Apella have released the limited edition vinyl and CD of their debut album ‘1963’, alongside the band’s new single ‘Buried You’. Since the album was digitally released on January 29th, it has been going from strength to strength, with a whopping 500,000 streams racked up to date. The album reached #1 on The Official Irish Independent Chart and #2 on the Official Album Charts.

I caught up with Dara Quilty to discuss the album’s success, the energetic video for ‘Buried You’ and getting in shape for live shows.

“ This album went to number one in the Independent Album Chart and number two on the Official Album Chart. I was in the hospital with my mom, we were at an appointment and I got the phone call. I don’t know, like an hour maybe before the charts are published or something,and I was told it was the number one independent album and I was like, oh my god!. I was so happy. I actually shed a tear of Joy. Then I was told, hang on, and he said 1963 is the number two album in the country. I was like What do you mean?. So this is the official independent chart for artists who are not on major labels. but I look at that and like Adel is in there, Arctic Monkeys are in there. So to be number one on that is unbelievable and then to be on the official album chart. Justin Bieber is number one,  Apella is number two, Dermot Kennedy is number three, Dua Lipa is number four, John Spillane is number five. Demi Lovato released the same day we did and she’s eight and we are two that is, I don’t know, what do you say about that?”

“There has been nothing but truth about this campaign. Obviously I opened up a bit. I have never done that before. I’m no celebrity as you well know, but I just feel social media, I like it for what it is, I like to put my work up there and I like the fact that I can get engaged with people that enjoy what I do, whether it be the band or a podcast or a show or TV or whatever. I like it for that kind of thing, but I never post my personal life up there. Not because I think I’m a celebrity, just, because it’s the internet, and there are weird people in the world. So it’s kind of daunting to share that part of the story, and the response, I mean I have gotten so many messages from so many women, and so many young women that are my age, that are 31, 32 that have been through cancer, and they’ve never heard a guy speak about it. They have said they’re going to get support and they have realised they’re not okay. One girl said she was diagnosed at 27, five years ago and she said, I’m not okay. Five years later, I listened to your podcast and I’m gonna get help today.This is a weird thing, people can live their lives without being affected by it and they are so lucky. And people that are affected by it, every story is different, every experience is unique so I didn’t want to come across like a Mr.know it all, because I’m not a Mr. know it all. I’m a Mr. wants to know it all, I want to speak to people, I want to learn more from people. I can share a perspective, and an idea. Do you know how many women in Ireland are diagnosed with breast cancer every year. 3700 People, 3700 Women, 3700 unique experiences and stories. It’s so complicated. That’s crazy. I remember when you experience it for the first time, you don’t know what to do because it comes out of nowhere, so I guess if I could share my experience it might resonate with someone. That was a bonus to this record, if anything, to be able to do that, you know.”

Quilty has been open and honest when discussing the motivation behind why he decided to give 100% of the proceeds from the sale of the album to The Marie Keating Foundation. His mother lives with Stage 4 Metastatic Breast Cancer, and the title of the album ‘1963’ is named after the birth year of his mother. It’s a personal album that has resulted in him speaking frankly about his personal life. Something he has never done before

“It’s acceptance. This is the thing, I believe, and again, I’m no expert. I think life is complicated, difficult to navigate, and the older you get, the more complicated and difficult to navigate it is. The world is unfair, and then we all die at the end. So you decide on what you do with this weird experience. This absurd existence that we have, you decide. Do you want to be an angry person on Twitter, or do you want  to have fulfillment in what you do, for me it’s making music.”

‘1963’ is by no means an album about cancer. It’s an exquisite collection of pop-punk indie tracks sure to fire up the soul and have you dancing and moshing along in no time. Quilty displays his deft songwriting through these dynamic songs to give listeners something they can enjoy and listen to.

 “Someone referred to it as a cancer album, and I had to correct them. I was like no no no no no it’s not. This whole thing was written and recorded before. If you listen to the record, like the single is called  ‘Buried You’. You can’t have a cancer album and a song like that no. ‘Buried You’ was this athemic cliche breakup song about a guy who’s just out of a relationship. The lyric is “turned out the light, went out into the night searching for anyone that would give me anything close to love” , that’s just the power breakup, f*ck you, I’m going out and getting drunk and I don’t drink. So that was written from the perspective of a character. The album is all stories and stuff. Lyrically, they’re meticulously put together stories, some are from real life experiences and some are from fantasy.”

