Tag Archives: Dara Quilty

A Chat With, Indie, Interviews, New Music

A Chat With: Dara Quilty of Apella

Apella-Bured-You-3-Video-Still_Ray-Keogh

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”

  • Apella
    Photo credit: David Gannon Photography
  • Apella
    Photo credit: David Gannon Photography

“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

A Chat With, Indie, Interviews, New Music, Pop Punk

A Chat With : Dara Quilty of Apella

Apella have released their much-anticipated debut album ‘1963’. I had a chat with frontman Dara Quilty to discuss the details of creating the album, his love of producing and crafting songs as well as the lengths he went to in order to create the right atmosphere within one of the songs.

‘1963’ is an album Quilty has been working on for quite some time. The album kicks off with Apella’s debut track ‘We Met At A Party’ which was released in 2016 and ends with ‘Point Of View’ last year’s release (with singles ‘Graceful Dancer’ 2016, logic 2017, City Limits 2018 in between). It’s a passionate album depicting Quilty’s journey since Apella’s debut. During this time Quilty’s love for production blossomed allowing him to experiment, hone his craft, and become comfortable with his style in order to create the compelling and dynamic collection of tracks within ‘1963’

“It feels wonderful to have it out there. Obviously, the circumstances in which it has been released are different. Usually, you would release the album, with a good PR campaign, a tour straight off the back of the album with a radio station tour and a press tour, and none of that happened. I’ve been in studios, pretty much my entire, well not my entire life but I started recording professionally, probably with my first band Fox Avenue. I would have been maybe 20 years old. Even at that time I remember when we were in the studio I was glued to Joe Egan, he’s the engineer who I’ve continued to work with all the way up and through Apella. He owns The Nutshed in Clara County Offaly. Joe and I have become really close friends and he’s sort of been my mentor in the studio in many ways because his musical ear is just astonishing so when we were doing Fox Avenue I was glued to Joe’s shoulder, I never left the control room. I wasn’t the lead singer of Fox Avenue, so [ with Apella ] I knew I needed to be the lead singer, purely not to have to rely on another person, if that makes sense. So I did vocal coaching for four years. Sinéad Flynn is my vocal coach and she is astonishing. Actually doing vocal coaching is like therapy. Sinéad Flynn encouraged me to do these exams and now I have a distinction in musical theater and performance from the University of West London. I’m not a musical theater person. I didn’t grow up in musical theater, I have no background in it. But I was learning all these songs, and she helped me to sing and get better at singing because some people are naturally gifted singers like Gavin James. I’ve recorded Gavin James several times in radio stations. He is a beautiful singer. I’m not that.”

“The reason I went with Sinead’s plan to do these musical theater exams…. because…it was so far outside of my comfort zone. The exams are, you in a room with a man who is 110 years old wearing a jet black suit. He is pale as the sheet of paper in front of him on his table and he sits there at this desk with all these sheets, you’ve paid piano accompaniment 50 euro so he plays for you for the day. Then you have to perform, whatever six or eight pieces. There is nothing more uncomfortable in the world than being alone in this room. You’ve got to act out the scene of each piece and you’ve got to introduce the song, discuss the composer and discuss the meaning of the song, the characters, all this kind of stuff and he’s just looking at you. He doesn’t have any expression. Then after you’re finished describing, he goes. ‘Thank you’ and then the piano guy starts playing. One song I did was, “Oh, Why am I Moody and Sad?” from Ruddigore, which was Gilbert and Sullivan from like 1890 something. The point is, it’s so far out of my comfort zone….people have fears about public speaking, people have fears of flying. When I was younger, my biggest fear was singing publicly. I think the most vulnerable a person could be is to sing in front of people. I don’t know why. I just think it’s such a vulnerable thing and I was never a great singer, so I worked hard on my vocals.”

