ROCK'N'ROLL KIDS: There's a growth area in the msuic industry in Ireland, but it's not album or ticket sales that are booming - it's babies
TYPICAL – YOU WAIT nine months for a baby to come along, and then a whole bunch of them arrive at once. The economy may be going bust, but the Irish music biz is in the middle of a rock’n’roll baby boom, as doom and gloom gives way to gummy smiles and rosy-cheeked grins.
The global music industry is going through a mid-life crisis right now – record companies are losing the battle against music streaming, downloading and file-sharing; record stores are losing their place on the high street and concert promoters are losing their capacity to fill venues.
But one area where there’s no sign of a downturn is in the maternity ward – this year has seen a bumper crop of rock’n’roll babies, and more music biz couples are finding themselves with a plus one – a little bundle of maximum joy.
Singers, musicians, publicists, radio DJs, venue promoters, record shop owners and band managers – even music journalists – are stagediving headlong into parenthood without even pausing to check the sound levels, and discovering that parenthood is even wilder than any gig. Yes, having babies is the new rock’n’roll, and dadrockers and mumrockers are firmly back in fashion.
Publicist Stevo Berube and his wife, music solicitor Eileen O’Gorman, expanded their posse with the arrival of baby Bébhinn last March. In the same week, Eileen’s childhood friend, singer-songwriter Mundy, and his partner Sarah, gave birth to their daughter, Eden. Also that same week, EMI’s Pete Murphy, who used to work in Tower Records with Stevo, became a proud daddy when his wife Claire gave birth to baby Erin.
While Stevo nervously paced the corridor of the Coombe Hospital awaiting news from within, he was joined by Late Late Show music associate Dermot McEvoy, who was also anticipating the birth of his first child. In radioland, Phantom FM DJs Pete Vamos, aka Sinister Pete, and Moss Breathnach aka Jack Hyland displayed sharp timing by becoming dads in the same week.
And Dave Kennedy and Julie Collins, who run Road Records in Fade Street, had the most important shipment of their lives when young Paddy rocked into their world.
If the music biz makes it through the downturn, there’ll be a whole new generation of rock’n’roll kids ready to take the reins – with their parents setting the example, the industry is sure to be in good hands.
DAVE KENNEDY AND JULIE COLLINS WITH THEIR SON PADDY
One night can change your whole life; when Dave Kennedy and Julie Collins got together over a few drinks and decided to open their own record shop, it was the start of a great adventure. That was 12 years ago, and since then Road Records in Fade Street in Dublin’s city centre has navigated the ups and downs of the music industry. Late last year, however, it looked as if the needle had run off the groove for Road Records, and Dave and Julie were facing the prospect of closing the shop for good. With a new baby on the way, this was the worst time to be going out of business.
But friends of the couple, along with many of the city’s bands and musicians, rowed in to hold a gig for the ailing shop and encourage people to drop in and make a purchase. International Record Store Day, held last April, also raised awareness of this little gem of a shop that specialises in the best of new Irish indie music.
Now that Road Records is back on track, Dave and Julie can concentrate on the business in hand – bringing up Paddy and showing him the path of true musical appreciation.
Dave listens to old folk, blues and reggae, and when he and Paddy are playing together on a Sunday morning, Dave likes to play gospel music for baby. Julie, on the other hand, says she likes “twee, indie music like Camera Obscura and Belle Sebastian.” Both have a rule that they don’t talk about work while they’re at home, but they will happily bring work home with them — the latest Sonic Youth album, for instance. Julie is on maternity leave so it’s up to Dave to bring home the good albums to listen to at night. “I know her tastes by now, so I know what not to bring home.”
As for Paddy’s tastes, says Julie, “as long as he likes music and gets pleasure from it, I’ll be happy.” Of more immediate concern is Paddy’s reluctance to stay asleep for very long. “We started the controlled crying last night, and it was heartbreaking,” says Julie. “He’s a rock’n’roll baby – he doesn’t need any sleep,” reckons Dave.
They named him Paddy after Julie’s dad, who died two years ago. “It’s a strong name,” says Dave. “And, no matter where he goes in the world, no one will have to ask him where he’s from.”
The couple are full of praise for the staff at the Coombe Hospital who helped them through what was a very difficult birth. “We went from one midwife to about nine people in the space of five minutes. We went public and the care was just amazing.”
