Damian McGinty, star of Glee and Celtic Thunder, has just released the video for his brand new single, ‘Those Were The Days’. His seven-track EP, also titled ‘Those Were The Days’, is set for release on 25th June. Every month this year McGinty has released a new original single from the EP starting with ‘Fight This Fight’ in January. I caught up with McGinty to talk about what we can expect from the EP, how his love for the idea of nostalgia sparked the writing and warmth within his songs as well as what we can expect from his exciting two-part concert live stream on June 26th.
“Yeah, I started a project this year to release a song every month, which is a big undertaking. I ended up creating and writing more music than I thought I would. A lot of people said to me seven tracks is more like an album. I know seven tracks technically qualifies as an album, but I don’t want to call it an album because, even when I grabbed an album from my favourite artist I almost feel cheated when it’s only 10 tracks. I love albums that have 13, 14, 15 songs on them. So, this is a bonus for the fans that follow my career because the album is gonna come early next year. I read an article that Ryan Tedder did where he thinks seven songs is a perfect representation of where an artist currently is in their artistry and these seven songs just feel like a family. To be honest, they just feel like they belong together. There’s songs on the EP that haven’t been released yet ‘Never Lose Sight of Home’, is a song about Derry but it’s a song really about the feeling of when we’re growing up, even if you go out to play with your friends, your mammy and daddy say, keep your eye on the house or don’t lose sight of home, or be home at a certain time, whatever it might be, so it’s a nostalgic, reflective song. Then there’s a song called ‘A Letter To Myself’, which I wrote with Ryan O’Shaughnessy, I wrote that in LA with him, and that’s basically – what would I tell my 10 year old self now, if I could talk to him? We recorded that in Nashville, so it’s got a country vibe, which I’m really excited about, I love country music.”
The songs released so far from the EP exude a country-pop tone filled with nostalgic melodies that evoke images of sweet memories of home. As we spoke, it became clear that McGinty has strong ties to Ireland, and I wondered if the pandemic sparked this EP, considering he has been away from home due to covid 19.
“Yeah, I suppose it did. I feel my music has always represented that to be honest. I love the idea of nostalgia. I’m curious about nostalgia and what exactly it is that makes us nostalgic. What makes us have that feeling inside us, this nostalgic feeling. I’m really curious as an artist where that stems from, what inspires that. I’m curious about finding the nostalgia in the current moment, living it because at the very end of the day, I’ll look back 10 years from now and I’ll be nostalgic about today. But why is it that I can’t feel that in the moment or appreciate it in the moment. So it’s a theme that I’ve always been really curious about, it’s a theme I love, and it’s a theme that I look to when I listen to music, it makes me feel the most. The pandemic definitely did spur it on as well because I only got home for the first time in 16 months in late April. So it was definitely a long period of time to not be home and see my parents, my brother and sister, my nieces and nephews, my friends, it was a long time. So starting to write music in that time while I was gone, was also definitely influenced by the fact that I couldn’t get to Ireland”
McGinty shot the music video for ‘Those Were The Days’ on the driveway of his family home in Ireland. It’s the perfect location to express the theme within the song.
“I did, yeah, I got home for three weeks, and I had another project with my group Celtic Thunder. But I wanted to squeeze in this music video. I managed to pull it off. It’s a concept I’ve always wanted to do. I just never had the song written for it yet. This song felt like the one, it was perfect. That’s my high school band behind me, everybody has a significant meaning and role to play in the video so I think it really brings it full circle.”
McGinty has a wonderful ability to capture emotion and tell a story within his lyrics. The lyric in ‘Those Were The Days’ “lost our voices singing sweet caroline” is just the perfect description of anyone who meets another Irish person in a pub in another country.
“100%, not every song is like this but this is a very factual song for me because I got married to a Memphis girl, two years ago in Memphis, and everybody remembers this wedding. It was this huge party, and myself and my wife got on stage with the band and we sang Sweet Caroline, the whole crowd sang it as well because I had so many friends from Ireland flyover. Memphis people love a party as well so Memphis and the Irish people really came together, insanely better than you could have imagined. Their personalities just really worked. The whole place is just screaming Sweet Caroline. That was a great moment and that’s such an Irish thing as you say across all the pubs in Ireland, Sweet Caroline is just such a thing. So yeah I wanted to fit that in there. I’m glad it worked.”
This lyrical prowess combined with his emotive and luscious melodies makes the songs on the EP charming and irresistibly catchy. Especially within tracks such as ‘City Of Angels’ which boasts beautiful melodies and earnest emotion. I wondered how McGinty crafts his songs.