“I never in a million years thought I would be releasing an album under these circumstances, with my mom, with a global pandemic. Having moved to New York City, and being there for, I don’t know, six, seven months, and then Manhattan shutting down. More Americans have died from COVID-19 than World War One, two, the Vietnam War and 911 combined. I have a picture of me on 6th and 44th around Times Square at rush hour on a Tuesday. I’m in the middle of the avenue. I don’t know if you have been to New York, but up the avenue, cross the street that’s how you remember. So the avenues go up Manhattan. They are always full of cabs, Ubers honking horns. I was in the middle of the street, I didn’t have to wait for the crosswalk, there was nobody. I have this picture of me with a completely empty Times Square. There’s red steps in Times Square, that are infamous for Instagram. You never get near them there is always tourists. I have a picture of me just on my own on those red steps, you’ll see them in the Jay Z and Alicia Keys video for Empire State, but they had to block it off to shoot there and close it down. I have a picture of me just in there in the middle of the day I had the whole thing to myself”

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“If you told me in 2019, the conditions, I’d be releasing this album under. I’d be like this is a dystopian future show on Netflix you’re pitching to me here this is crazy. But look, like I said life is difficult, complicated, and you choose what you do. I chose in this pandemic, I was like, right here’s a pause, let’s do a podcast, I’ve wanted to do for so long, ‘Quilty’s Differen‪t‬’. I love my podcast. My record is recorded, let’s release the record.  I released the record in January digitally, as you know and then April 2 physically, you know what happens in January, the music business? The festival booking.

“So all the festival booking happens around December, January. So if there was no pandemic, we would be booked now for festivals. Then we release it and then it goes well in the charts, and then the festivals would start bumping us up the lineup maybe. Then we go,ah let’s put on an Olympia show or the Academy show or let’s see what venue we can do, and let’s go around the country and tour. We can’t do any of those things. It’s such an unusual time to release a record but I was like I’m not waiting anymore.”

The pandemic has caused a lot of uncertainty within the music industry, and one crippling factor for artists is the lack of shows. I wondered, considering the album is doing so well, is Quilty annoyed at the fact he can’t tour to maximize the reach of the album.

“No I’m not annoyed at all, because it’s outside of my control. Who knows if I released this record in the usual noise of the world it could have been lost in the noise. I don’t know, it is what it is, I accept it for what it is.  Right now, what I’m doing is talking to you, what happened an hour ago is not important, what’s going to happen in one hour is not important. The album is the number one and number two album in the country right now and then somebody else will take over. So,  this is going to be I hope, a key to continue the success in the United States. Because there’s an alternative market over there that doesn’t exist here. As in, there’s alternative radio stations like K-Rock in LA and ALT 92.3 in New York City, that just play bands like Apella, Twenty One Pilots, Weezer and Machine Gun Kelly all day long. ‘Buried You’, ‘We Met At  A Party’,  I can hear that song on all those stations, not sticking out like a sore thumb. But I love this country. This country is magnificent and the ‘Buried You’ music video would have cost me approximately $20,000 to do in New York. I got to do that here in Ireland with creative people that I know as a collaboration.

Ireland is a beautiful country for that. My team of people with Apella, it’s not just me, it’s me, it’s Ronan, it’s Joe from the studio it’s Ray, who does the cinematography, Dara Munnis who shot the album cover, Natalie who designed and Sabrina, it’s a team. This is good for, not just me, this is good for everybody. Everybody has a role, and everybody’s celebrating this. Maybe it’s because I’m in my 30s now, it’s not a narcissistic experience. Did I want to be a big rock star when I was 22 Yeah, I was 22. Now, 10 years later I’m like okay I just want to do this, I don’t care, I like doing it. We just love the studio, Ronan is such a good drummer. If we’re gonna put on a show we’re going to put on the best show possible and if people come and enjoy that, that’s amazing, because we care deeply about it”

Apella have also released the video for ‘Buried You’, which was directed by Ray Keogh. The video showcases the live energy of a show and gives a glimpse into Apella as a live band. Well captured and beautifully presented, this clip definitely whets the appetite for anyone longing to see the band live, which will hopefully not be too far in the future.

