroded, how home studios can be upgraded, and how the music industry sometimes doesn't know its hairy arse from its smooth elbow.
And then it suddenly happens: stray thoughts strike The Ticketabout Egan's less than lustrous moustache: has he just forgotten to shave his upper lip for the past week? Did he grow it in homage to Barry McGuigan or Phil Lynott? It is the stylistic elephant in the room. Tourists look concerned; the wait staff could well be avoiding our table. The ghost of Lynott himself looks up from Grafton Street as if to ask: Richie, pal - what gives?
Well, this is Egan's Phil Lynott phase. It isn't that Jape's new album, Ritual, surges forth from the speakers in a rage of interlocking twin guitars, long hair, leather trousers, a twinkle in the eye and a query on whether you'd like a little bit of Irish in you; it's just that he has a song called Phil Lynotton the album.
"The song is the story and the story is the song," says Egan, a master of understatement.
"Some time back, I was at a Mastodon gig on the night there was a lunar eclipse. My dad phoned to tell me it was about to happen, so we went outside the venue, and just as the eclipse started, Mastodon began to play Thin Lizzy's Bad Reputation.
"So. A Lizzy song, a lunar eclipse, loads of rockers around me. Without being all hippy-dippy about it, it was a total moment, and I felt something about the power that music can have. The next morning I woke up and wrote the song in about 10 minutes. It was like spirit writing."
You wouldn't have thought that someone of Egan's age (at 30 he wasn't even born when Thin Lizzy were at the height of their powers; at a rough estimate - not that we're dwelling on it - he was probably just out of nappies when they began their decline) and creative proclivities would be affected so much by a song that isn't exactly regarded as a Lizzy classic.
Still, as Egan says, total moments are total moments. And besides, historically and geographically he shares Lynott's Crumlin background. "Who isn't a Thin Lizzy fan, anyway? I grew up in Crumlin; my da went to school with Lynott, and my ma saw him from when he was in The Black Eagles. So his music was always around me as I was growing up."
Moustache explained, then, if not necessarily condoned.
Ritualis Egan's third album under the guise of Jape, a one-time side project that has gradually taken over his (still) strong interests in Dublin band The Redneck Manifesto (RM). Where RM can be vaguely defined as post-rock, Egan's solo work is more classically educated in the art of pop/rock, a little bit ahead of its time yet also inherently here and now.
The plan, he says, was to have Ritualout last year, but the release got derailed, not easy for a self-confessed control freak to deal with. Every cloud has a silver lining, though, and as the album sat on a shelf, Egan began to inhabit a Zen-like state of acceptance and focus.
"Having that delay between recording the album and its eventual release focused me on the songwriting aspect of my life, and what it told me was that songwriting is possibly the only thing I can really control. I'm just glad Ritualis now out. It was the most difficult album I've done, because I really pushed myself in the songwriting areas.
"I've come to this conclusion: the only thing I aim for is to try to get better at songwriting. Outside of that, there isn't much more I want to do. For starters, songwriting keeps me sane.
"In the overall scheme of things, it doesn't really matter whether you become famous or whether people like you. What matters is that you get through your life, and what gets me through the night, so to speak, is songwriting, so that is where my focus will be.
"I'll go with the flow, the ride, and if things happen then fine. If Jape falls on its ass then I can go back to my old job of audiovisual technician."
Back in the day - long out of nappies, surrounded by Thin Lizzy records and memories at home, watching Top of the Pops, dreaming of one day having a moustache as stylish as Phil Lynott's - Egan's teenage ambitions were more along the lines of being famous and filthy rich.
"When I started playing first," he recalls, "I was into Nirvana, and had the notion of being a big star - even though, there I was, writing the shittiest of songs on a four-track, and writing lyrics about collecting dead flies. Over time, though, your focus changes as to why you play music. Then music turns into a crutch that you need, and gradually I realised I couldn't live without it. The tipping point arrives where you do it because you need to do it, have to do it, rather than just want to."
And what of Ritual? Is it the pinnacle of his achievements so far? "You put so much of yourself into it that you think you can't possibly make another record, but as soon as it was mastered and I listened to it twice, I knew I needed to make one more.
"Damn! It's like starting all over again. Hence the title."
Ritualis on release through Co-Op/V2. Jape perform at Dublin's Andrew's Lane Theatre on June 14th as part of the Future Days Festival. www.myspace.com/jape
JAPE AND THE REDNECKS
Richie Eganon his two bands
"THE WAY I divide my time and work between Jape and Redneck Manifesto is very simple. With the Rednecks we always write together in a room, the five of us, bouncing ideas off of each other. That's the only time we write; when we're not in a room together, I'm off doing Jape stuff.
"No one brings in songs or snippets of songs or a riff, we just jam continuously for ages, and we know instinctively which ideas we'll keep and which ones we'll throw away. By this stage, we have a good relationship, we do our own thing and we continue to do it, and it's great. But outside of Redneck Manifesto, it's just Jape and me.
"I can't see where Jape will supersede what I do with the Rednecks. It would need to be a death for me to make that choice. Let's put it this way: I could go away and tour for two years, yet come back to Dublin and still reconnect back in with them.
"There have been times this year where Jape - which is a very solitary thing - has taken over, whereas playing with the Rednecks is like a release. For starters, RM is a very unusual band. We don't play gigs that often; we don't tour. Band members have family things to do, so we're limited in a way as to what we can do, but, that said, we can easily fit in what we do around Jape.
"The members of RM love playing together, but we'll do it at our own pace. There has never been any major record company involvement, and we've never tried to make any kind of a career out of it.
"We're a strange, cantankerous bunch - we love playing, but yet we say no to almost everything we're asked to do. It's almost cultish, but after 11 years of being together as friends and a band, it works for us.
"Ultimately, as long as we feel like that, we'll all keep going."
