Irish singer-songwriter Rory & The Island has released the video for his brand new single ‘Miss This’. ‘Miss This’ explores the basic little joys we all miss during this crazy COVID situation and has become a firm favourite during Rory & The Island’s successful weekly Facebook Live broadcasts. I caught up with Rory to discuss the new single, his live broadcasts and the exciting prospect of live shows later in the year.
As Rory was “having a bit of a meltdown trying to get Weetabix out of a table” which was delightfully “mixed in with Crayola and milk” we talked about ‘Miss This’ and its slightly different shift in tone compared with his previous release ‘When The Lights Go Down (Valhalla)’. With its subdued instrumentation, the song creates a warm ambient atmosphere. Obviously, the lockdowns due to covid sparked the inspiration for the song, but I wondered was it Rory’s personal experience that made him write. ‘Miss This’ or was it seeing other people struggling.
“Probably a bit of both, we just got old clips of me playing live gigs and merged it in with myself and the kids around the sitting room. It’s just the contrast of lockdown as opposed to being able to go out and play in front of a live audience and even just put in some footage of when I used to go and watch a Donegal game and just the contrast of that. That was the thought running through my head but it’s so weird, when I put the video together, I have to be honest and it might be because of my age, but it looks like it’s a midlife crisis. It’s almost like a pining for your youth. I try not to make it too sentimental either. There’s a positivity, as you say – it’s melodious and rich. I went for that because I didn’t want to do another sob story of the pandemic. It’s the kind of song that maybe in eight years, I would hope, that you could listen to it and it’s still this song about reflecting on good times, it could be about a missing friend or missing some days that you had when you were younger with your family, but I’d like to think that it’s positive, you know it’s not got bitterness to it. “
It’s easy to accept and get used to the “new normal”, but when I heard ‘Miss This’ for the first time, it hit me hard. Everything we are missing just came flooding back, and it does every time I hear the song. It’s the perfect little reminder of all we have lost without being sad. Instead, it’s wonderfully nostalgic. Rory seems to have captured a sense of history in the track, yet it has a timeless feel.
“Even just buying a glass of wine during the day and sitting down at a cafe or two friends just getting a couple of cans and sitting on the beach on holiday. That can’t be done anymore and it’s hard to get your head around that. You would never have thought that was a big freedom”
“ I wrote it in like nine or 10 minutes, and that’s the same with, ‘Wired To The Moon’ and ‘Valhalla’ [‘When The Lights Go Down (Valhalla)] that kind of stuff connects well with people. Even with The Revs, we used to find that the stuff that we would spend three hours on would come out better than stuff we spent three weeks on. It’s really weird. So I just basically scribbled down on an A4 – sitting down for coffee in a restaurant, simply sitting down with a friend, having a conversation with a beer – you know, little basic things like going to a football match. I just wrote down about 10 things and then just started playing, the little old fashioned four chord rotation which is like a 1950s rotation really. It would be from ‘Blue Moon’, or ‘Stand By Me’ it’s just one of the classic chord formations. It’s kind of like that Bruce Springsteen thing of, can I get something really basic really quick? with a couple of chords. And sometimes, nine times out of 10 you can’t get that because after 20 minutes you do something that sounds like 20 other songs and it’s going nowhere and it’s not even interesting to me. But with this one, that was one of those where I was like wow! you know, the hair stands up a little bit on your arm. After five minutes, you know that you have a song almost complete which is so weird. “
This emotional and sweet sentiment that ‘Miss This’ summons within the listener makes you think of the live setting and how special this song will be live. It’s going to be a teary song with swaying and hugs when Rory finally gets to play it in a venue for the first time.
