The Goo 1
Interview DES TRAYNOR I’M SO BORED WITH CONTEMPOR
ARY MUSIC PRODUCTION, THERE’S SO MUCH ‘NOTHING’ IN IT So Seán, congratulations. 9 years in the making? Well, it wasn’t really nine years. It was two-anda-half years, I suppose. I’ve written hundreds over the last nine years, but I suppose I’ve just been doing loads of other stuff - like the theatre stuff - and it’s the logistics of getting it together to do an album. It’s so difficult to balance the financials and the time frame. Also, what happens is that it takes me so long to gather the wherewithal to record, in terms of my own time, energy, commitment and money for studio time, that by the time we go to do it I’ve moved on myself personally. I just reached a point where I wanted to make something really raw and sort of acoustic and roots-based and that’s relatively cheaper to do. Because of COVID I wasn’t doing anything else, so it meant this became my focus, and I got it done and got it out. I’m working on another one already. Ace singer-songwriter Seán (Doctor) Millar has just released his sixth solo album, Ruining Everything, having endured not only pandemic lockdown, like the rest of us, but overcoming some personal health issues as well. Here he chats about the making of the record, his influences, and what else he has been up to. PAGE 16 It was Les Keye, at Arad Studios? …as producer, yes, and he was much more ‘the producer’ on this. Normally when I make records, I’m co-producer. I generally work very closely on arrangements, you know, because that’s one of my skills, I guess. In fact, I’m much better at arranging music than I am at playing it. For this Les did a lot of donkey work and he brought in Donal Lunny and Bill Whelan the banjo player. No click tracks were used on the record and huge amounts of them are single takes. So that was an attempt by Les to try and capture a sort of authentic Dr. Millar experience and that kind of mixture of absurd post-punk and roots music that I am. PIC: NORMA BURKE DOCTOR MILLAR