They also had help from their staff at Road Records who kept the show on the road during the busy Christmas period. But soon after Paddy was born, the couple had to come to terms with the prospect that the shop may not have been able to reopen in January. “We started to think, OK, there has to be a future for him, so we had to make some hard decisions.” “It really, really was a wake-up call,” says Julie.
With a little help from their friends, the couple managed to stabilise the shop. It helps that they stock a wide range of new Irish music, which is eagerly bought up by local fans as well as international collectors. However, Dave has noticed that people are spending less money across the board, and foregoing luxuries such as the new Arctic Monkeys album on vinyl.
But they’ll keep the shop going as long as possible, and are hoping their son might start working summers there and learn the gospel of rock’n’roll. Well he’s already taken over the place.
PETE VAMOS AND LEONA KEALEY-VAMOS WITH LEO
“It was a hell of an achievement, and it’s still quite a struggle. Because things change, rules change and you have to adapt to the changes. Sometimes it’s a little bewildering, alright, but you just go forward and do the best you can do.” Pete Vamos, aka Sinister Pete, is recalling how he felt when Phantom FM finally won its broadcasting licence and became a legitimate alternative rock radio station. He could just as easily be talking about a more recent event — when his son Leo arrived and turned the whole show on its head. His wife, Leona, sums up the experience of the past six months: “You can tackle anything if you’re not exhausted.”
On the face of it, Pete and Leona’s origins seem poles apart. He hails from a remote mining town in northwest Quebec; she’s from Limavaddy in Co Derry. He’s Jewish; she’s Catholic. But the couple, who live in Fairview on Dublin’s northside, have plenty in common – not the least of it being a love of music.
As well as being a DJ, Pete is the programme director at Phantom, and he oversees the Rock Census, Phantom’s weekly hit parade of most popular bands.
“I’m always amazed when I go into town and I see young people of 13, they’d be listening to bands that I listened to when I was their age,” notes Leona, a self-confessed rock chick. “AC/DC has never gone out of fashion.” Leona did her degree in marketing, working for Eircell before it became Vodafone, then changed career to teach English as a foreign language.
Leo was born by emergency Caesarean at 38 weeks, and weighed 5lbs 2oz. Both parents found the birth experience “surreal”. Since then, says Leona, he’s been “a dream”, going to sleep at 7.30pm and staying down till 6am. Pete puts it down to “routine, routine, routine”, but Leona reckons they’re just lucky to have a baby who is so easygoing.
“We divvied everything up when Leo arrived,” says Pete. “My goal was, when I saw how exhausted Leona was in the hospital, get this girl as much sleep as she possibly can, because a woman without sleep is a nightmare.” Leona has taken an additional four months of unpaid maternity leave so she can spend the summer with Leo – taking the pressure off Pete, who often has to go into the radio station late at night to sort out some issue or other.
Neither has had time to ponder the implications of becoming new parents just at a time when the economic outlook is bleak. “It was too late,” laughs Leona. “When the credit crunch hit, I was already pregnant.” Choosing a name could well have caused conflict – the name Leo turned out to be a good compromise. “It’s my dad’s name,” says Leona. “There’s lots of Leos and Leonas in my family.”
“I said Leopold, that’s a great Jewish name,” says Pete, “and she said, no way. It’s Leo.” Choosing Leo’s religion could also have been a bone of contention, but Pete is happy to let him grow up a Catholic — although he will make sure Leo stays connected to his Jewish heritage. “I think it’s important that children have some sort of basis to look at life. Because when life gets hard, you have to fall back on something, and if you don’t have something to fall back on, you can fall back on things that aren’t going to help you, like alcohol, drugs, and bad relationships.”
Pete is worried that Leona’s love of 1980s hair metal may adversely influence Leo’s musical tastes. “His first love appears to be Motley Crue,” he notes with concern. “But how can you say to somebody, this is what I want you to listen to, and this is what I don’t want you to listen to. What you do is, you live your life and listen to the things you listen to, and if they like it, fine.”
PETE AND CLAIRE MURPHY WITH THEIR DAUGHTER ERIN
EMI’s Pete Murphy and his wife Claire could make an iPod playlist that charts their entire relationship. Lenny Kravitz would be on it – the couple met when Pete was shipping Lenny Kravitz’s Greatest Hits to Golden Discs in Santry, where Claire worked.
