STRAIGHT OUTTA COLÁISTE CHOILM
The bling-free trio bringing rap and hip hop to the Midlands… and beyond
JJust like any hip-hop act, Chasing Abbey rap and sing about who they are, what they want and where they come from. The difference is Offaly is not LA and Tullamore is not Compton. This trio came straight outta Coláiste Choilm.
Back in 2015, the Midlands school’s music teacher Stacy Hogan suggested that Leaving Cert students Jonathan Byrne and Ted Conway should enter a radio talent competition. After enlisting Ronan Bell from a class three years below them they began working on music. Within a short time, Chasing Abbey took shape.
‘We just haven’t looked back since,’ Jonathan says.
Of course, Jonathan, Ted and Ronan now go by the names Bee, Teddy C and Ro, monikers more at home within the lingua franca of rap and hip hop. And no, as you might have guessed, deciding to bring rap and hip hop to the Midlands and beyond was not met with instantaneous approval.
‘People thought we were English. No one could believe we
were from the middle of Ireland. We knew straight away that we would be fighting a tough battle,’ Bee says.
‘We’re talking about true experiences. We don’t use slang from the UK or America – we use our terms.’ So, who is Abbey, Bee? And why are you, Teddy C and Ro chasing her, he or it? ‘It’s not a girl’s name to us. Abbey is who we think about when we are working towards a song, it’s the audience,’ Bee, 22, says.
‘We might say: “Would Abbey like this?” or “Nah, Abbey wouldn’t like that.” So, when it came to choose a name, we thought, well, Abbey is the audience and that’s what every band is chasing. We’re not pandering to anyone but it’s good to keep in mind who we want to appeal to.’
The Irish hip-hop scene is growing, he says. He namechecks Kojaque and Jafaris and other notable exponents. ‘I think the encouraging thing is that there are pockets of acts around the country. It’s not all about Dublin. That’s why we’ve called our tour the Culchie Kid Tour.’
In keeping with their Midlands earthiness, unlike many of their American and British counterparts, Chasing Abbey don’t indulge in the braggadocio prevalent in the genre.
‘We don’t have bling; we don’t have money, so we don’t talk about that,’ Bee says. ‘The five tunes on the EP is us talking about our journey. Our experiences are not money and bling – they’re about relationships and about our battles within the music industry.’
Given that they hit the charts with their first single, That Good Thing in 2017, a mere year after forming properly, and, the following March, won the RTÉ Choice Song of the Year prize for it, Chasing Abbey seem to have driven a coach and horses through an initially resistant industry.
They also featured in an Eir TV campaign, as did their song Talk To Me. Considering their own ‘tough battle’ they’ve set up a music production and artist development company in Tullamore called Penthouse Productions to smooth the way for the next wave of Irish rap and hip-hop acts.
‘If you grow up around Tullamore, music means the banjo or the fiddle; traditional music, country and folk music. Rap music is just alien to most people from Tullamore,’ Bee adds.
‘Everybody thought what we were trying to do was impossible and we’ve proved that it is possible. We want to spread the message that if you want to do it, you can do it. We never had that help – we had to do it all by ourselves.’
Chasing Abbey’s EP, The Odyssey Project, is out now. They play Cyprus Avenue in Cork on Saturday and the Olympia Theatre next Sunday.
‘Everybody thought what we were trying to do was impossible and we’ve proved that it is possible’