Stephen Kelly, frontman and songwriter for Dublin rock band Raglans, is set to release his new single ‘All The Trouble I’ve Caused’ on Friday, October 22nd along with news of the release of his upcoming solo album ‘Bad News Best Forgotten’. I caught up with the singer-songwriter to talk about his blistering new single, what we can expect from the album and what sparked his decision to release solo material.

‘All The Trouble I’ve Caused’ is a big sing-along indie-rock anthem filled with scorching guitars and vibrant rhythms. Kelly’s signature hearty melodies and rich musicianship are on full display within the track while his deft songwriting hints at deeper, more serious subject matters. 

“With a lot of my songs subconsciously but also consciously, I try to mix a catchy melody with more serious subject matter. The lyrics aren’t always about the best things but the melody makes you feel good so there’s a bittersweet dichotomy going on. With this one, it’s just a case of self-reflection of my journey so far in being an artist and having the belief and faith of many people in your life, and how that can sometimes feel like you’re taking advantage of their belief in you when you’re trying to get things going as an artist. It’s a song about self-doubt, the verses are about doubting yourself and the choruses are about believing in yourself.”

During the lockdowns due to Covid-19, we have all had time to look inward and reflect on our lives. Kelly was no exception to this, and he explained to me the impact this had on his career and decision to release solo material. 

“Absolutely, with Raglans I wrote all the songs but we worked on them all together and it was a real team effort once we were in the band. So after Coronavirus and losing all of that because of what happened, you just have to draw on your own, and develop skills better than I had by having great musicians and stuff around me. I like writing songs but I often deferred to musicians to help me to arrange them etc and now doing it all completely by myself has been a very eye-opening experience. It’s been incredibly gratifying, developing my skills to the point where now I can really just look to myself to express my own vision.”

Producing and writing one’s own material can give an artist a sense of freedom; however, it can be daunting as you don’t have anyone to bounce ideas off. For Kelly developing the skills to produce his own singles was an invaluable and enjoyable experience.

“That’s the terrifying thing of it. But at the end of the day when you sit back and you play the track to yourself, and you’re happy the first time you hear it. I kind of follow that instinct rather than listen to it a million times and go ‘oh this is what’s wrong’ or ‘I could change this’ or ‘if I spent more money doing this it could be better’. I find doing that is just a pathway to complacency, so I get a song finished, I get it mixed and mastered to the best of my abilities. I play it to myself really layered and if I’m happy with it, I cross it over and move on to the next song. I feel I’ve got my second album, nearly finished aswell. I’m being very productive… it is nice to have developed the skills to do it myself now and be the king of my own creation.”

“ I’ve loved being in Raglans with Rhos [Horan] and Conn [O’Ruanaidh] because we didn’t know each other when we started really. They knew each other but they were strangers to me, and strangers who meet in a room and share music and that music starts at nothing and then takes you to Australia, all over America, everywhere. There’s something beyond the music to that relationship that we built. That’s why we never announced in my opinion, that we’re breaking up or we’re finished because we never had intentions of being a band that breaks up when we started because we didn’t have any intentions at all. I like the idea of it being an open-ended project and if people ever want to see us in a room together playing our music together we’ll be there to do it but at the moment because of the way the world is and because of how hard it is to be an artist financially. It just makes sense for us to do our own things for the moment and I found that something I wasn’t expecting to find as gratifying but I’m loving it, you know.”

The intro to ‘All The Trouble I’ve Caused’ is incredibly catchy and sets the song up well, creating a dynamic and full-bodied sound that makes the listener eager to hear more. ‘All The Trouble I’ve Caused’ is the perfect appetizer for the upcoming album, and Kelly explained to me how his mother influenced which track was going to be released first.

“Yeah, it was actually the intro that sparked the song. What I often do is I’ll hear a drum beat or find a drum beat and I have hundreds of songs in my head that I’ve written over the years, and I listen to this new drum beat and sometimes I go, well if I play this song over this drumbeat, it will completely change the complexion of that song with this beat, and ‘All The Trouble I’ve Caused’, was like that.”

“The reason I released that song first, is more of a personal decision. My mom passed away two years ago and before she passed away, I’d just started writing that song on an acoustic guitar, and one of my memories is her walking by going ‘ah that’s a good one Stevie, that’s a good one’. She always had a good ear for music. So, part of me felt like doing my own thing, not answering to anybody no compromise. I’m going to put out the song my mom would have liked to hear. That’s why I chose it. Even though I feel some of the upcoming singles that I’m working on may appeal to a wider audience or whatever, or be rockier blah blah blah. This one was very important to me because of what it meant to me and my mom’s relationship.”

“She’d be proud of me getting my shit together, getting my songs out, especially the one she likes. So I’m excited to put it out in her memory, her honour because I don’t like to post about those things on social media, put up pictures and say all this and that, it’s just not my way, but this is my way, to make this song for her, put it out and hopefully if she is around, or if she can hear…she’d be proud, you know.”

