MacD on Music: It’s Not Easy Being Green

Ireland has a long, proud history with punk bands. From The Undertones to the late, great CHERYM (sorry if this is how some of you found out they’re done), to The Pogues, we’ve produced some of the best.

Today, I’m talking to Galway’s Numbskull Narrative, aka Green Day-tribute band Green Week. The group, made up of Alan Casey (bass/lead vocals), Francis Glynn (guitar/backing vocals) and Victor Vieira (drums) played Bennigan’s in Derry (with support from Shasma) and are about to release their latest EP ‘The Gutters’ later this month. I caught up with Alan and Francis recently to talk about the group and it’s history.

Alan: “It basically started with the spontaneous decision to sit down and write some straightforward punk rock music. Before that, myself and Francis were in a band called In Orbit, which would’ve been post-rock, instrumental, very different from Numbskull anyway. We were looking to just strip things back, look at the Ramones and their process, just really simplifying things and creating songs that had kind of witty, wacky content.”

Francis: “Basically, for about a year, it was a bedroom-based recording project. We never brought it live. It was just the two of us. We had a drummer that we’re friends with that lives over in Canada so he recorded some drum tracks for us remotely, but basically, it was very complicated. Lots of guitar-based loops and not very conducive to a live setting.

"Then Casey came to me in, I think, September ‘22 and said ‘I have all these punk rock tracks written, would you record them for me?’. I said ‘Yeah, sure. Who’s singing?’ and he said ‘I am’. Years before that, I’d heard him sing but I thought I’d record them anyway because I was moving to Switzerland in two months, so we’ve gotta be quick about this.”

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“We did six tracks. He laid down the bass tracks and the singing, and he recorded the drums since we didn’t have a drummer at the time. Then I heard them and said ‘These are really good. I really like these. I’ll play guitar. I’ll be in the band’. It turned from a recording project to an actual band when one of our good friends Pearse Kelly joined us for our first gig in April 2023. He helped us out for our first run of gigs.”

Alan: “A lot of the songs were written and recorded before we’d even played live together, so we kind of had to twist his arm a bit when it came to playing with us. He said he wasn’t going to be able to do it but he really pulled it off, but we only got about four gigs out of him.”

Francis: “He had other life commitments, but he’s an absolutely superb drummer. He doesn’t even own a kit at the moment. Casey actually bought his kit off him a few years before, so he would listen to the tracks in the car on the way up, do one rehearsal with us before the gigs and then smash it. He’s a brilliant drummer.”

“At that time, I was living in Switzerland and I would travel back for the gigs, so we were probably a bit slow to do things in 2023. It wasn’t really until the end of that year that [Alan] met Victor.”

Alan: “Just by chance. I’m a barber and I was cutting a lad’s hair up in my house and he asked ‘Do you mind if a buddy comes?’. I was like ‘Yeah, come on’ and he ended up showing me videos of himself playing on YouTube with these DIY punk rock festivals over in Brazil. Big fan of Misfits, big fan of the Ramones, and I was like ‘Could you practice tomorrow?’ and we did just that. We blasted out some Misfits covers and he’d taken to the songs immediately. It was a real Godsend because I’d given up all hope before that.”

Finally, I asked about Green Week and their Derry gig. Francis: “It was a huge success. We’re really happy with how that went. It was effectively a double-headliner, with Numbskull opening for Green Week, but it’s all us. The reception from the audience has been so good. We had a good crowd in Bennigan’s. I’ve been playing music since I was a young kid. I’ve been doing live shows since I was, like, twelve and I said afterwards that they were one of the most appreciative audiences I’ve played to.”

And that’s it from Numbskull Narrative/Green Week. Their new EP ‘The Gutters’ is out on March 27th on all good streaming platforms and can be bought on Bandcamp.

They’re currently on tour to promote the EP, playing Electric Avenue in Waterford tomorrow night, Pharmacia in Limerick on the 26th, Sally Longs in Galway on the 27th, Toale’s in Dundalk on the 4th April, Poor Relation in Cork on the 11th April and Fibbers in Dublin on the 18th April.

They can be found on Instagram @numbskullnarrative.