“ It really depends. Sometimes there’s no rhyme or rhythm, sometimes you get inspired by a lyric and then you need to develop it and flesh it out. Sometimes you get inspired by a concept and that can take up a full record, you know, the record I have coming early next year there’s a very clear theme to it and that was a concept that I had as early as summer of last year. So it really depends and then other times, it’s as simple as just showing up, literally showing up and treating it as a nine to five, put the work in. You might not feel inspired some days but use all the tools that hopefully I’ve been developing and carving out over the years since I’ve been writing. If I show up every day. Try and write something. It’s like fishing, you know, sometimes you go fishing and you catch something other times you catch absolutely nothing. But, at least you are showing up. Sometimes you get good stuff. Sometimes you get not so good stuff but you have to get through the not so good stuff to get the good stuff. There’s so many different ways to do it.”
“If somebody sat me down and was like what is one of your strengths in songwriting, I would say creating melodies is one of my biggest strengths. I don’t really know why that is. I love listening to melodies and I’ve always done that, I think that just comes from a love of music. So one of the things I do really enjoy the most of the songwriting process is creating melodies, because if it doesn’t sound good to my ear I can assume that it’s not going to sound good to millions of other people’s ears. Melodies are a really important part of making a song hooky and melodic. That’s something I really enjoy doing. I wrote City of Angels with Cozi [Zuehlsdorff]. Cozi is such a talent, she’s done so many things, she’s done so many Disney movies and she’s such a great musician. It really didn’t take us that long to write that song, which is sometimes even more fulfilling when you’re not having to graft too hard or feel like you’re circling an idea but never getting to the center of it. That song just flowed for us, which was really nice because sometimes that doesn’t happen you know, that can be rare”
Cozi Zuehlsdorff and McGinty’s vocals blend beautifully in ‘City of Angels’. Their tight harmonies and rich, velvety tones elevate the song to celestial and captivating heights.
“I appreciate that, we share an agent, and that’s how we met each other. Once I met her I learned about her and admired her work. I think she basically did something similar and we just became really good friends. Then we were like let’s just write some music together. With nothing in mind we didn’t know if it was gonna be a duet or a song for Cozi or a song for me and it just kind of played out the way it did so that’s always nice.”
For ‘Those Were The Days’ EP, McGinty had to rethink his production team as he could not travel to Ireland, resulting in Nashville producer Noah Needleman and Grammy-winning mixer Jon Kaplan teaming up with McGinty for this collection.
“ This record cycle was different for me because with my last one, I had a full Irish production team, which I loved. I still love those guys and I will work with those guys again. I have no doubt about that. But with the pandemic it just completely shifted the needle, I couldn’t get home all of a sudden, I couldn’t get that team together. So I was forced to branch out and search for new contacts, new musicians, new producers. I know a lot over here that I’ve worked with in California. I’ve worked with a lot of pop producers but in terms of creating a project together and not just writing, it was very important to find the right fit and Noah certainly ticks that box. He’s incredibly talented. He brings so many great ideas to the table. He understands the strengths of my voice, he understands the weaknesses of my voice which is as important as knowing the strengths. Then Jon Kaplan, who mixed ‘Those Were The Days’, he’s won several Grammys for mixing. It’s hard to explain, he just elevates it to a different level. So yeah, they’re just absolute pros and they bring the best to my project which I’m very grateful for.”
However, keeping things as Irish as possible, McGinty arranged for the cover art for all of his 2021 releases to be created by Irish artist Holly Keating, an animator and illustrator currently based in Cork. These fantastic visuals capture the style, warmth and tone of the EP perfectly.
“ Holly is so talented. I worked with Cian Sweeney who produced my first record. He put me in touch with a fella called Bill Maybury who’s a songwriter. He’s really up and coming at the moment in the Irish circle and we wrote a lot when he was in LA last year. He’s got three songs on the new EP that he wrote with me. So when I was talking to him he put me in touch with Holly [Keating] and I looked at Holly’s portfolio and was blown away. She’s so talented. I’ve kept her busy every month. I have to say I did pre-empt her before she came on board, I was like – So Holly, this is the deal you’re going to be quite busy, because there’s going to be basically a new one every month and this is what it’s going to look like – but she’s been superb, and I always want to bring in Irish people as much as possible because that’s obviously where I’m from. That’s really important to me to keep it authentic and always bring it back home as much as possible.”
McGinty made his debut with the world-renowned group Celtic Thunder at the age of 14. It is such a young age to be exposed to the music industry. I wondered how he found navigating through the industry at that time.
