Joe Philpott

00:00:00 Joe Philpott: There were days where I hadn’t spoken and it would be just eight o’clock at night when I was sitting down for dinner or seven o’clock first time you have a conversation and you were still you were thinking about tomorrow’s what you’re gonna do in the morning and it was all in your own head. And it didn’t exist yet. It was and I had that wobble where I realised halfway through it, oh shit like I’m one of these dudes who’s writing the book that might not come out. Imagine that! The best advice I got at the start of it was don’t tell people, show people. Just show people what it was. I was able to do that, I think, which was a great discovery for me, that I can actually translate those pictures into words. You’ve got to be able to pick yourself sometimes and realise that when you’re at the table, you realise most people aren’t all that. There’s a lot of facade and everyone’s making it up as they go along. Obviously people put work in and get qualifications and establish themselves in terms of their knowledge of things, but when you’re at the table, you more than belong there.

00:01:20 Geraldine Hennessy: So today we chat to musician and writer Joe Philpott on the Cork Creative Podcast. You’re very welcome, Joe.

00:01:27 Joe Philpott: Thank you, Geraldine and thanks for having me. I appreciate it.

00:01:30 Geraldine Hennessy: So growing up in Bishopstown, how did the local Cork environment and music scene shape your early ambitions with Ruby Horse?

00:01:39 Joe Philpott: I think with Ruby Horse, I mean, I started secondary school in Colaiste An Spioraid Naoimh in Bishopstown, and I was living in Ballincollig, and my best friends when I was in nursery school were the guys in Ruby Horse, and I moved out to Ballincollig and went to national school there. So I reconnected with them. When I went back into first year, and in the 80s, late 80s in Ireland, your identity hinged on, you know, what sport you played, what band you were in, more accurately in our case.

00:02:09 Joe Philpott: So it was actually second year, we kind of had that summer of boredom that everybody traditionally has, and we were lounging around out in the commercials football field, and we just kind of got it into our heads that we were just venture to this little room that our original drummer, his sister, had a band. They were about seven or eight years older than us. So when we walked in, it was like walking into Toy Town. It was like, welcome to Toy Town, Noddy. Everything was there, guitars, bass, drums, a really bad smell, which we didn’t mind. And we just kind of assigned ourselves to our instruments based on, I had a guitar, you look like a drummer, you look like a bass player, and that was kind of the start of the development of the band.

00:03:02 Joe Philpott: The school environment itself was pretty incredible. We had a teacher, his name is Tony Dougherty, the Doc, and huge advocate for the arts. And we were very lucky in Spioraid Naoimh at the time. It’s not there anymore now, which is a shame, but there was a school stage, which was actually almost like a state of the art theatre. Even things, sound and lights were already there, which was incredible, even for people who just wanted to get into the technical side of it. Actually, a couple of lads that went through the school ended up becoming techs because of that, being in that environment on a basic level. But you know what, it was up there. And that environment, that encouragement. Gave us a platform and an audience as well, because we had the hall, the stage, the lights, and our peers and their friends, and we were encouraged to kind of put on shows.

00:03:53 Joe Philpott: So that was huge. Stepping out of that, we kind of, I suppose, realised that in order to be a real band, you needed to play venues around town at the time. It was a massive scene. In Cork City, Sir Henry’s was probably the beacon of everyone’s dreams. And you didn’t really become a band until you crossed that threshold into the liminal space of Sir Henry’s. Which is what we kind of bluffed our way into. At the age of 15, Tony O’Donoughue, who was a promoter in Cork at the time, he’s RTE Sports reporter now, he kind of really liked us. And even though we were very young, he gave us the opportunity to play openers for Something Happens, The Stunning, A House, any band that was coming through, we pretty much opened up for.

00:04:40 Geraldine Hennessy: And that was a huge thing for a bunch of kids.

00:04:43 Joe Philpott: Absolutely, yeah. Right. Yeah, yeah. So it kind of, we had our own. We were pretty good. For a 20 minute set, 25 minute set, we… And at the time, I guess when you’re 16 or 15, I mean, you have that kind of energy anyway. And we arrived up in our school uniforms, getting stopped by the bouncers at the door. And who are you? And we were like, we’re the band, we’re the opener. And they were like, “Lads, then get the school uniforms on, ride them to Red Square to get to Paisley Shirts and get geared up.” That was kind of the start of it in terms of the city and playing inside in Cork at the time.

00:05:16 Geraldine Hennessy: Yeah, yeah, yeah. That is fairly, like a fairly cool story, isn’t it? Like, I can’t even, like, there, like even just with Sir Henry, it’s like, it’s a shame it’s gone like, but it was such an epic venue, you know?

00:05:29 Joe Philpott: It was, and I mean, amazing acts coming through. Sonic Youth, Nirvana, you know, all the Irish bands that were travelling at the time, they had things like Transvision Vamp, and you had all these kind of, you know, you had incredible stuff. And of course then the dance scene, you know, it became one of the dance capitals of Europe, I suppose, or the world, in terms of what was going on there in the kind of late, end of the eighties, into the early nineties and beyond. But like, you know, either Franks, either Sultans, I mean, you did everything. I mean, Cork at the time was heaving with rehearsal rooms. Bands, I mean, if you walk through the city, France, where the lobby is, down at Union Quay, all the way across, it was just this cacophony of sound coming out of every spare, you know, upstairs office or garage you could possibly imagine. They were like, you know, definitely a couple of hundred bands knocking around the city. So crazy, but that was actually, you know, and everybody was actively gigging, and everybody was kind of like vying for existence, you know?