Their first date was a Gomez gig, so they’d be on the playlist, too. And Flaming Lips would take pride of place – it was onstage at a Flaming Lips gig in Nowlan Park in Kilkenny that Pete proposed to Claire. The fact that he was wearing a Santa suit and she was wearing a purple alien costume only added to the sense of occasion.
Their daughter, Erin, was born in Holles Street on March 29th, a week early. “It was Earth Day,” recalls Claire, and we were sitting at home with the lights out, watching telly. I had plans to go curtain-rail shopping and do my iPod playlist for when I went into labour, but when I went to bed my waters broke.”
She never got a chance to make her labour ward playlist, which would have included Ben Folds, Belle Sebastian and The Beatles, so she just listened to Phantom FM instead.
Pete reckons Erin came early because “she was so incensed that Kilbane scored an own goal against Bulgaria.” They had been considering the name Erin, but Pete also liked Tabitha, because that was the name of a character in one of his favourite vintage TV shows, Bewitched. “But we thought with that name she might get picked on in the playground,” says Pete. “So we settled on Erin. It was only afterwards I found out that Tabitha was played by an actress named Erin Murphy.” Spooky.
Pete’s love of music and his encyclopaedic knowledge of it led him to gainful employment in Virgin and Our Price in Dublin and London. He also did a stint in Freebird Records. When he worked at Tower Records, customers would come in, hum a snatch of a song they’d heard, and Pete would tell them the song title, artist and (probably) the catalogue number.
He has been with EMI for the past 10 years, and has seen it go through numerous changes since being taken over by Terra Firma. But though it has all gone very corporate, Pete’s still a true believer. “I think if you like music you’ll generate your own excitement.”
This year, he’s excited by the imminent arrival of the Beatles remasters on September 9th, not least because baby Erin’s also a Beatles fan. “She likes Abbey Road.”
There was a time when Pete and Claire would have been spotted together at every gig – sometimes even onstage with the band – but they admit they haven’t been to a gig since Erin was born. For Claire, who now works as a civil servant, having a baby has changed her priorities. “I’ve stopped buying a lot of records because other things take precedence, like nappies and formula,” she laughs. “I went to Edinburgh recently and I didn’t even go into Avalanche Records. I went to the Disney store instead.”
Pete often has to stay out all day and evening looking after one of his label’s signings, but the pair manage to work together to make sure both get maximum time with Erin. After all, the bands will always be there – but you’re only a baby for a short period of time.
“We’ll still go to Electric Picnic,” they insist. “We have her pink ear protectors already.”
TEVO BERUBE AND EILEEN O’GORMAN WITH BÉBHINN
A change is gonna come, wrote Sam Cooke way back in 1963. Music publicist Stevo Berube has seen that change, and it’s come in all corners of the music biz.
“A lot of my clients, and a lot of people in the industry – everyone I’m talking to is a new parent. I’d call someone up to discuss an upcoming gig or go over the sales strategy for their new CD – we’ll talk about music for about five minutes max, and then we’ll spend an hour discussing baby stuff. Nearly everyone I’m dealing with has had a baby in the past year.”
Stevo and his wife Eileen have a lot more to talk about now since the arrival of Bébhinn on April 6th. Stevo runs Berube Communications, which promotes acts such as The Pale, Pugwash, Ham Sandwich, The Coronas, Steve Earle and The Prodigy. Eileen works as a music business solicitor with Gleeson McGrath Baldwin, specialising in copyright, publishing contracts, distribution contracts, and other aspects of intellectual property. The couple work in Temple Bar, five minutes’ walk from each other’s offices, and live on Meath Street, 15 minutes’ walk from work. You could say they’re in the thick of Dublin’s rock scene.
They’ve gone from partying five nights a week to looking after their own pint-sized party animal 24/7. “Once she gets to sleep she’s great. But getting her to sleep is a nightmare. She wants to stay up late, but doesn’t want to get up in the morning – so she’s a real rock’n’roller.”
With Eileen’s childhood friend from Birr, Mundy, and Stevo’s old workmate Pete Murphy (see above) becoming dads in the same week, it seems like there’s a whole lotta serendipity going on. “Must have been a hell of a party back in July 2008,” says Stevo. While the mummies meet to chat about breastfeeding, Stevo and his dadrocker friends discuss far more important things – such as what tunes you should play for the baby. “I’ll text Mundy and say, ah, she just went down to a Steve Earle song, and he’ll text me back and say, try this Chris Rea song. We have this whole trying-out-songs-on-your-baby network.”