“Over the course of this record I could have used autotune and just sound like Kanye West, but I was doing the voice training and I was learning how to produce properly and use ProTools and the more I learned the more everything made sense. Ronan Nolan my drummer is perfect. He is the best at his instrument, and I have realized the importance of that now with my knowledge of production, ProTools, and creating a song, whereas when I was 21, I had no idea. When you go to record a song there’s an assigned tempo. Then there’s the loudest beeping noise out of the speaker and you have to play perfectly in time. You think you’re doing a good job and then the engineer says ‘no timing, go back to the start again’ and you’re like what!. I didn’t realize until I learned how to do it where you can literally see on the screen, Oh god that’s way out of time. So, I guess it was, probably a four-year journey. ‘We Met at a Party’ came out in 2016. The album was done by 2018, for sure, then it sat on my phone for two years and did nothing because I had this fear because I put all my own money into it, I paid for everything, independently. I won’t disclose the amount of money that I paid, but I could have put a deposit on a house…”

“I’ve had the great generosity of the Irish artists and community like Andrew Holohan, who has directed ‘We Met at a Party’, ‘City Limits’ and ‘Point of View’, even though we did it on a collaborative basis, but even still, you gotta rent cameras, lights, spaces… it was just so much time and investment. When it was finished, ‘We Met at a Party’ came out and that did well ‘Graceful Dancer’ came out that did better on radio. Then I was like, if I release this album, and I don’t become Brandon Flowers of The Killers overnight, I’ve failed, which is absolutely delusional. I think it’s just because I knew how much work I put into it but I didn’t do anything with it. We released another single, we did all the festivals, we toured Ireland, the UK, and all this stuff.”

“Obviously, now I’ve come forward. I had all this personal stuff going on in the background of my life. My perspective has just changed. I was in New York and my friend Aidan Cunningham runs a studio at there called Empire Underground and we reopened the album, and basically remastered the entire thing. Everything just sounded better and I made a decision… to put this out. All I want is this to exist. What is the point, If it doesn’t exist. There was a comedian I spoke to Mark Normand, he was a guest on my podcast and he said hey life is a catalog just keep adding to the catalog. Make a big interesting catalog and then die at the end. I thought God, he’s right, so I just wanted the album to exist. We completed the post-production in Brooklyn, and then I decided, with things going on with my mom, that maybe I can use this to help, or I don’t know maybe there’s something I can do or give it a meaning, or something like that. “

The album is named after the birth year of Quilty’s mother, who lives with Stage 4 Metastatic Breast Cancer. Apella have decided to give 100% of the proceeds from the sale of the album to The Marie Keating Foundation specifically to help fund the outstanding support services they provide to women affected by Breast Cancer. It’s a really moving gesture as Quilty funded the making and recording of the album himself 

“It’s the money of the sales and it’s important to be very specific with this because Spotify pay 0.00437 cents per stream. So I think you need to listen to ‘Point of View’ 250 times for me to make $1.00. I wouldn’t have got CDs or vinyls made if I didn’t partner with the Marie Keating foundation.”

“It’s my art. I was doing the album before my mom got diagnosed with cancer. This is all happening anyway. So, the reason that I’ve decided to go for 100% of the sales is because there would be no sales if it wasn’t for the Marie Keating foundation so it’s only right to do it this way. And it’s also, you know, it’s not a cancer album.”

‘1963’ is an exhilarating pop-punk album filled with wonderful indie nuggets and electronic blends especially in tracks such as ‘Buried You’. Quilty has a knack for creating catchy hook-filled melodies that ooze pop sensibilities and easy on the ear charm while packing in oodles of emotion. With Ronan Nolan laying down the deft drumming foundation notably in ‘New Things Get Old’ the album is jam-packed with rich vibrant tunes. This album is by no means a soppy, sad collection of tracks; instead, it is a refined display of instrumental prowess and meticulous musicianship.