“This week I put out tickets for three gigs and the Glasgow one is almost sold out already and it’ll be 200 people upstairs at Malone’s in Glasgow, which is a lovely gig, it’s an Irish venue in Glasgow. Just the thought of being able to walk out with an acoustic guitar and kick drum and start off with that song. It’s exactly what you’re saying. It’s just going to have a totally different resonance. You could almost add an “ed” at the end you know “I missed this”. For people that have been locked up for all these months to get that little release. Though August is still ages away and who’s to say there won’t be some variant from Mars or Venus to throw another spanner in the works but yeah that’s one of those songs that I think is going to work really well live. It was really hard to record it. I said to Josh who would do the co-production with me, he’s a friend of mine from Rock School in Ballyfermot. We went there in the late 90s and to be able to meet up again years later is mad. He has a recording studio in Yorkshire, that’s where I do all my stuff, it’s such a nice studio it’d be like Abbey Road quality.So I sat down and I just said this one I want it to be acoustic guitar, tambourine, vocal, and it’s just got that broken down at a festival type song. So we put that down first and after two and a half minutes we thought there’s something dull about this and we didn’t want to make it sound overproduced so we added a little bit of kick drum which is natural anyway because I use a kick drum, and then I thought there’s still something. It was so tricky. We’d say ok let’s try a string section, you put that in and all of a sudden you go, well it’s missing drums and bass now so let’s take that out. It was getting to the point where it was 10 o’clock at night and we’re going, Holy sh*t. It was so annoying because sometimes when you’re trying to find simplicity, like if you listen to certain songs that you would think they’re really simple, you realize there’s about seven overdubs in the background that are just making it glorious and that’s what we really struggled with so we managed to slice it down to moments of piano, moments of strings, kick drum, bass guitar subtly underneath the acoustic in the background and tambourine and harmony. But for the first two minutes of the song it’s really just the guitar, vocal, that you would hear. So,it was really tricky. The other song I did, ‘When The Lights Go Down (Valhalla), I flew through that much quicker because I knew it was going to be that kind of Neil Young, Meat Puppets type thing. I could hear the drum pattern, the bass pattern, the guitar pattern. So this one was a bit of a panic in the studio and I actually thought that we had blown it. When I got the mix back. I was like, I don’t even know if this is gonna get played on the radio. It sounds weird, you know, but yeah it’s going good so far”
Rory’s previous single, ‘When The Lights Go Down (Valhalla),’ reached Number 1 in early November 2020, and it kept Miley Cyrus, Lizzo, and Dermot Kennedy off the top spot for the weekend. He admits this success put a little pressure on the singer-songwriter as he approached his next release.
“I know yeah, it actually gave this one a bit of pressure, it was like oh my god, the last one went to number one if this goes to number six everybody’s gonna slag me oh you’re not as popular as you were in November. All these stupid things go through your head. So I was glad that it did go to number one for a day. “
Rory’s weekly Facebook Live broadcasts have built up something of a cult following with an average of 30,000 weekly views over the past year. These fun-filled nights of great tunes, fantastic originals and mighty covers have cheered people up and given them something to look forward to each week. There is a little community here, as Rory gives shoutouts, birthday wishes and requests. Along with his cheery and fun persona, there is something extremely charming about these live streams.
“Yeah, it’s been amazing, I suppose the only thing is that there’ll be a slight songwriter artistic guilt within me because when I started off I wanted to give it a real feelgood factor so I was taking requests, so I’m playing all this stuff, and I wouldn’t normally have a lot of it in my set, you know, but the fact that it was a keeping the spirits of the people up type vibe, it almost felt like well, if they’re feeling good, I’m serving a purpose this year. After all that time now it’s really hard to pull back and go, Okay, well I’ve done loads of cover versions now I want to do 90% of my own set which is kind of a dilemma but I think I’m gonna have to do it. I’m gonna have to shake off the people that are just watching it for, you know, having like 20 cans, and singing along with the screen. That’s the one thing I’ve found a little bit tricky, just judging Facebook. As you say people tune in / tune out so much you would keep it more upbeat, more commercial than you probably would. It’s a weird line that you have to tread.”.
If anyone is looking for a short pick me up, they need to check out Rory’s 2021 Song on Facebook. It’s a catchy, cheeky ditty that will stick in your head for days.
“That actually went viral, a few of them have gone viral like the one I did for Meghan and Harry. But I think if you’re clever and you make sure there’s just no narrow-minded malintent behind any lyric it will connect with enough people. You trust that people might be on the same wavelength as yourself. In the past, Ricky Gervais seemed so dark and rude but at the same time, he didn’t. It was the same with Steve Coogan, there was almost this, taking the p*ss out of himself type thing. It works you know, and I don’t like cheesy writing, I don’t like sentimental writing, but at the same time, I don’t like just rude for the sake of being rude. I like to have it with a bit of thought behind it, I think that’s connected with some of the more silly stuff that I’ve done”
Thankfully these live streams won’t come to an instant halt when the live shows return. Rory plans to keep them going as long as people want to see them.