Stevo comes from Houston, Texas, and went to London to study education and communication. While at college in London, he got a summer job in Tower Records in Piccadilly Circus, and ended up working there full-time. He came to Dublin to run the Wicklow Street store, but in 2000 he jumped the fence from retail to running his own press and promotions company. He works by the rock clock, which has made him better equipped to deal with the demands of a new infant.
“Because I do a lot of my work through the night when it’s quiet, my body clock is already set to the night feeds and stuff.”
“We’re hoping that when I go back to work, I’ll do nine to five, and Stevo will do baby nine to five,” says Eileen, who is on maternity leave for the rest of the summer. “We can flip-flop for the first few months and see how we go, because obviously we have to get some time to see each other as well. At the moment, it’s fine because we’re still in the babymoon period, but I look at people I work with who have husbands in the same job, and they’re rushing to the creche – no flexibility really. We have a lot of flexibility.”
Both would like to see baby Bébhinn getting a good, all-round musical education. “We’ve been chatting to a friend of ours who works in education about sending her to a school with a music grounding,” says Eileen. “We live close to the music school in St Patrick’s Cathedral, although I don’t know if they take girls at junior level. You’d like them to have exposure to music of all kinds. I grew up in an opera home – the only loud music allowed in our house was dad blaring opera and classical. My mum still comes up for the Concert Hall, and then there’s the whole rock festival side that we’re into.”
Neither is unduly worried about bringing up baby in the so-called current climate. “I think the whole slowdown gave people a chance to start thinking about having babies,” Eileen says.
“I think of someone like Arlo Guthrie,” Stevo says. “He was born in dustbowl America in the Great Depression, and he got along just fine. Naw, we’re not worried, we’ll just get on with it. Actually, the recession is a good time for babies, because everything is cheaper.”
TANYA LAWLESS AND MOSS BREATHNACH WITH SOPHIA
Here’s a tip for mummies-to-be planning to have their babies in the Rotunda – try to go into labour just before tea-time, because that’s when you get the best treatment. At least, that’s the experience of venue and festival promoter Tanya Lawless when she went in to have her baby Sophia last December.
“She was two weeks late, she took her time, but we were lucky in that there were no complications. But we both thought it through and we were prepared for anything.”
“We definitely had all the angles covered,” agrees her partner, Moss Breathnach, DJ and events manager for Phantom FM. Sophia was born on December 11th, weighing a healthy 8lb 6oz, “and she didn’t leave too much weight on me, thankfully,” says Tanya. “I swam a lot right up to the time she was born, and I think that helped me.”
Tanya is from Drumcondra, where she and Moss now live, and she is events organiser for Radio City, the indie rock venue just across the road from Busaras, booking such popular acts as The Flaws, The Minutes and Oliver Cole for her monthly unsigned bands showcase. “It’s a really nice night that brings people out of the woodwork and it fills the place.
But I have to work very hard for the good nights.” She also hops back and forth from Denmark in her capacity as Irish promoter for the massive Roskilde festival. “It’s wonderful, because I did live abroad for quite a few years, and it’s nice now to be based in Dublin and near my family with my new life, and also to have the chance to travel a bit, and integrate with other European people in a different setting.” Moss hails from Churchtown – or the independent republic of Churchtonia, as it’s known in rock circles – and is better known to radio listeners as Jack Hyland, the man at the wheel of Phantom FM’s drivetime show, Heavy Traffic.
He also organises events such as Phantom’s popular First Friday gigs. Neither has what you could call a nine-to-five job, but they now have to plan their schedule around the main event in their lives. “It works very well, because I get the core of my work done in the mornings, and Moss’s day would start at around 11. So he looks after Sophia in the mornings, and we have a childminder in, and I’m back at 5pm, and then Moss is back at nine in the evening. We balance it out quite well. We have set schedules, but we do have to have a certain amount of flexibility. We compromise.
Moss wanted to go and see Joan as Policewoman, and I wanted to see her too, but I could sacrifice that one. And I’m going to see Chris Cornell on Sunday and Moss has to do the babysitting.” Sophia’s musical development is being well looked after. “Music is the most important thing,” says Moss. “We have her listening to anything from Mozart through to indie bands like The Minutes, to Radiohead to The Beatles. She is definitely gonna be a rock’n’roll baby. I’ve played in bands, and I’ve done a lot of stuff in the music scene, but this is the most fulfilled I’ve ever felt.”