“I’m so happy you said that because when I came up with the concept for that video I had this idea of black and white but like colors, not black and white video. That video is a representation of what you would see walking into a tent at Electric Picnic or Glastonbury, you know, there’s Apella. That is the energy we play with live. We’re both very ostentatious performers. Ronan is particularly spectacular to watch live playing drums and I’m a tall drink of water. To me, that video is Apella. That’s what we are, the lights, the look, the energy. That was all shot on a handheld camera, there was no jib, there was no tracking, there was Ray Keogh and his genius brain. It was all handheld. He edited that video and Ronan Kenny was the lighting designer, and that is the band. What you see in that video is what you should see at a music festival, except it’s on YouTube”

“ Yeah, we were contemplating do we book one [shows] or not now because I know shows are being booked, and I see people for September and stuff or October and I’m like, the government are saying, you’re allowed meet one other household but not in your garden or their garden. I feel like if we put a show on sale we’ll just have to reschedule it.  This idea that Ireland is going to go from being allowed to meet one neighbor not in your garden or theirs to like the Olympia, I just I don’t know, I can’t predict that. So we’ll do shows when shows are back.” 

“Shooting ‘Buried You’, we had such bad headaches after that video, because we hadn’t performed in a year. Your body gets used to it. The headaches weren’t from the music it was from, and it sounds really lame but it’s just rocking out our brains!. Ronan after the second take was like, oh god I can’t see anymore, because he plays so hard. I think in the pandemic he did some shows with Gavin James. Gavin James and Apella are very different. Gavin is beautiful, it’s about his voice and Ronan is very lightly playing drums in the background. Apella is like, throwing the kitchen sink down the stairs. So, the day after we shot that video, it felt like we had been drinking for, well I imagine what a terrible hangover feels like. Again, I don’t know I don’t drink or do any of that sh*t but we were just so f*cked the following day because… it just took so much energy. You need to be in shape for tour, I don’t think people realize this about touring”

One aspect of touring that can be difficult for artists is the comedown after a show. It might not seem so, but to go from the high energy and adrenaline on stage to a quiet room on your own is a difficult transition, and this is another aspect of touring, artists have to prepare for.

“Oh I know about the comedown jeepers.I spoke to Dougie [Poynter] from McFly on my podcast about this actually. Dougie and I bonded many years ago over a mutual love of Blink-182. He was in McFly doing arenas every single night and like you said, went from standing on the stage to 14,000 screaming girls to what they call, I don’t know what they call like – it’s like, a speed exit or something. It’s when there’s music still playing but the talent are taken off stage, put onto the bus and brought away from the venue straight away.  You go from standing in front of people to being on a tour bus in a bunk. I don’t know if you have ever been on a tour bus before but the bunks are tiny. So you’re in a bunk alone after literally 10 minutes ago standing in front of 40,000 people. Imagine doing that 265 times a year.”

“I guess I’m kind of lucky in a way that I’ve been working professionally in this business since 19 via radio. I always think it’s so funny people’s reactions to celebrities like people freaking out because we’re all just people you know. But I’ve definitely been super jaded after festivals.  I remember we did Sea Sessions a few times and that’s really far away. Donegal is like a four-hour drive and we never stay anywhere we just come back because it’s too expensive, you drive for four and a half hours to play a 40-minute set. I remember one Sea Sessions… I was just exhausted from the whole day, all the gear in the van, getting there. I drove us there and then our tour manager had to drive home. I was like, I need to pass out. I need to sleep, our tour manager had to drive, and I passed out immediately. I was asleep for most of the ride home. Just because I was tired from four hours of driving, and you’re on stage at a festival. For festivals, you have to stick to your timeslot. There’s a big thing on the side of the stage, because if you run late the whole day is screwed. So if you run over on your set time, the next band are starting. It works like clockwork, especially like Electric Picnic and stuff, behind that big curtain is the next band setting up all the gear. It’s all on wheels so one band rolls off, the other band rolls on, and this happens worldwide. When you’re a smaller act you don’t have a crew of 15 people to do all that stuff for you, so you know you got local crew so you got to do it yourself, which is fine, but then you do the show, then you get all the stuff back in the van, and then you got to drive four hours back to go to bed so it’s tiring. But I still want to do it again.

“Being on stage is probably the best. It’s probably the most fun thing. It’s such a different experience from doing it to watching it, you’re in another place. It’s hard to explain. Going into a song, I won’t know what the first line of the song is, and then Ronan counts in, and then it just happens. It’s like you’re pouring yourself a glass of water. You don’t need to think okay, lefthand, I need to turn the cold tap on, leave it run, right hand, glass, okay the glass is full. It’s just a thing you’ve been doing your whole life so it’s just muscle memory.”

