Photo credit: Acacia Evans
Tell us about your tour vehicle.
As we are based in Ireland, when we tour in the US we typically drive a rental – a sprinter van. We’ve done some pretty wild travel condensed in one weekend of festivals. Once we did a night in Kansas City Irish festival, flew to Denver to drive up and down to Four corners folk fest deep in the San Juan mountains in the southern Rockies, only to finish the weekend atop Mount Hood, Oregon.
How do you eat cheaply and/or healthy while on tour?
We eat lots of healthy food, not always cheaply, but we are a band that runs on our stomachs! Lots of Mediterranean /middle eastern, Mexican, Japanese and some bbq here and there!
How many strings do you break in a typical year? How much does it cost to replace them?
We don’t break too many strings nowadays- we’ve got the string change routine dialed in- strings aren’t too expensive. Fergal our fiddler can change a guitar string in under a minute so he’s our on-stage ninja!
Where do you rehearse?
We rehearse in different spots as we are all spread out – we’ve had some great experiences in rural west Ireland, where we’ve rented a house and just played for a week or more – that really fuels the collective creative brain.
What was the title and a sample lyric from the first song that you wrote?
One of the first self-penned songs we recorded as a band was tell me why – which dave wrote – and there’s a great line about “houses on the hills lie empty and haunted” which was in reference to the wild turn of events in 08’ when the world went mad on house speculation!
Describe your first gig.
The first gig we played as a band in the US was Milwaukee Irish fest – we played a tiny tent in a huge rainstorm and it was filled full of folks – a really memorable time!
What was your last day job? What was your favorite day job?
We all worked different jobs/gigs before we banjo 3 – Enda worked as a food safety officer, Martin was doing a PhD in engineering, David was studying mechanical engineering.
How has your music-related income changed over the past 5-10 years? What do you expect it to look like 5-10 years from now?
Most of our income is live music performance, with a small trickle from royalties – who knows what it will look like in a few years!
What one thing do you know now that you had wished you knew when you started your career in music?
We learned how to travel well and balance time well on the road – we learned that through some mistakes as we went! Still learning!