MacD on Music: Just in Casey

It’s a pretty well-established fact that Ireland is the land of excellent music and brilliant festivals. Events like Electric Picnic and Stendhal draw in some of the best talent from around the world every year and have given us many iconic moments. It may surprise you to discover that England, too, have been known to host fairly decent festivals themselves. Glastonbury, otherwise known as the English Electric Picnic, is coming up later this month and this year features one of Derry’s finest, the brilliant Paul Casey.

Paul has been a staple of the Derry music scene for a long time now, and his talent has been recognised globally, having spent a stint working with Chris Rea. Closer to home (taking that Road to Hell that leads to the Peace Bridge), Paul has worked with a number of home-grown talents, producing for people like Brother Ray and Paddy Nash.

On the 26th this month, Paul will be taking the stage in St. Columb’s Hall for a warm-up gig ahead of his Glastonbury debut. We spoke recently about this gig, as well as the road to Glastonbury and the difference between solo acoustic shows versus full band affairs: “I love to play with the band as much as I can but a lot of the time it’s not viable because it takes a lot of money to put on a big show.

"Over the years I’ve learnt to do solo gigs and I tune my guitar to an open tuning. I had to do it because I wanted a bigger sound. I use an Open D tuning. When I’m playing solo gigs, it fills out a lot of stuff for me. I play a loudened guitar. It’s got a lot of bottom end, a lot of bass. It can be very rhythmic and percussive, so I love all that.”

“Whenever I play with the band, I play a lot more electric guitar because the band is covering all the things I’m trying to do in a solo gig. What got me playing guitar was electric guitar. It’s great to play with the band because it gets me back to where it all started.”

“I can’t wait for the Glastonbury gig and the warm-up we’re going to do. It’s going to be great craic.”

Next, we spoke about Glastonbury and how it came about: “It came out of the blue. A man called Paul Charles, who runs the acoustic stage, he’s an agent for some big, big names, Tom Waits being one of them. Away back during Covid, it was Van Morrison’s 75th birthday and Hot Press Magazine did a series of artists doing a tribute to Van. We did one, ‘In the Days Before Rock and Roll’, my favourite Van Morrison song.

"We did that and somehow ended up on the main night, the night of his birthday. There was to be ten videos released on the night of Van’s birthday, which was all the big names, Hozier, Glen Hansard, the President Michael D. Higgins, Bob Geldof. When we made ours, and we sent it to Hot Press, they were just blown away by it and they put it on the big night with all the big names, which was insane.”

“It was sent to Paul Charles by Niall Stokes from Hot Press at the time and Paul became a big fan and he was watching all the new music I was putting out myself since then. I was sitting there last October working in the studio and an email came in from Paul Charles that just said ‘Are you playing live? Do you have an agent? Can I have your contact details?’.

"We got in touch and basically, he said he wanted to book me for Glastonbury, that he was a big, big fan of the Van Morrison thing and all the music I’ve put out since and he just wanted to give me a go at it and that’s how we’re there. I’m still in shock about it. I won’t believe it until we’re standing in Glastonbury playing.”

“I’ve a great band and crew, all musicians I’ve worked with the past twenty, thirty years. Liam Bradley on drums, Nicky Scott on bass, Johnny McCullough on Hammond piano, Damian McGeehin on fiddle, Lauren Doherty on backing vocals and John T. Doherty on rhythm guitar and then we have Paul Sheeran, PS Audio doing sound for us. It’s going to be really cool.”

We spoke then about the warm-up gig: “The night in St. Columb’s Hall is a full band production. We’re going to do it as we’re going to do it at Glastonbury. I know it’s only the cinema room, and there’s only 130 tickets, but hopefully we can fill it and do a really good gig for everybody.”

And that’s it for Paul Casey. The Glastonbury warm-up gig will be taking place in St. Columb’s Hall on the 26th this month with tickets available in Cool Discs.

Paul can be found on Facebook and Instagram @paulcaseymusic.