“Yeah, it’s not written about sadness. All I wanted was it to exist in the world, and I guess if you can do something with it, why not and if this flops on its ass that’s okay. I’m comfortable with that now. Whereas three years ago, I would have had so much anxiety. But if this flops on its ass then it flops on its ass because nobody can take it off Spotify and Apple Music nobody can take the body of work away from me because it exists. But on Friday when it came, just seeing Apella ‘1963’ on Spotify and Apple Music I was so excited.  When it was published to Apple Music and you could see it but all the songs are grayed out and it said coming January 29th, I thought that was the coolest thing. I get excited by the nerdiest stuff. I mean I posted today, a behind the scenes video, like the recording of ‘New Things Get Old’ and it’s just Ronan and I in the studio. I love the creation of a song. My entire childhood, even now, I just love watching the creation of music when you produce a mix or you know how production works, you don’t listen to music the same way as a person who doesn’t. Much like a classically trained musician experiences music differently to someone like me who would be a contemporary musician…which is fascinating. So I put up this video because, technically you go into the studio, a Pro Tools session starts empty. Silence, and then layer by layer you fill that silence with instruments and you can do whatever you want. There are no rules, yes there are rules in music but technically you can do whatever you want.”

“For Apella, I started with music. There are some new songs that I’ve written. I’ve started with an idea or a concept, or an emotion and I’ve taken that to the instrument. So I’m going to the instrument with the emotion. I’ve never done that before. It’s a new way of writing like let’s say you’ve been through a breakup. I know it’s the cliche hit song. But you go to the song with the idea of the broken heart. This is what I’m writing about and that will have a different result. But with Apella, I would compose everything. There are co-writes and stuff on the album not that many two or three songs I co-wrote with other people. But yeah I would do it all in my home studio, there’d be MIDI drums on there and I’d record all the vocals and guitars and come to the studio with a session. Then, Joe Egan, who co-produced this record with me, his musical ear is unbelievable and because it was mostly Joe and I in the studio and Ronan there was never any arguments, tension or ego. It was like, if you can imagine a whiteboard and everybody’s trying to solve a puzzle and it’s whatever’s best for the whiteboard. Doesn’t matter who said it or who came up with it but if it’s the best thing for the board. It goes on the board. That’s what we applied to this record. I might have a part in and Joe would say, that’s not right, I think you can do something better. That happened for ‘Little Bit Less’, track 11. The middle section of that song was totally different then Joe said, This just isn’t right. I think you have something better, and he sent me home for the weekend. He gave me a U87, and I went home and rewrote the middle section and recorded the vocals, with the U87 in my closet. I came back to him with that idea… Actually, we never ended up re-recording. The whole middle section of ‘Little Bit Less’ wasn’t done in the studio… the vocals and everything were recorded in my bedroom.”

“There are ideas or something I didn’t like on a track like an idea Joe would come up with and I was like I don’t know if I like that. We’d all listen and Ronan would say I think, that adds a lot to the song and whatever was best for the song went on the song. Ronan is the most positive person to be around. He’s so funny and he lights up every room he goes into. There were days where Joe and I were doing vocal mixes or recording guitars, but you know they can be 12 hour days, some days, we would literally call Ronan, because he gets all his drums done in one take and a second take for alternative parts, he’s so good. But he would come down and just be funny and kick chairs over and tell us we’re pricks. Ronan actually sings an awful lot on this record. All the high stuff, all the falsetto. There’s a song ‘Deja You’ and if you really listen closely in the chorus, you’ll hear Ronan, way up in the octaves or the intro of ‘New Things Get Old’. All the high stuff is Ronan he’s a great singer. He’s an angel. He’s a choirboy, but then he provides a contrast because I do all the other harmony so it’s good to have contrast and vocal because the texture is different. My voice layered five times, it’s gonna have a similar texture, no matter how you treat it so Ronan singing adds something different.”

There’s a lot of heartfelt emotion within ‘1963’. ‘Graceful Dancer’,’Buried You’, and ‘Point Of View’ exude heart-stopping melodies and meaningful lyrics. However, for me, it’s ‘Shadows Of My Personality’ that is the standout tune. This snappy glistening 80’s-hued track shimmers like a radiant glitter ball with sparkling electronics and zesty guitar flirtations providing an uplifting bounce through jazz-esque keys and hearty production. Quilty discussed with me the influences behind these songs and the interpretation of lyrics.

