Shut The Folk Up

AS the sun begins to set on the final year of the millennium, rock fans are reflecting on the music of the past, present and future, and asking themselves some deep questions, like, Did Dylan sell out when he went electric in 1966? Or Was Jeff Buckley's drowning an accident or suicide? And Did a big yellow taxi really take away Joni Mitchell's old man?

One question that should be asked, however, is: do we really need another folk hero? And if we do need one, can a 24-year-old Dubliner named Paddy Casey fill those muddy boots, or will he get bogged down by a whole half-century of unrealistic expectations?

Paul McGuinness certainly seems to think that the young busker with the Marc Bolan hair and boyish grin will go the distance: the U2 manager has signed Casey up to his Principle Management stable, and with Sony's S2 label also owning a piece of the young ingenue, the big boys are definitely roping in behind their guitar-toting young buck.

The press release can't cover the suspicion that Casey is an untried - and untested - newcomer in the big rock'n'roll arena. The bumph details his early years as a busker in Dublin, then points out that he also busked in Galway. It lists his recent support slots with artists such as Elliot Smith, Blondie, Ian Brown, Tracey Chapman, David Gray and Ani Di Franco, plus appearances at Glastonbury and The Fleadh. So the kid has proven he can cut it live, but we'll have to wait and see if he has won himself enough new fans to shift his debut album, Amen (So Be It).

At the launch of said album, in Whelans on Wexford Street last week, Paul McGuinness presided over a media circus which resembled a crowded Noah's Ark of chattering socialites, gibbering hacks and garrulous musos, with Paddy Casey as the single musical minnow in the middle. At one stage, a hapless media type sidled up to this journalist, and, unaware that McGuinness was standing directly in front of him, began to deliver an on-the-spot critique of the lone lad on stage, right in the middle of a quiet, cello-drenched rendition of Everybody Wants. The U2 manager rounded angrily upon the speaker.

Casey won't have McGuinness there at every gig to silence the critics for him, so the young man with the guitar and a bunch of self-written songs will just have to stand on his own two flared-trousered feet. It sounds like he's well up to the task, if the positive reviews for his UK performances are anything to go by. But while there seems to be a unanimously good opinion of Ireland's latest musical export, the British media can't seem to decide whether he's Donovan with a brogue or Christy Moore's nephew.

"Irish, wears green," is Casey's short summary of the UK's perception. We're in Slattery's pub in Dublin's Beggar's Bush, a week before the album's release, and Casey has taken a break from rehearsing to do another quick jump through the media hoops. "Some people have this funny view about my name. One person gave me a review saying the songs were great, and then said, what the fuck kind of name is that for a rock star? There are going to be people saying, `well, he's Irish, he plays an acoustic guitar, so whatever', but I don't really mind. "

His name may sound like that of a sean nos singer, but Casey's music, which uses drum loops and synthesisers along with the traditional acoustic instruments, may quickly dispel that impression, once people get to hear it. Which brings us to another problem: how to market a guitar-strumming troubador in a world of disposable teeny-pop, consumer-friendly car ad jingles, and The Venga Boys.

"People love that, though, because they never get that on the radio," is Casey's optimistic answer. "There's no one on the radio who just plays acoustic guitar and sings, so people love it when they get it - it's just like an extra Christmas present or something. It's funny, because I've been doing gigs in Whelan's, and I'd expect a certain type of people to come along, and they wouldn't show up, but then there'd be a whole load of people whom I didn't know. "Like, I always try to remember faces when I'm playing a gig, looking out into the audience, but even before I'd signed, there'd be people who were 16 and people who were 40 who I'd never seen before in my life. What were they doing there? I don't know."

Maybe people do need another folk hero - they just don't realise it yet. Casey, however, is not ready to play the guru-with-guitar role right now, so if anyone is looking for a folk icon to worship, they won't find a willing Buddha in this boy. "I haven't even released a record yet," he protests. "I don't even think about that. The only thing I can say is, there's no answers on the album, there's only questions. Probably the same things everybody else is wondering about, like what's the meaning of life? That's all music is, people following other people's confusion." It's a strange irony in modern music that if an artist can eloquently articulate his or her own confusion in a song, then he or she is deemed to have all the answers. Thus Thom Yorke is cast as rock's wired-up oracle, Richard Ashcroft is Solomon in a beanie hat, and Jewel is the girl with the pearls of wisdom. When someone actually offers an answer on record, it usually turns out to be something mundane like "use sunscreen".

For his own heroes, Casey looked no further than Grafton Street, to the buskers who plied their trade outside the shopfronts of Dublin's main pedestrian thoroughfare. While still a teenager, Casey was more likely to be found on the street than at school - giving his undivided attention to buskers like Glen Hansard and Mark Dignam. "When I was a kid and starting, just walking in Grafton Street, I used to see Glen and Mark busking, and I swear, they were better than anything that was on the telly. They saved me from television, in a way. I was always into music, you know, but seeing people who were so talented playing on Grafton Street . . . there was something kind of special about what they were doing."

Hansard later ended up on the telly, starring as Outspan in The Commitments, and fronting The Frames, but back in the late 1980s, he was the unofficial leader of a raggle-taggle group of young people who regularly performed on Grafton Street. When Casey first encountered this motley musical crew at the tender age of 14, he had just quit school, left home, and was living at his brother's flat in Dorset Street. He hadn't even heard of people like Bob Dylan, being more preoccupied with The Thompson Twins, The Cure and The Smiths. Casey did have an acoustic guitar, however, and so he eagerly joined up with this busking brotherhood.

"I would probably have gone down a totally different path if I hadn't been welcomed," says Casey of those times as a teenage truant. "I could have gone down some dodgy routes." Instead, Casey's path took him to auditions for The Commitments, where he very nearly got a bit part - as a busker. "I went in and I gave a false name 'cos I didn't think I was going to get a part. I just made up a name - L'Orange de Gateau - and did a song and a screen test. So then your man Alan Parker called down to my house in Crumlin in a big white stretch limo, and me ma answered the door, and Parker goes, `does L'Orange De Gateau live here?' and she said, `no, perhaps you should try Cashel Avenue'."

In the event, Parker tracked down the young Casey, but his part still ended up on the cutting-room floor. Undaunted, Casey carried on busking, writing songs, and performing regularly at various singer-songwriter nights. It was at one of these gigs that Casey caught the ear of Hugh Murray, Sony Ireland's Irish A&R rep. One signature later, and Casey is standing alone in a crowded venue filled to overflowing with media sharks, trying to keep his head above water while his high-powered manager snaps at noisy members of the audience. Casey, however, will not be drowned out, and so he exercises his own bit of crowd control, flexing his folk-hero muscles a little too. "Shut the f*** up," he orders the assembled liggers. "It's my gig." The crowd cheers his bottle, then falls silent as Casey plucks the opening chords for his finest song, Sweet Suburban Sky.

"It's not like we're scientists or anything," concludes Casey, "There's no rules to this. You've got something that's yours, but until people start liking it, it doesn't exist. You've got a song, but until people wanna hear it and call it a song, then it's not a song. It's not solid. It needs validation. When somebody turns around and says, `will you play that song?', that's when it becomes a song to me."

Paddy Casey's debut album, Amen (So Be It), is out now on Sony S2 Records. Paddy Casey will be performing at the Fleadh in Finsbury Park tomorrow (Sat 10th).