“For me. Yeah, because I’ve built up a lot of fans that would be in the vulnerable type class, you know they’re like oh my god I can’t really buy tickets to your live gigs, because I feel too nervous or because I’m severely asthmatic and I’m not ready yet, so I just said back to the people until the view figures hit like, 190, 85, then I’ll know it’s time to call it a day and then maybe even if they’re hitting that figure and that’s on a Monday night and seven o’clock and I’m playing all my own stuff, there’s no harm in that. So I think it’s always gonna be there. I think every third week maybe just keep doing Facebook Lives and stay in touch with those people that have been really kind to me for the 13 months. I’m very lucky that I’ve built up a lot of followers in Canada, America, Japan and even Dubai and some random places…like in the Bahamas.”
Rory has been writing a lot over the last year and is hoping to release some more music this year. Along with his live shows booked for later in the summer, he’s got some exciting things planned
“ I’ve been lucky. I’ve had a good spell I’ve written about nine new songs so hopefully if we can get maybe the best 7 of those recorded and then put it with the four I’ve recorded this year. I would like to get a proper digital vinyl out, maybe like 1000 prints in November/ December this year. It’d be a nice way of just gathering all the stuff that I’ve done this year and then maybe not make it pandemic related. I’ve done a lockdown special EP with just a lot of the cover songs that were going down the best, mixed with my own songs and we just did an acoustic CD. Put out like 500 Copy limited edition and that sold which is brilliant. It got me through three months really from the old fashioned CD profits, it was like, 1998 again! So I’ve got an album of stuff ready to go. I just need to get enough days where it’s legal to go to the studio.”
“I think there’s a subconscious thing where people realize that even though we’re all trying to get as much for free as possible, a lot of people,at the end of the day they know artists are only getting maybe like a 90 quid cheque every month from Spotify at the very most if your doing quite well. Whereas if you buy a CD, it should be, when all is said and done, maybe eight euro straight to the artists. So I’m looking at the good side of people and I think that’s what a lot of people are thinking, especially this year. A lot of people even bought the CD and took a photo of the CD in the kitchen saying it ‘arrived today Rory! thanks a million, I don’t have a CD player but you know.’ People are almost doing the artists a favour just because they know it’s been a tough year. I think even indie bands and all that, their Spotify at the end of the year could be 300 Euro. So people will go, you know what, I like this band, I’ve seen them live twice, I’m going to get their vinyl, because it’s something to hold in my hand, and they might actually get some money from it. There’s a much sweeter sound off vinyl and if you have a nice vinyl player in the sitting room, it just looks really cool, if you have a few friends around, put on the vinyl, sit down, the tone is nicer. I wouldn’t have thought that when I was younger but the more you go into a recording studio and hear the difference in frequencies it does become apparent that there’s not really much difference between CDs, and mp3s, on Spotify, there’s really not much of a difference but there is with vinyl”
Rory has two live gigs in Glasgow and London for August (Dublin Castle, Camden) and he is excited to get some more booked in as soon as he can
“I’m trying to get a few gigs booked in Ireland but it’s just really difficult as I’m sure it is for everybody. I was hoping maybe August, September, but it’s just very hard. One problem is, the venues have such a backlog of bands that were meant to play that they’ve got like gigs on six nights a week, on paper, starting in July, and they’ve got to work their way back from like seven months of backlog gigs. So, for me, booking a gig fresh I might actually not be able to perform in Ireland until February or March 2022 which is just crazy to get your head around that, but over here in Scotland I’ve got Glasgow almost sold out for August and then I’ve got Dublin Castle in London and Camdon and that’s almost sold out as well and the Irish Centre in Liverpool so it’s nice to see gigs coming back and it’s great to see as well that people have a thirst for buying tickets which is a relief.”
Rory crafts beautiful tunes filled with earworm melodies and heartfelt emotion. He is proving himself to be a diverse and refined musician. His music exudes such an infectious sound, it is sure to have anyone singing along in no time. I’m looking forward to the earworms he releases next.
Watch the video for ‘Miss This’ below
Author : Danu
