Kingfishr: from Marlay Park to Hyde Park

We caught up with the Irish trio just a couple of minutes before performing the biggest venue of their entire career: Marlay Park in Dublin. You can feel the excitement and nerve wracking vibe in their dressing room. The band is also released their new single: ‘Headlands’ which follows “Anyway", which has racked up over 200k streams in the weeks since its release. It was also among the tracks performed at The Independent's live music session Music Box last month.The band has an exciting summer ahead supporting Bruce Springsteen at BST, as well as support slots on George Ezra’s UK & Ireland tour & Dermot Kennedy’s Limerick shows at Thomond Park. Alongside this are a run of festival dates that include Neighbourhood, Sea Sessions, Lytham Festival, Latitude & The Indie-pendence. They have also appeared on BBC Introducing Belfast and recently performed on Irish TV Series Other Voices.

"Headlands" is out! What's the track about?

Eddie: All our songs are personal, it's probably very cliché at this point. But it's as personal as it can be. That reflects better and it's the easiest and hardest wait to write. I mean, talking about the things that are kind of closest to your heart is probably the best way to do things. But the song is about Ireland - which is home. Ireland is probably famous for farming, all that stuff. And we all grew up on farms. We're kind of we're country boys. It's about the trouble with farming stuff.

It's a very rich history of things going wrong with farms and inheritance and all that stuff, trying to transfer land is troubles. There's actually a very famous play about it, a guy called John B. Keane. It's called "The Field". There's a movie made about it, okay. With Sean Bean and Richard Harris were in it. It's a really famous Irish film, and it details that. So I think there was maybe a shadow of that cast when were writing it. But it's one of those things that maybe affected me growing up. And I thought it was kind of a unique story as well.

Are you usually the only one writing songs or you just guys like, get together?

Ed: And a lot of the lyrics would come down to me. But musically, in terms of what comes forward and doesn't, there's kind of different roles coming forward all the time. Fits doing a bit of right as well. Yeah, it's between all of us, but I think on this one in particular, probably me, more than sure.

You're playing in Marlay Park tonight opening for Dermot Kennedy. What can we expect?

Fitz: Oh, man.

McGoo: Jesus. Is it butterflies? Is it nerve? Is it, like, more excitement?

Eddie: Maybe it's a mix of everything. That's part of the crack, not knowing or leaving a little bit of taking a bit of leap of Faith is class.

How does it feel to be sharing the stage with him?

Fitz: It's like Christmas in June.

Eddie: To tell the full story, we obviously heavily inspired by Dermot. I think almost every Irish act the last five years has been he's turned into a bit of an icon, like, to a certain degree.

Eddie: Yeah, he's a phenomenon, really, but it came about through, I suppose the right people present the right opportunities to us and maybe I know Dermot obviously got to hear the music. He obviously doesn't hate it.

Did you get to meet him?

Eddie: Haven't met him yet. But I'll try to say hi at some point.

Well, that's not the only big venue you're playing. You're doing Hyde Park in a couple of days for the British Summertime Festival ...

Eddie: This ridiculous. It's actually ridiculous. Humans are not prepared for events like this.

How do you prepare for events like this one?

Fitz: Put on the kettle, I believe?

Ed: You're essentially trying to ground yourself. Like, we live out in the North. Yeah, it's the countryside. We don't want to lose touch with our kind of center place.

But it is nice at this early stage, we have only been going for 15 months. The best thing to do is kind of just get away from it. It's like take a step back all day. So I think being on a dairy farm, being around kind of just the same crew that we're always around and doing the same things. I think it's healthy.

Is it what you do when you're not, like, writing or just playing shows?

Ed: Yeah, we meet the lads and family. We have been very busy recently though.

McGoo: Not complaining. Absolutely not complaining.

What's next for kingfishr?

Eddie: Staring down the barrel of an EP sooner rather than later. An Irish tour lined up. We won't give away too much. Those things are come up very shortly.

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Words by Sal Fasone