00:06:25 Geraldine Hennessy: Okay. And moving from Cork, then I suppose, like taking Ruby Horse from Cork to the US Billboard Top 20 is like incredible. What was it like, I suppose, transitioning from the local gigs to performing “Sparkle” on American late night television?

00:06:42 Joe Philpott: Well, there was a long journey to take from us in Fast Eddies, you know, and Tuckey Street to be on. At Sullivan’s Theatre in New York, live to 14 million people, as somebody tapped me on the shoulder two seconds before I went down and told me. But, like, I think when you commit to something in any walk of life, and you walk steadily and patiently for a long time in the same direction, the law of averages, things will happen.

00:07:11 Joe Philpott: And in our case, I think the leap we took, leaving Cork was a decision because we realised, I think to be fair, in hindsight, we were probably a bit more astute than we maybe give ourselves credit for, in the sense that we had a very clear vision as to what we were trying to achieve. And America at the time, it’s different now, obviously, but at the time, it was still that beacon of hope. In Ireland anyway, you kind of had that relationship with America, if you grew up in the eighties, a lot of friends of ours, uncles of ours, cousins of ours, had gone and done very well. And, you know, there was always that, we weren’t afraid of the word success, which probably was working against us, maybe here. We wanted to achieve, and it’s awfully uncool to say that. But we didn’t care. We actually felt, you know what, like, when I say success, I mean, life experience. I mean, we wanted to be in California’s sunshine in November, as cheesy and all as that sounds like. We had all these kind of like, we wanted to get into a yellow taxi in New York. We wanted to, you know, sit and have a pint with Norm in Cheers until we found out that Cheers didn’t actually exist.

00:08:23 Joe Philpott: And, you know, there was a naivety attached to it, but it was also a kind of an ambition, I suppose, that was a little bit, we didn’t want to go and do the squatting in London and come home miserable after eight months, you know, because we saw great bands doing that. And for us, it was like, well, we won’t survive because we don’t have that kind of, that’s not what we’re really about. We wanted to go and have that experience far away and take that leap.

00:08:51 Joe Philpott: And so it took a bit of work. We had to get our work permits, which we did. How we got that, I just, I mean, to this day, took us a year to get them. And we did it all properly, you know, which was kind of part of the reason why we were able to kind of survive out there is because the things that, the bumps that you run into, we kind of managed to kind of figure out before we left. And we had nothing going out there. Absolutely nothing. I mean, it’s people kind of don’t believe us. When we say we had a thousand euro pounds, actually, in old money, a full number, a few sleeping bags. Yeah, so there was like kind of compound interest filled up of a lot of bravery and stupidity, which is probably a recipe for success at that stage of your life. That led us to all these extraordinary experiences, one of them being the Letterman show and on.

00:09:43 Geraldine Hennessy: You sound very responsible though, for like a group of young lads coming from Cork. Like it seems like you got your work permits and everything. Like you sound like you had a good old plan to when you were going over there. It wasn’t just a spur of the moment thing.

00:09:58 Joe Philpott: Well, I wouldn’t say we were responsible in the sense we were as mad as brushes. You know, we were wild. But we did definitely have a sense of ourselves, which probably annoyed people, you know? We kind of, like even things like when I think back to before we left, we made a record in Elementary Studios in Cork and we put it out in the back and you know, at the time making a record and producing it and releasing it was the thing because people still bought CDs and there was a kind of a bit attached to it. Now you can make music on an app and release it in 10 seconds. And back then you had to kind of do a whole, which was beautiful by the way. There was a lovely process to what it was.

00:10:41 Joe Philpott: So we approached Elementary Studios and asked them could we kind of use the studio on downtime? And we made a deal with Mark Atkins. And I can’t think of the other man’s name. He was a lovely, Ger, can’t think of the second name, a Ger O’Sullivan maybe, I’m not sure somebody out there will know. And they said, look, no problem. But then we said, we’ve got no money. And he said, well, look, can you pay? So we agreed a fee and we paid them like, I think a 10 or each every week until we had paid off the cost of the record. And then we got a sponsorship deal with Guinness to do a tour and buy us a van. And so we had that sense, all right, definitely. But we weren’t, we were bonkers. I mean, we were like, there’s no identity. We were definitely not overly focused.

00:11:33 Geraldine Hennessy: Bonkers, but with a plan.

00:11:35 Joe Philpott: Yeah, definitely kind of an end game insight and a drive. I think you can Cal McCallaghan who I spoke recently, did an article on us on Black Moon Sentinel. He always remembered, she just said, I just remembered the ambition was actually terrifying. He said, like for a bunch of young fellas, even with him, he was a few years old, he kind of said to be kind of around, it was almost unnerving because there was a definite focus there, for sure. I’m probably like a bit of an eijet here now, but that’s just a fact, that’s the way it was.