“They are personal songs for me and everything is authentic. The thing about music and I’m not the first person to say this, but lyrics are open to interpretation and you find solace in them. I’m sure you have your go-to songs for when you have a sad day or when you’re going out or before a date because that song means something to you and you sort of applied the lyrics to your life.‘Shadows of My Personality’ was a big one for me. I didn’t realize I was writing that song about anxiety, until after it was finished. That song was actually called 80‘s song. That was the name of the session. Each song on the record I hadn’t had an idea of how I wanted to approach it from a production point of view. ‘Point of View’ and ‘Graceful Dancer’ are clearly balanced. There is room in the songs, the songs can breathe. ‘We Met at a Party’ and ‘New Things Get Old’, they are clearly, punk sounding, from my influences from Blink-182, Green Day, and ‘Deja You’ is indie ‘Buried You’ was quite The Killers, so there’s a lot of influence on the record and for ‘Shadows of My Personality’, I was like I want to write an 80’s song. I love The Cure and The Police so it’s literally a juxtaposition of those two artists. My favorite bit of the whole record at the moment is the pre-chorus of ‘Shadows of My Personality’ because of the guitar riff because it sounds so Andy Summers and I really liked it. I was writing about anxiety, and that was when we decided to put the breathing in. That song opens with breaths, that are to represent the panic and the panic attack. I don’t know if you’ve ever tried to breathe in time to a metronome. It’s a lot harder than you think it is. It’s very strange but that was fun to do. You can hear it in the track now and that’s kind of an acknowledgment to ‘Close To Me’ by The Cure, because Robert Smith does a similar thing in ‘Close To Me’. I think it’s nice to pay homage to your musical influences, and it just made sense with the song. So no I’m not afraid. I think it’s important that the songs are real. If somebody interprets, a song completely incorrectly that’s their interpretation of it and that’s okay. “

After touring all over the country – opening for Twenty One Pilots, appearing at all major Irish music festivals including Electric Picnic, Indiependence, Castlepalooza and Sea Sessions, accompanied by UK tours with Keywest and Don Broco, Quilty moved to New York City to work further on his career. 

“I needed to get out of my comfort zone. You know, 13 years on air, very grateful, loved my whole career, Ireland, I love this country. It’s small, and the fact that it’s small, it’s amazing. You can get to know so many people you can gain experience. I have pretty much done every stage from the Three Arena to the Olympia, to the Academy to upstairs in Whelan’s, to the big outdoor stage at Oxygen. But I was always the guy from the radio. People always start out saying you’re on the radio, must be easy for you to get your songs on the radio. It’s actually the complete opposite, because I was on the radio people go we’re not playing him he’s on another station. Then personally I wanted to expand and actually see was I good. I’ve had success in radio sure I got awards but that’s in Ireland am I actually good. So, let’s go to New York where there’s 8.5 million people. New York’s unfortunately been hit so hard by COVID that every venue is closed and everything has stopped but I was lucky that I had a studio that I built that I was able to work out of and Aiden Cunningham, and his studio in Brooklyn, that we were able to continue our work together over there, which is great. It took a lot of consideration. There was obviously a huge amount of work for the visa and everything, but it was right.”

With ‘1963’ released Quilty tells me he has other exciting projects in the pipeline this year.  

“ I’m back in Ireland for a while, we’ll head back to New York soon. I’ve still got so much to do over there. I have a new show with MTV, that’s out now called Stan vs. Stan, which is pretty cool. They’ve made it the header of the MTV YouTube channel over in the US, and that was all done in the pandemic. Eight episodes of that show and thanks to my ProTools and production knowledge, I was able to do the voiceover, do the comedy and stuff and provide them with broadcast standard audio from my studio. I’m pretty proud of that. Stan vs. Stan you can watch right now on youtube.com/MTV. It’s their main push at the moment which is just pretty cool. They all exist together – music, radio and production it’s all in the one sphere.”

Apella have created a sublime, engaging and energetic album filled with fantastic anthemic pop punk bangers.The effort and love Quilty has for music oozes from each song and his crisp production, passionate songwriting and melody wizardry makes ‘1963’ a satisfying listening experience.

100% of the proceeds from this album bought on apellamusic.com will go directly to The Marie Keating Foundation’s Positive Living support group. 

Check out the Apella behind the scenes video for ‘New Things Get Old’ here https://twitter.com/i/status/1356197080704950274


Author : Danu