TD 1
What I tried to do, instead, was shout differentl
y rather than louder. I find louder doesn’t always work. – Paul McDonnell “How do you get heard?” ponders musician Paul McDonnell. It’s a pertinent question that many independent musicians across the globe have asked when trying to find their place within the seemingly impenetrable music industry. In May of this year, a report by Luminate disclosed that approximately 120,000 songs are released everyday on music streaming platforms. Developments in software and social media have made it possible for anyone to record music at home, share their work online and hopefully garner an audience. The ease of uploading music online has significantly broadened the potential for artists to get one step closer to obtaining opportunities to further their career and make the prospect of being a recording artist far more accessible than ever before. Of course, this virtual open-door policy comes with several drawbacks. Primarily, how do you get heard? Over Zoom, Dublin-based musician Paul McDonnell tells me how, at the age of three, he spent hours on the porch of 16 his family home with boxes and knitting needles playing a makeshift drum kit before eventually going on to perform with the National Youth Orchestra, join The Pale in the mid-90s and land a coveted position as percussionist in the RTÉ Concert Orchestra. However, by the ripe age of twenty-seven, despite the comfort of his job as an orchestral percussionist, he was already eager to explore the next chapter. “By twenty-seven, the challenge had gone because I had gotten to where I always wanted to be before I had even turned thirty. There was no room to progress, I was at the top peak of where I could reach in that role. So, I thought, ‘Right, I need a challenge. I thrive on being challenged,’ McDonnell explains. The ensuing years were filled with raising a family and managing a mortgage which sidetracked his professional life away from music. “My soul was crushed into nothingness and it was from a bad place that brought me to a point where I needed to start again. My soul was dead because I hadn’t made music for a long time. I had done some soundtracks for TV and movies but I didn’t have the time to do that anymore with my day job. I had to put that on pause and eventually it ground to halt because if you’re not pushing yourself, the phone stops ringing. Over time, I put a little home studio together and started writing songs and just experimenting and having fun.” As McDonnell’s children got older and his partner returned to work, he began a new musical project, A Band Called Paul and released Prestige, his debut album under this moniker in 2019. Gearing up to take the album on the road, the project expanded to a five-piece to bring A Band Called Paul’s electrifying rock riffs to life in a live setting. That was until the Covid-19 pandemic put a pause on gigging. All the while, alongside writing, recording, collaborating and releasing music with A Band Called Paul, McDonnell also manages the business and strategic side to the band. Having to exist on both sides is something that countless independent artists have to do in Ireland and around the world. “It’s part of the package of being an independent artist,” McDonnell notes frankly. “I’m not going to pull out the smallest violin, but it’s tough being an independent artist. You have to wear so many hats and I think that the hardest aspect of it is to accept that at the end of the day, you’re most likely spending about 90% of your time on marketing and promotion and about 10% on creativity. That’s just the nature of the beast, that comes from the democratization of both the internet and technology. The technology is now available for anyone to set up a home studio while the internet is available as a distribution point for anyone to get their music out there. Anyone can record their own track, put it up on a streaming platform and suddenly you’ve got an unbelievably saturated market,” explains McDonnell. “And so, you spend a lot of time trying to do anything you can to get heard because everybody else is shouting, so how do you shout louder? What I tried to do, instead, was shout differently rather than louder. I find louder doesn’t always work.”