00:12:10 Geraldine Hennessy: And you had an amazing opportunity to record the track Punch Drunk with George Harrison. How did that collaboration come about? And what was the most memorable part of working with him?

00:12:22 Joe Philpott: Like all of these things, I mean, the most complicated things are usually born out of the simple seeds. Nowadays, that fascinates me because when I look back on it and even writing the book, and I was looking at it and thinking, okay, if you are a kid and Cork and your parents have Sergeant Pepper and you’re looking at it, every time you put on a music channel or documentary, it tells you that the Beatles were the greatest band of all time. And you fall in love with their music and you think that’s wildly out of reach for me. And then you find yourself playing with one of them.

00:12:54 Joe Philpott: I don’t really know. I mean, like the simplest way I can put it is we asked him and he said, yes. As somebody said to me recently, one, yes, can change the trajectory of any part of your life. And that certainly did for us and continues to be something that I almost find to be from my head. We were in Los Angeles. A lot of the time too, the environment you’re in, I’m coming from Ireland and even still it’s so small. I mean, we’ve huge reach as a nation and we punch above our weight in so many different things. But when you’re home, stepping outside your doors is different to stepping outside your door when you’re in New York or when you’re in Boston or Los Angeles.

00:13:34 Joe Philpott: And in our case, we were kind of in LA at the time and our manager was picking George Harrison up from LAX. And he had the cassette on the car and he asked, George just asked, who’s that? And he said, it’s a band I’m working with from Cork. And he said, I love it, it’s great. And Jeff said to him in the rear view mirror, he said, would you play on it? And George said, yeah. And that was it. And a couple of months later, he got in touch with us and he said, I was in my kitchen and I can’t get that song out of my head. And I just, I’d love to play and send me the reels. So we sent him the tapes to his place in London. We were in Miami mixing the song. And he sent it back to us and it was done. And he charged us $25 to make it official, a kind of a union standard union fee to kind of solidify the contractual element of it. And there’s a great kind of full circle story which is in the book. So you have to buy the book to find out how it ended.

00:14:38 Geraldine Hennessy: Very good. So just ask the question. So basically if you don’t ask, you don’t receive it.

00:14:44 Joe Philpott: Well, I think so. I think there’s a huge nervousness attached all the time to us. And we always put ourselves in a, you gotta be able to pick yourself sometimes and realise that when you’re at the table, you realize most people aren’t all that. There’s a lot of facade and everyone’s making it up as they go along. Obviously people put work in and get qualifications and establish themselves in terms of their knowledge of things. But when you’re at the table, you’re more than belong there. So it’s always good to just realise that without being arrogant or without being aggressive about what you have to offer. You deserve to be there. So I think, and it’s an Irish thing too. I think we’re forever making our apologies for existing.

00:15:35 Geraldine Hennessy: Very true, very true, yeah.

00:15:37 Joe Philpott: Yeah, so like it’s sometimes it’s good to have a bit of balls and just go for it.

00:15:42 Geraldine Hennessy: Absolutely. And having shared stages with massive acts like REM and Sheryl Crow and Def Leppard, is there one specific memory from those tours that still gives you goosebumps?

00:15:56 Joe Philpott: Yeah, like I think playing, when you play stadiums, 30,000 people indoor, like it’s quite a thing. It doesn’t really ever get old. And there’s something kind of secure about it really because when you play small venues, it’s terrifying because everybody’s two feet away from you and have to know your auntie. Whereas like in a stadium, you’re just immersed in this ball of energy that’s almost bigger than you. And you’re kind of living it almost like outside of yourself and it becomes a kind of an immersive experience. So that was incredible. And with the Def Leppard, it’s all show. So you get the full whack of what that thing is. And I mean, they happen to be very nice people as well, which was very cool. I mean, we were playing club shows simultaneously to the stadiums. So like we’d be in say Indianapolis and we’d be playing a stadium and they’d come down and watch us the following night in a tiny 200 seater, they’d be in the crowd wearing our t-shirts. You know, that’s kind of, you know, pretty cool. They were lovely. I mean, it was amazing.

00:17:07 Joe Philpott: And everybody else, R.E.M were the same. Like we met them in Georgia, just walking down the street and they came to see us in the Georgia theater and we just went out for a few pints with them afterwards and they just invited us to play with them. And, you know, so things like that just kind of happened. Yeah.

00:17:25 Geraldine Hennessy: What a life you’ve lived. Isn’t it so interesting? Oh my gosh.

00:17:30 Joe Philpott: Yeah, like it was, look, we were very lucky and we were blessed. And I’m really grateful for the time we spent doing it. You know, it was in our twenties and into our early thirties which is the time to do it. And it was, all of it was, most of it was pinch me stuff, you know? And it was, there was a lot of luminous experience and experiences and bright and kind of, you were kind of aware, I wish I was more aware at the time of what it was, you know, cause I didn’t really have a sense of what it was. Really, I kind of almost had, I don’t know how to describe it, but I kind of, I don’t think I ever stopped and kind of just took a breath, you know? I think it was over before I kind of realized what it was. It’s actually only in recent years actually that retrospectively it’s been easier to digest and to take in.