Social media is a huge element of artists live’s now. I wondered if Quilty finds navigating his social media easy or is it a difficult but necessary task.

“We can take nice pictures on Instagram all day. We can be on TikTok, all day, a lot of people do that and that’s where they put their energy and that’s fine. My least favorite part of this whole album has been the Instagram and social media promoting. Everything is different. This many words are allowed on twitter, twitter video can be this long, Instagram video can be 60 seconds long, this is this aspect ratio of the story. I’m like, Oh God, I wish I had someone to do all this. I love social media but I don’t like constantly having to push and put up the videos. I just like doing the music bit of it and I like having the silly time.”

“If I wasn’t doing this as a job I would not be on any of it.If you log onto my Instagram it’s just stuff I’m doing. Like I said earlier. I’m not an influencer, I look forward to reading the book on social media in like 50 years. Donie O’Sullivan from Kerry who’s the CNN journalist is sort of lifting the lid on major social media platforms and propaganda, and especially during the Capitol Hill riots that time. I look forward to reading the book somebody in 50 years will write and it’ll be called the Social Media Experiment or something. I think it’ll flip reverse, I think eventually our grandkids will say grandma how didn’t you know. They’ll be like, there was a camera on the front, there were three cameras on the back.”

Like all bands now, Apella have the power and influence of streaming platforms, giving artists huge exposure; however, it doesn’t make them money. They have the opportunity to reach more people but don’t reap the benefits as much as an artist would with album sales and touring. Artists have had to adapt to this mass consumption of music and make the most of what they can.

“I feel it’s being devalued. It’s a good way to get your music out there and digital is the future we got to just accept that adjust and adapt. Like we had to adjust and adapt to COVID and like we’ll have to adjust and adapt to the next thing. This record is literally a demonstration of adjusting and adapting to a circumstance and trying to prevail. This is the number two record in the country, and the number one record on the Independent chart, you know, the word chart was never even part of that. This is my first actual official release, I’ve been releasing music for 10 years and I’ve skipped this bit because I’m like I’ll just put it up on MySpace at the beginning. Fox Avenue, all we would do is put ourselves on MySpace. Go and play The Academy Whelan’s, Olympia, whatever supports slots we can get you know, that’s what we did. Now, it’s a completely different world that we live in. I think our publishing company, which is just a self-publishing company, you just do it yourself. It sends it to 88 places. The obvious ones are Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube Music, Deezer, Tidal, but then there’s ones in China and Japan I have never heard of and it just goes, Do you want to send it to everywhere and you’re like, Yeah. So just goes on to all the places and I’m like, did I get any money for this?. Anybody pay me for this any time, anywhere along the way. So that’s why the chart thing, I never thought about that because I’ve never done it before, ever. With a chart, you need to have a company, scanning barcodes.”

People really appreciate the care and attention to detail provided by Quilty. All the pre-ordered limited edition white vinyl’s of ‘1963’ come numbered and signed by Quilty. He is also giving away a custom-built RQ1963 pink guitar designed by himself and crafted by Custom Built Ireland to one lucky person who pre-ordered the album

“I did a personal note to every single person who pre-ordered. I thought it was going to be really nice until it was 3:15am, and I was only on order 185. And with GDPR and all that they didn’t send me full names so it was just a first name I got. I vividly remember being on 185, and it was three o’clock in the morning, and I was like, what am I doing, but it was a limited edition vinyl, there’s a specific number of vinyls, so I wanted to number them. I don’t know, I just like to go the full nine yards. I got so many tweets and Instagrams about it so it was nice. It was kind of fun, it was like oh look, we found vinyl 145 Oh, we found vinyl 86. I enjoyed seeing where they landed. A lot of family and friends were supporting the record and I was like hey you got vinyl 99. Did you not preorder this when I asked. So it’s fun stuff like that”

“Yeah, we haven’t given that away yet [ custom-built RQ1963 pink guitar ]. We haven’t picked our winner yet, that’s only for the people that pre-ordered. I guess we’ll probably be giving that away by the end of the month. The competition is closed, it was only for people that pre-ordered. “

‘1963’ is a well crafted and thoroughly enjoyable album, Apella has managed to capture a whirlwind of emotions heightened through sublime musicianship and production. The refined glorious melodies and masterful instrumentation portrayed within the tracks makes each song dynamic and energetic. ‘1963’ is a must listen

Watch the video for ‘Buried You’ below

Author : Danu