Time has made a world of difference
Galway boys have improved with age
Steve Wall has found himself balancing a career spanning 30 years in music with a more recent interest in acting. He finished off 2017 with a lead role in the film My Foolish Heart, in which he played renowned Jazz musician Chet Baker and his last days in Amsterdam.
He’s also in the process of working on Warrior, a production shot in South Africa, which will get a release next year on HBO and Cinemax.
On these shores Wall is best known as the front-man of Irish Indie favourites The Stunning.
The Galway outfit are on the road again, promoting the release of Twice Around the World, a revamped version of the band’s
1992 hit album Once Around the World.
So what can fans expect from
The Stunning this time round?.
“We’re a much better band than we were”, Wall told The Beat.
“In the years when the Stunning were broken up we all did different things, all music related – playing with different people.
We became much better players as a result, you can’t beat experience!”.
Wall’s ‘gonzo’ approach to songwriting, will be on full display once again and he was happy to talk about some of the ideas behind the album’s best loved tracks as the tour rumbles on.
December Sky, a song about a single mother who couldn’t cope, was inspired by a case that appeared in a newspaper article in the early 90s, while the turbulent political situation in Northern Ireland during the late 80’s and early 90’s provided perfect the backdrop for a song like Men Without Souls.
An emphasis on writing compelling music about important social and political issues, is something that Wall feels is lacking in modern pop music.
“You know a lot of it is pretty similar,” he said.
“It’s usually, boy meets girl, girl leaves boy, boy is broken hearted – or something similar”.
“I grew up listening to people who had an edge, like Bob Dylan and John Lennon. Then you know the whole punk rock thing happened and you had people like Joe Strummer and Johnny Rotten – there was an edginess to the lyric writing that I feel is missing nowadays.”
With The Stunning, Wall toured every pub club and dance-hall the length and breadth of the country from 1987 to 1994, building a cult following along the way, however an international record deal remained elusive.
The frustration built up and lead to the break-up of the band: “Any Irish act writing original material with any kind of success within the country will want to try their hand abroad, because you just really make a living from it here long term,” he explained.
He reckons things are only getting harder for Irish bands: “I feel sorry for Irish bands at the moment because the touring circuit has shrunk so much compared to what is was in the early to mid 90s.
“Any band promoting an album in Ireland now you’re kind of talking only six gigs, whereas when we started it was very different.
“I came across a flier for a single called Heads Are Gonna Roll, you know we did 22 dates in Ireland to promote it in the mid 90’s.”
Changing habits and the varied ways that people consume music nowadays is Wall’s explanation for the phenomenon.
He reckons people are content to listen to music on streaming rather than go to concerts.
The Stunning have just under 26’500 monthly listeners on Spotify. “Is that good ?”, asks Wall. “I don’t use it !”.
The answer of course is relative. A quick comparison with other Irish acts of the era tells you that The Stunning have a strong core following – interestingly, they record an almost identical number of plays as Aslan who have 26’500 a month.
The Undertones meanwhile, record 400’000 monthly listens, The Frames have 63,093, Ash have 360,080 and U2 predictably blow everyone out of the water with over 9’000’000 plays per month.
At this stage, chasing an international record deal is strictly off the agenda for Wall and The Stunning who are more than content to play to Irish crowds.
New faces turn up to gigs all the time, “younger brothers and sisters of Stunning fans, coming of age”...
“We’re perfectly happy to play
12 gigs a year, if the demand is there”, says Wall.
“We’re not about to do the toilet tour of Britain again – we’re way too old for that!”.
Steve will appear at the Vinyl festival (which takes from the 5th to the 7th of May) alongside his brother Joe, where he will give a talk about sustaining a career in the music industry as well as discussing the 25 year anniversary of Once Around The World.