00:18:30 Geraldine Hennessy: Okay. And like, it all sounds pretty amazing, but how did you, I suppose the negative side of things, like how did you navigate the intense pressures like the burnout and the shifting landscape of the US music industry?

00:18:44 Joe Philpott: That was very real. I mean, as amazing as it all was, my central nervous system, now that I know what that is, was completely shot. You know, my adrenaline was at high levels for, you know, 10 years and everything was pressure. You know, getting from one, even small things like finishing a show and wherever, having to do 1500 kilometers to get to the next one, you know, and being in a van with guys you were nursery school with and that you love, but it’s challenging, you know? And you’re away from family, you’re away from home, you’re sacrificing a lot of relationships and situations that probably need tending to, and what are you actually chasing? You know, what are you after? You know, what’s the end game? And then you have the industry, which at the time was a bit of a cesspool. Like, you know, you wouldn’t be around the great, there’s some wonderful people in it, amazing people.

00:19:48 Joe Philpott: We met like people like Steve Ralbovsky and a lot of the girls that worked on the Island Record team were lovely. I mean, lots and lots of people, but there was a lot of things that probably people still have to navigate, you know? I mean, when you look at what came out, you know, subsequently about, you know, what people were doing and the kind of abuse that maybe was going on and the manipulation and things, it’s all kind of public now, but back then you were just in it and you were around it and you were kind of going, did I just see that or hear that? And there wasn’t a whole pile you could really do about it unless, so like there was pressure and there’s also manipulation. And, you know, when you were at the party and everyone wants to be around you, or you don’t really understand what people’s motives are all the time. Like there was a lot of people making a lot of money from us. We went through various different management situations that weren’t always healthy.

00:20:45 Joe Philpott: And we were kind of like in a big, everything was high stakes. So it felt like a high stakes poker game all the time. So every time you’ve made a move, the repercussion of that move was either a success or a failure. And if you didn’t hit the bullseye, you know, you realize when you’re, I remember someone said to me one time when you’re hot, you’re hot, when you’re cold, you’re freezing. And that’s exactly what it was like. It was like when you’re the talk of the town, everybody wants to be around you. But when you were looking for a hand around the shoulder or some guidance, you’re not in the right industry for that. Good luck with that.

00:21:21 Geraldine Hennessy: And after stepping away from the commercial music scene, you worked in European hospitals and palliative care. How did that profound experience fundamentally change your relationship with music?

00:21:34 Joe Philpott: Yeah, it was a big one. It was kind of where I got back from America. After the band, we didn’t really break up. We just kind of took a break that ended up being 10 years long or more. I was completely lost. I didn’t really know. I came back home for personal reasons and I had no interest in resetting myself back in the States. I was completely institutionalised by being in the band. So I didn’t really know what I wanted to do. So I came back to Cork and I was just completely lost. I was just, I didn’t know what I wanted to do. I felt a bit broken, not overstated, but I was just very rattled. Like, from my whole identity was gone. It was just right here. What are you exactly? You’ve never really played with any other musicians. You were in the band since you were 14. You’re late twenties now, like what you wanna do? And I hadn’t a clue. And I fell out of love absolutely with the industry of music and the business music because I had absolutely no interest in that. I didn’t have the ambition that I had 10 years previous or longer to be in a band and to rev up that engine with other people at the time.

00:22:45 Joe Philpott: So I kind of met my wife, Aoibheann and her brother, Joe Carey. And we formed, they had a band called Jodavino and I started playing with them and we, it was lovely. We went to three, we were doing some beautiful tours and we were more family than anything else. And we actually went back out to Nashville and made a record. And then we came back and I married Aoibheann, Joe married my sister and we started having family. So there was a bigger question at play for me then, which was like, look, I love music, I realized, but I just didn’t, I wanted to find the value of it somewhere for me and for what could I put back into the world that was useful and valuable. So I stumbled across this training course and I said, absolutely no idea what it was. You had to go for an audition in Dublin Castle.

00:23:32 Joe Philpott: So I went, I have no idea what this is, but I’m just gonna do what it sounds cool. And I had a sense that it might be interesting and it was, so I thought I wouldn’t get it. So I arrived up and completely missed the brief, got the whole audition completely wrong, but somehow made a connection with Elaine Agnew, who was one of the, on the panel for the interview. And she, I got chosen as one of four, like there were thousands of auditions, I believe, not thousands, sorry, hundreds of auditions. And I got, I was one of the four Irish musicians.

00:24:07 Joe Philpott: It was 16 musicians from all over Europe training in each of those countries, the UK, Ireland, France and Poland. It was run by an organisation called Music Eisante, Music and Health, who were based in Paris. At the time they were running for 25 years and they had created an amazing culture of having the arts and music as a central part of the recovery process, therapeutic as opposed to therapy. So it was an amazing experience just to go there and train and work in the hospital settings and all sorts of stuff from oncology to med-el to neonatal to psychology, everything, and see their approach and do it over a two year period in different countries.

