A ROLL CALL OF WHAT’S
Faye O’Rourke on festivals and finally touring the band’s debut album
FAYE O’Rourke is not normally the lead singer of a covers band but guests at Kellie Harrington’s wedding might have got quite the surprise when they realised it was the full line up of Soda Blonde belting out the classic hits.
‘Amanda is my cousin,’ says Faye of Kellie’s now wife. ‘I was the entertainment, I was their wedding gift and that was all they were getting,’ she says, laughing. ‘It was really funny because people kept asking if we had a card. We’d probably make more money in a wedding band,’ she says, joking. For Soda Blonde have been in big demand in their own right since the release of their debut album Small Talk last year.
It was right in the middle of various restrictions and a booked tour had to be cancelled so this summer will see them touring it for the first time. They are one of the bands heading up Beyond The Pale which takes place from June 10 to 12 in Glendalough Estate, Co Wicklow.
‘This is our first summer touring the album really’ says Faye. ‘We were initially scheduled to tour last September with a UK and Irish tour and that was postponed right up until February. It feels like it has been up and running for a while now and time is flying by so fast I think, because we were used to sitting around at home twiddling your thumbs.’
Small Talk was, though, received with much love as O’Rourke and her band mates guitarist Adam O’Regan, drummer Dylan Lynch and bassist Donagh Seaver-O’Leary slid out from under their Little Green Cars past.
It was the right decision, O’Rourke feels, to release then.
‘It was a hard decision because there were people saying “Don’t release that in the middle of Covid it’s going to have repercussions.” But I think it was the right time for the record and I think people needed things in their lives at that time,’ Faye says. ‘You can sit on these things and wait for the stars to align but at the end of the day it’s about how you feel about the music and the time it represents in your life. And I think if we’d sat on that any longer it wouldn’t have felt the same. I think songs change meaning as they go anyway. They really are open to other people’s interpretations and connecting with them but for us it was the right time to do it.’
REINVENTING yourself in the music industry is not the easiest thing but after Little Green Cars split, Faye wanted to change things for herself.
‘We started in 2019 as Soda Blonde so it’s really not that long ago but that time seems so bizarre now as I was trying to figure out my place within music then,’ she says. ‘Obviously I’d been more on the sidelines of things - not really but in comparison to Soda Blonde I was doing a lot less and my personality wasn’t as prominent in that project. I was very shy and I never spoke on stage. I found that all really terrifying so this was a real challenge.’
Indeed, O’Rourke admits she decided to follow that age-old adage fake it til you make it.
‘I had to manufacture a lot of fake confidence at the start of Soda Blonde and now I feel like a little bit more of a human,’ she says, honestly. ‘I feel like more of an artist in my own right and that I have a place in music and I’m not going anywhere. Because we’ve done the hype thing before and we have been chewed up and spat out by the hype machine many years ago. So that’s not relevant to me - I want to make new things so it’s just about making and creating as much as we can and not resting on our laurels. I am really pleased about how
the record has done but now it’s onto the next chapter.’
Covid did help in many ways as the band got used to remote working on songs, changing uo the traditional roles.
‘I can work and layer and produce and arrange things at home so our roles are spread out now,’ says O’Rourke. ‘It’s not “stay in your lane” and so the soundscapes are broadening because we have learned to adapt to working by ourselves.’
That said, live is where the band do their best work so a new album is being formulated soon down in The Bee Keepers in Clare to get the live feel.
‘We are all growing as artists and we are not as tied to sticking to one lane and that’s the benefits of having the experience we have had,’ says Faye.
But with summer coming and the heady mix of music and fields beckoning, Soda Blonde look forward to enjoying what they missed out on last year and giving those tunes from Small Talk the chance to change and grow in front of live humans.
‘That was what the pandemic showed us,’ Faye muses. ‘That 80 per cent of what you do is because of the people that are standing in front of it and how it affects them.’
Soda Blonde play the Beyond the Pale Festival which takes place from June 10 to 12 in Glendalough, Co Wicklow. Tickets on sale now from itsbeyondthepale.ie