The new song follows the melodically rich tunes we experienced from Kelly’s ‘Home Brew Volume 1’ EP last year. We discussed how Kelly created his upcoming album ‘Bad News Best Forgotten’ differently from the EP and what we can expect from the new album.

“Well, the difference with Home Brew was it’s kind of like a brain fart, you know. We were all locked down, we weren’t practicing the same levels of scrutiny etc on our lives that maybe we were before. I look back at Home Brew now and I see it as a necessary evil, it’s not exactly how I want my songs to be produced and sound but I had nothing at the time and no means of getting anything. But luckily, in the last few months, I’ve been able to invest in my own proper equipment in the studio and I’m working with some great musicians when I need. There’s some brass parts on the new songs, and I’ve got great musicians who come over to my studio and put the brass parts down. It’s personal diary entries that are masquerading as absolutely banging anthems. But there’s more shades to it than just rock and roll, indie rock anthems. We’ve got a few different styles in there. I’m using some violins and brass, and I just want the album to showcase a dynamic songwriter who doesn’t just write for one genre – can write across a few types of songs and tell some stories as well, and hopefully people will go ‘okay shit this is going to be good live let me go see this live and we’ll have a party!’.”

I got a sneaky listen to ‘Leandro’, another blistering track on the upcoming album. This fiery indie-rock tune is brisk, catchy and full of energy and boasts clever lyrics that narrate a love triangle.  

“That’s a perfect example of what I want to display – a dynamic songwriter, for example, that song is like Raglans Christmas song [Christmas Number One (On My Own)], it’s tongue in cheek, you know. Somebody told me I couldn’t write a Christmas song so I wrote a Christmas song. I wasn’t actually alone at Christmas feeling sad and writing a song. I wrote a song about being alone at Christmas because somebody told me I couldn’t.”

“With Leandro, I was listening to a song by The Cars called ‘My Best Friend’s Girl’ a lot of the time, and I found there was something hilarious about that sub-genre of music about the jealous boyfriend, who loses his girlfriend to a friend. There’s a few songs like that, there’s also the Joe Jackson song [Is She Really Going Out With Him?]. I just wanted to write a song in that genre.”

“So with Leandro, I had a girlfriend at the time who, received a job offer from a lovely, lovely guy called Leandro. The Leandro in the song is not actually based on the real Leandro, because he was a lovely guy, but I envisioned as a joke that he was a suave lecherous guy who was stealing my girl but ultimately they just fell in love and I was the third part, the third wheel without knowing until the end of the song. It’s actually one of my proudest songs even though, it’s a simple indie rocker. My songs, the ones that aren’t personal diary entries sometimes are easier for me to listen to because I haven’t attached as much of my traumatic experience to the lyrics.”

There is a shredding guitar solo in ‘Leandro’ that scorches through the vibrant indie-rock backdrop. It oozes swagger and vigour.

“Well actually, that is an interesting one because that was supposed to be on Raglan’s second album. Before the Coronavirus came I’d shown the guys in Raglans that song…I actually remember singing the solo to Rhos [Horan] when we were playing because like I said, I would often refer to better musicians, so I’d sing the lines sometimes and the guys would play them. But yeah, there’s definitely some Raglans DNA in that song, but I just thought I had to get it out. I really want to hear it on the radio before the summer sometime when I’m driving somewhere, you know.”

‘All The Trouble I’ve Caused’ and ‘Leandro’ evoke images of live crowds dancing and bellowing the track’s lyrics back at the top of their lungs. Kelly told me he is buzzing to play his songs live.

“Oh absolutely, it’s all getting planned at the moment. I put together my own solo band called Steve Kelly and The Natives, which is a nice nod to the Raglan song. So yeah, we’re putting that together we’re going to be ready to gig by January 2022. The album is intended to be coming out in March 2022. It’s called ‘Bad News Best Forgotten’ and we’re rehearsing at the moment, getting ready.”

‘Bad News Best Forgotten’ is a great title for an album. I wondered how Kelly came up with it.  

“Picking titles is hard that’s why Raglans first album is called Raglans. But this one, it was a lyric in one of my songs. Often I subconsciously write my lyrics and have a built-in meter of what I think is good and bad, and I look back on the lyrics I’d written for one song that might not even get on the album and I just saw that one of the lyrics was “bad news best forgotten swore an oath in blood”. I just liked the idea of Bad News Best Forgotten and we’ve been through a lot of shit, every human being in the world for last few years. We’ve received a lot of bad news on a daily basis. But dwelling on it is not the case and that’s what this album is for me.I don’t want to dwell on Raglans broken up by COVID. I want to just put good music out.”

‘All The Trouble I’ve Caused’ is a bright, anthemic and perfectly executed song that will put a spring in your step while the meaningful lyrics showcase the artist’s eloquent songwriting. This is exciting times for Stephen Kelly and fans alike. ‘All The Trouble I’ve Caused’ is out this Friday. Check it out, it’s an absolute gem.

You can follow Stephen Kelly on Facebook here https://www.facebook.com/StephenKellyTheFirst

Author: Danu