00:24:53 Joe Philpott: So it opened up a whole new worry for me in terms of how valuable music can be, like how a culture and experience when you’re actually most vulnerable. And actually, you know, what it gives people is an opportunity to say no, because when you bring music into a healthcare setting and ask and offer it, someone can say no. And very often that there’s dignity in that because it’s some of the choices. They don’t have a whole plan of choices when they’re dealing with their health. Or their lack of health or whatever it might be. So I loved it and it was an education and it was an experience that kind of made me realise, okay, this is another lane that I can occupy as a musician that I had no idea about. So I kind of developed my own practice around it then for the bones of 13 years through an organisation. I co-founded with Joe Kerry and Adrian O’Mahony, who were in the guitar club with me. And we just basically, our mantra was, let’s shine a musical light on all corners of the community.

00:25:52 Joe Philpott: And we used training I had done and a few different approaches to bring that in. And I partnered up then with Music Generation and started running programs in the city. And we did palliative care in very much hospitals. We worked in loads of different healthcare settings around the city and brought music, high quality music. St. Finbarrs Hospital was one of the most recent projects we did, it’s still running, that’s incredible. So yeah, there was a lot in that.

00:26:21 Geraldine Hennessy: I know myself, like when I was in the hospital, when I was in CUH now and there was musicians came around when I was with my child and it just made us pause and just maybe not think about what was going on with our own situation. And we just listened to the music and it was actually lovely, that kind of way. It was just a nice experience just to kind of give us time to just maybe not think about the health situation and focus on something different.

00:26:48 Joe Philpott: Yeah, I think there’s kind of a, I think I know where it comes from, but there’s a thing about music or art where it can aesthetically arrest you, where you’re not looking at it for any particular reason, you’re just getting a feeling from it that’s inexplicable. And like you say, the simplicity of it is taking you away from the core stress that you’re experiencing for no reason and then you’re actually experiencing something and an emotion that is evoking that’s a bit less stressful than whatever you’re dealing with. So it was hugely, I mean, massive thing. I mean, I loved doing it. I’ve taken a break from it because quite frankly, I don’t, again, it became very difficult to be in palliative care settings as often as I want. Experiencing the level of kind of, of kind of, I suppose, vulnerability and stress people are under and trying to provide the music. The project is still running. I’m just not front lining at the moment. I’m still involved in the organisation. I’m still involved with Adrian and setting up the different programs. And we have musicians working presently in a few different settings around the city. And I just don’t have the time actually that it deserves at the moment. So I’m not able to be there as often as I was.

00:27:59 Geraldine Hennessy: Taking a step back from it at the moment, but still behind the scenes as such.

00:28:04 Joe Philpott: Yeah, no, I definitely go back into it. It’s just, it’s full out. You can’t really just take it into play. You’ve got to be available to it and it’s something that I love doing with a heart and a half rather than kind of not really thinking about something. That’s why I’m doing it or it should be somewhere else or whatever is going on.

00:28:20 Geraldine Hennessy: Absolutely, yeah, yeah. Looking back at the highs and lows of intense international touring, what’s the most valuable lesson you’ve learned about sustaining a long-term creative career?

00:28:30 Joe Philpott: I just think you make everyday count and you look after your, you just try and think, trying not to get lost in other people’s agendas, try to kind of like understand why you’re doing it. Ask yourself why every day. And even learning to say no is really a big thing because we can all say no to things that we don’t want to do. I think to learn to say no to things that you might want to do is something I wish I was more disciplined about.

00:28:58 Joe Philpott: Because like if you, the expectation to be available as an artist is always there because people will always think that you want to be available. Everything is an opportunity. Everything is exposure, but you can die from exposure. You need to be careful of what you’re exposing yourself to and who you’re exposing yourself to and always ask yourself who are you around? Check it out, just have a look and go, if I wasn’t a musician and if I didn’t think that that person could do something for my career, would I, they say it was don’t ever be your own, but you’re at the table with people you wouldn’t starve with. And I think that’s a really good question to ask yourself.

00:29:42 Geraldine Hennessy: Good one, I don’t remember that one now. That’s a good one to remember.

00:29:47 Geraldine Hennessy: And you’re now a member of the Balincollig-based Whitehorse Guitar Club. How does the ethos of this collective differ from the ambition-driven bands of your youth?

00:29:57 Joe Philpott: Well, I suppose the foundation of it was very different because you’re older, we wrote it when we started for a start, so it was more about having a few pints on the Thursday night and meeting a few friends than anything else. So what it grew into is reactive, I suppose, because we never really had a plan for it to be a band. We still probably won’t own up to the fact that it is a band because if we did, we’d be admitting defeat.

00:30:24 Joe Philpott: So I think that it’s important to remember that, again, we all met, we didn’t really know each other, one or two that out of stage, kind of through their kids being in school and things like that, but it was just a very simple plan at the start to meet on a Thursday and play music. And what it’s turned into is completely, if we had planned that, we’d be geniuses. So we’ve had to kind of just ride the wave of it and enjoy the fun of it.

00:30:52 Geraldine Hennessy: Absolutely, and you recently released a new album, ‘Sos Beag.’ What’s the energy like when you perform these soulful reinterpretations of Americana and Irish folk life?