“Yeah, it had its moments. It had its tough moments, it had its great moments and it had its moments of, do I know what I’m doing here? Am I good at this? Am I good enough for this? is this what I want? It had all those ranges of emotions, at that age as you can imagine it’s just very difficult. So young to travel across the world, you know, three, four months on the road at one time. So that was obviously a challenge, but then, that’s such formulative years for me. I was quite a late developer physically so I was going through all of that on my first tour as well which was just really uncomfortable almost, because it’s just not necessarily a graceful time where you’re turning from this young teenager into this young adult. So, in the middle of that, I was on stage every night in front of 1000’s of people. It was just like sink or swim. I ended up swimming, and I finally found my feet. I was very fortunate that with Celtic Thunder we had a very tight-knit group. I had really good influences like Phil Coulter, for example, the musical director, and he knew what the music industry looked like, and he knew what way I needed to approach it and what I needed to be surrounded by in order to maybe have a shot at a long term career, so I was very lucky to have those people around me as well.”
McGinty’s career has taken him on tours worldwide, which is reflected in his broad international fanbase. This EP shows the drive and artistic perspective McGinty has. To celebrate the release, he is holding a two-part concert live stream so fans can get a view of these songs live along with some extra little treats.
“It’s been tough. I think for every musician across the board it’s been really hard. You know when this went down last year I had a summer tour planned and an autumn tour planned with Celtic Thunder; the summer tour was my own, and obviously, pretty early on, by early May, I knew that both weren’t happening. I mean that’s definitely hard, you have all these thoughts going through your head – when’s this going to be normal again ? When is this going to be back? How am I going to make a living? How am I going to make ends meet?, like all this stuff I’m sure every artist went through. I’m just really excited for live music to be back. I miss it a lot. I haven’t performed live in a year and a half. I think every artist is like please just bring it back.”
“Normally an EP comes with a tour announcement and I am finally looking at some of that for maybe the autumn. But right now it’s just still a little too uncertain to announce a tour. So yeah, the EP is released on June 25th and then instead of going on the road I’m doing a two-part live concert on the night of the 26th. Tickets are available for that now and I’m shooting it from LA, and it’s going to be in the studio. There’s going to be information about all the tracks on the EP. We’re gonna be doing a lot of those and then I’m gonna be doing songs from my first album ‘Young Forever’. I’ll do some Irish stuff as well from the Celtic Thunder scene, and some sneaky little covers that I’ve been working on, and even a track or two that I have been writing that I haven’t released yet that’s gonna come later this year. So it’s going to be this release party. It’s just a weekend to celebrate the release and obviously, I can’t physically be on the road but a two-part live concert streaming online is going to be the next best thing.”
“It’s definitely a different launch than normal, which has its own challenges, but I’ve also seen with artists where they are like “I don’t want to release a record right now because I’m scared I can’t go on the road, I’m afraid it’ll disappear into thin air”. I went through that mindset for a little bit but then you can’t wait until forever to release music, you just need to get it out there. So, as I said, normally we’ll come up with a tour announcement and stuff but this is obviously a very different time. It’s been a really fun time, it’s been different, there’s a lot of promo going on. ‘Those Were The Days’ is getting a lot of traction, which is really exciting and the two-part concert. I have a couple of things up my sleeve over the summer as well and the song a month is going to continue, which is slightly terrifying, but also exciting.”
Considering McGinty began his career at the tender age of 14 and experienced tours, Glee, Celtic Thunder and much more since, I asked him what advice would he give somebody who wants to start a career in music.
“I would say be prepared to work very hard, be prepared to be as self-disciplined as possible and be prepared for it to not look glitzy because everybody’s sold on this idea of fame or whatever it might be, that it’s gonna be really shiny, and it’s gonna change your life, and there is times that it might change your life, you know something for example like Glee or Celtic Thunder, all of that has an impact on my life, but basically what I would say is learn to be self-disciplined, and enjoy the work, enjoy the process of writing music, enjoy the process of striving to get to where you want to be, because it’s a continual journey. Personally, I’ve gotten to a lot of different levels, and it never stops. It’s never fully fulfilled me to the point where I’m “oh okay, I can retire”. It’s just like alright what’s next. Let’s keep going, let’s keep the train rolling, let’s keep on this journey. If you learn to enjoy that, you’ll be in a good place because it’s always going to be a journey for the rest of time”
Damian McGinty creates hearty, wholesome and catchy tunes laced in rich songwriting and glorious melodies, and ‘Those Were The Days’ EP is a glowing example of this. McGinty’s passion for music radiates from each track as he presents a refined and warm collection of tracks sure to have you singing along in no time. Looking forward to his live stream on June 26th. It is going to be a joyous event not to be missed.
‘Those Were The Days’ EP is set for release on 25th June. Until then, you can watch the video for ‘Those Were The Days’ below
Author : Danu