00:31:04 Joe Philpott: I mean, I’ve just come off the back of a few days away. The way it’s landing with people is, I don’t really understand it, I’ll be honest. I don’t, like I kind of do in the sense that I can see the appeal of it and I can understand the reason it’s landing, but it’s a very, it’s kind of like, it’s just the music we play, I guess. And I suppose a lot of it might be just, people are saying it’s the 11 male voices together. It’s the fact that it’s built on something other than, you know, a career and all this. It’s just a very organic, unusual, you know, AI couldn’t do it, put that. You know, if people are worried about AI, you just form a guitar club, you’ll be grand.

00:31:48 Geraldine Hennessy: That’s good, that’s good. And now talking about your book, ‘All Rules Lead to Where You Are,’ was written after a doctor’s warning for us to slow down. What was it like to pause and finally kind of write your own story down at that specific moment?

00:32:02 Joe Philpott: Well, like in one sense, it probably sounds a bit dramatic, but it was the combination of things. Really, I was going at full tilt and I wasn’t really doing anything for myself, other than, you know, like things you do for yourself. But like, I wasn’t actively thinking about, it was all go, go, go, yes, yes. Again, falling into the trap of availability and busyness. And, you know, I was 50 and I was kind of like going, and it was actually my wife kind of said, look, you know, would you just not think about writing something? Like, because I knew I could put together word salad and serve it up, but there’s a big difference between being able to juggle words around or sit down and actually write something that has an arc and that can, you know, reach people on a level that isn’t just you talking about yourself in a way that’s linear. So I wasn’t sure if I could do that.

00:32:56 Joe Philpott: And everyone says, people say there’s a book in everyone and some people would say that’s where it should stay. And then what happened was I just took the first step, which was to kind of have a chat. I actually, I just literally hadn’t been, I went to my GP and I wasn’t feeling great for no particular reason. And he just said, you’re just completely burnt out. And I was like, here I am again, I can’t believe I’m, and he said, like, look, give me your week. And I told him and he said, well, something has to give. So think of your priorities and what they are. And do you want to be around for them in 10 or 15 years time, healthily? And I was like, well, obviously yes. And he said, this zone you’re in is not going to feed that possibility very well.

00:33:44 Joe Philpott: So what you’re, the decisions you’re making now are the best version or worst version of your tomorrow’s self. So that was the kick I needed to kind of go, but then it just meant reassessing and having a chat with Aoibheann and getting her support on trying to do that, this book thing, which took up time and without her, I wouldn’t have been able to do it. I would have her support, you know, just to say, I just do it. And I did it without any plan. And I’m glad I did it because that story was in me for so long. And, you know, I didn’t really talk about it unless I was asked. And then you find when you were asked and you started talking about it, people were actually interested and they’d actually be asking you to talk more about it. So I’d be like, you’d be embarrassed by the sound of your own voice. And, but eventually just going to the page and, you know, if I had to do it right now, again, I don’t think I could. I think it was one of experience for me not the writing, but that particular story. So to get it down on paper. And the big relief for me was that the lads in the band were all, they all messaged me, or should I see them? And they were, once they read it, they were really happy that they had done it on their behalf as well.

00:35:02 Joe Philpott: Like Owen had said, I don’t want to misquote him now, but he said to me something along the lines of that he would be proud to give it to his mom and his daughter because that it just explains what the hell he was doing for that period of time in a way that he mightn’t have been able to explain himself. I think that’s what he said. So that was as valuable to me as anything, you know, just that the people that I spoke about in it, that they were happy with how it was told. And it’s great to kind of leave that, sometimes stories get lost, you know, and it’s great to like for your family and for the bandmates, I think families as well, just have a bit of a legacy. It’s written down there. That’s kind of a synopsis of what our life was at that particular moment in time.

00:35:49 Geraldine Hennessy: Yeah, absolutely.

00:35:50 Joe Philpott: And I think what I enjoyed as well about the book was writing about the time it happened. You know, and the places, like the describing what Boston was like when we arrived, describing what Cork was like when we left. And then the places we went, just, you know, the best advice I got at the start of it was don’t tell people, show people. Like just show people what it was. And I was able to do that, I think, you know, so that which was great discovery for me that I can actually translate those pictures into words.

00:36:22 Geraldine Hennessy: And it’s great, I think when you’re reading a book like that, like I read the Foo Fighters, Steve Grohl’s book and it just brought me back, you know, to that time when I was that particular age, I was really into their music. And it just made, I couldn’t put down the book, you know, because it just brought me right back in a way, like if I watched something on television, I wouldn’t have experienced because I was remembering my own feelings when I was reading the book, you know. So that’s the one, I think I think about a book like yours, it just brings you back really well to that moment when you listen to the songs or at the same time, you know, I feel it’s really, brings it real, makes it real and makes you back in time as such.

00:37:05 Joe Philpott: Absolutely, and that’s the beauty of words and stories which we need to hang on to actually, I think not my story or everyone’s story. You know, I think that if you even think there about, like, I don’t know if you’ve had any relationships with older people in your family, or they might be gone now or whatever, and if you didn’t have their stories or their memory, what would you have? And if we get sucked into this nonsense that we’re in right now, more and more and more, so what are people gonna be talking about? Like what’s the, like this thing, I know now it’s a cliche to even talk about it, but the AI thing, for example, AI is only based on what we’ve, as a human race have done. It’s not based on what we’re going to do.

00:37:51 Joe Philpott: So unless we keep, which is why it was really important for people like Manchán Magan and people like Martin Shaw and people like, you know, Ian McGillcrest and all of these people who are really acutely aware of the connection, and Irish people have such an advantage here because our landscape tells the story. You know, I was in the Burren in Clare over the last few days, I was looking at the walls and I was thinking, you know, every single one of those stones was put there by a hand. And I was thinking that there’s lines and those walls were one generation handed it over to another. And you could look at it and go, it’s just a wall, you know, but to me, it’s not. To me, it’s a thousand stories and to me, it’s care and it’s dignity and it’s longevity and it’s history and it’s all of the things that probably might not resonate with everybody, but thankfully I’m getting the sense that younger people aren’t buying the pup.

00:38:58 Geraldine Hennessy: Yeah. I think there’s a bit of a change, isn’t there? I think so. Yeah, I’ve gotten that vibe now. There’s a bit of a change, which is a good thing.

00:39:08 Joe Philpott: Yeah, I think so. I think the old folk have it sussed. I think it’s people like me. (both laughing)

00:39:16 Geraldine Hennessy: And as a songwriter, I cost him to convey emotion in just a few minutes. How did you find the solitary process of writing a full-length book and did you enjoy it?

00:39:26 Joe Philpott: Yes and no. I loved it and being exposed every day to people in all sorts of situations, whether it was hospital schools, touring audiences, always, it was incredible to just be in silence for, you know, I used to get up at half, six in the morning, every morning, five mornings a week and work until half 12, take a break at 11, maybe for a cup of tea or something, go for a walk kind of for an hour and then come back and kind of just look at what I had done and see did it make sense or did it, what, if it needed work and I’d spend a couple of days then working on the work I thought it needed and all that kind of stuff. So it was lovely. It was really cool and amazing. And silence actually is a huge, when you enter into that discipline then it’s always discipline over motivation because motivation was just too quickly gone and it’s a cheap trick.

00:40:20 Joe Philpott: Whereas discipline, you’re gonna get days where I found the beginning of the book particularly hard to crack. And it was just took me ages. So I started at the end and worked backwards. That’s what I did. So the silence and solitude part of it was lovely. The only issue I had was you were living in your own head at night then, you know, it was really difficult because you had no, you had not, there were days where I hadn’t spoken. And it’d be just eight o’clock at night when I was sitting down for dinner or seven o’clock. First thing you have a conversation and you were thinking about tomorrow’s what you’re gonna do in the morning. And it was all in your own head. And it didn’t exist yet. It was, and I had that wobble where I realised halfway through it, oh shit, like I’m one of these dudes who’s writing the book that might not come out.

00:41:13 Geraldine Hennessy: Imagine that.

00:41:15 Joe Philpott: I know. (laughs) And like, oh my, show of a disaster that would have been. And that was a terrifying bit. So like to have it on the shelf and to have it out there and have people buying it and have people talking to me about it now. And I look back and I think it was such a privilege to be able to do that. And, you know, I’m not doing it at the moment in the same disciplined way that I was doing that. I am writing at the moment and I’m working on different things. But I kind of have a craving to do that again, just to get back into just being that dude is terrified but not putting a book out.

00:41:54 Geraldine Hennessy: But the intense pressure is a great motivation, isn’t it? Like it’s, it’s addictive, I suppose. It’s a bit of a, like, and when you have it finished, you must have been like, you know, I’ve it done, like what an accomplishment.

00:42:07 Joe Philpott: To be honest about it, it wasn’t until I held it, which makes the whole digital versus kind of tactile thing such a huge, and a book in itself has so much, like when I buy books, I don’t, I’m not buying a book, I’m buying time. Then that book, I read it when I get to Ballyferriter in the summer, I’m going to take some time to spend on this. Or if I take an hour at a day to read something, it’s time you’re taking to do something that’s, but for me, when I actually hold way to the book, I still get a buzz out of it, you know, I still get, or if I see it in the shop or if someone buys it at a show or tells me they bought it, that’s huge because that means it’s real, you know? Like with all due respect to anyone who’s writing, when I was that person, it isn’t a book till it’s out there. It’s not a book until someone else has read it, that’s my view. And I know that sounds a bit harsh, but it’s the truth. You’re out of here. Your album isn’t an album if it’s on a hard drive. You know, it’s yours, you did it, absolutely.

00:43:06 Joe Philpott: And there’s a huge amount of merit in the creative process. And I know a lot of artists spend a lot of time overthinking their work into non-existence. And I just think to be careful of that is really important. And to kind of, I suppose there’s that you have to be a little bit brave to kind of put yourself out there. And there was a great story I heard one time of an architect who designed a mosque, I think. And it was the most perfect mosque in the world, by all accounts. And in his mind, he thought, well, I can’t let this happen because I know they’re gonna, they’re not gonna fully realize what it is. So he burned the plans and never built it. Which is what a lot of us do.

00:43:45 Geraldine Hennessy: And you recently released a companion single to the memoir featuring Liam Óg Fitzgerald and mixed by your Rubyhorse bandmate, Declan Lucey. Why was it so important to collaborate with those specific Cork musicians on such a personal project?

00:44:01 Joe Philpott: The truth of it is that they were both exactly the right people for the job. The song is a kind of a song that is basically about the book and the character being me who was on those roads. I know what I was listening to last night going, ‘If this didn’t happen, it would be a crock of shit.’ It did happen. And I’m wondering how people listened to it going, not realizing that this happened. Liam’s voice just encompasses that character. I don’t have that voice. Even I know loads of great singers, but Liam has a particular delivery. When I played it myself and did my demo of it, I just said, ‘That’s Liam.’ I can hear him. I sent it to him. Thankfully, Liam liked it. He said, ‘I’d love to sing it.’ That was that.

00:44:54 Joe Philpott: Deckie then is just a very, very talented engineer, producer, who lives two miles up the road from me. I love working with him. He’s brilliant. The sound he has that he gets, he’s a kind of non-discovered treasure, actually, around Cork and Ireland. Because he has that real… When I worked with producers in the States, the good ones, they have this thing they do. He has that because that’s where he cut his chops. So he understands that sound that it was after very easily. It was a match made in heaven, so… It was a match.

00:45:33 Geraldine Hennessy: Your memoir is fundamentally about risk and reinvention. What advice would you give to other Cork creatives who find themselves facing a major crossroads in their own careers?

00:45:42 Joe Philpott: Well, I’d be very slow to give anyone advice because… But what I can say is that if I was talking to my younger self or if I was giving myself advice, I just think to be as prolific as you can be and to be as productive as you can be without gatekeeping your own ideas to the point of them not existing, I think… Take risks, you know, and don’t be afraid of validation or otherwise because there’s an attachment thing. Like if you’re swimming and you’ve got an eight foot rope and you tie it to someone else’s ankles and hands, if they go down, you’re going to go down with them. So if you can swim on your own, you’d be grand. And the sharks and the stuff, the waves and things you encounter are only part of the story. So invent your story, earn your name, you know, go out and kind of like be the person you actually think you might find interesting by taking chances, by putting yourself out there and not really giving a shit what anybody thinks, if you can.

00:46:50 Geraldine Hennessy: Fair enough. And you’ve experienced both international charts success and the quiet intimacy of community music. How did you define personal and creative success today?

00:47:00 Joe Philpott: It’s about the process and getting it over the line. If you decide you want to do something, forget about the numbers. Forget about the applause. Doesn’t really matter. Because what people say about you are how people react to success. Success is measured in… The thing that I find hilarious, right, is the odd time people come up to me and say, ‘Jesus, it’s an awful shame that she never made it.’ And I kind of in my head go, ‘I made it every day. I got up every day, still do, and do exactly what I want to do.’ And that to me is success. Some people would view it as how many zeros are in their bank account or walking a car they drive or how many people like them on Instagram. So if you’re going to attach your definition of success to that, you’re always going to fail because it’ll never be enough. Because it’ll never be enough. I heard the story recently of a guy who was on Richard Branson’s island at this party that he gives or used to give once a year to celebrate success. And the guy that was out there apparently is a multimillionaire, but he came back completely disillusioned and pissed off with himself because everybody else on the island was a billionaire or something ridiculous like that. So that’s one way you measure success. I still talk to my friends, I have my health, I have a beautiful family, I’m fine. That’s it for me, you know.

00:48:33 Geraldine Hennessy: So between the launch of your memoir, the new single, and your ongoing community work, what excites you most about this next chapter of your journey?

00:48:41 Joe Philpott: Well, just to be able to continue to do it and the writing side of it, I’m only a baby in terms of that because I have nothing interesting to say at 53. I don’t know about that now. So imagine when you’re 80, what you could say. So it’s just to kind of develop, I love the craft of things, you know, I love making things. I’m not really good at DIY, but I can make other things. And I love that feeling of creating things and being in a studio, recording music, writing music, seeing the idea that you had in your head come into existence in a way that, you know, that just is even hearing the sound. It’s kind of cool that I don’t sing it because when I hear it, it kind of doesn’t even feel like mine. So I can, you know, I can kind of listen to it and go, did I do that? So I love that. I always have actually, you know, even when I was younger, I loved being in the studio. I loved kind of going in and doing your take and coming back into the room and listening to it all just come together. So the idea of that being an ongoing thing, the possibility of that being an ongoing thing is very exciting actually still.

00:49:50 Geraldine Hennessy: It sounds like you’re enjoying myself here, please.

00:49:54 Joe Philpott: Yeah, well, like there’s there challenges, you know, I mean, the book thing hasn’t been easy into in terms of having to the business side of it, you know, what you have to do to kind of make people aware of it. And that hasn’t been, oh, yes, I can enjoy talking to you. And I’m enjoying the conversations around it. But like, you know, there are realities you have to face up to. And similarly with all creative projects, there’s the way you let go of it in terms of what it isn’t in terms of creativity, and you have to get into the promotional side of it. That can be challenging as well, for sure.

00:50:28 Geraldine Hennessy: Okay, well, thanks so much, Joe, for joining us on the Cork Creative Podcast. If you want to find out more about Joe, his new memoir, and his music, you can find links on corkcreative.ie

00:50:38 Joe Philpott: Thanks very much for having me. Appreciate the conversation. And yeah, thank you.