An audience with class act I Draw Slow
I DRAW SLOW
After umpteen tours there, Irish band I Draw Slow are becoming one of the most respected roots music acts in America. As well as drawing on Irish traditional and Appalachian music there is more than a dash of country in the mix. That wasn’t enough to secure them an invitation to appear on The Late Late Show’s recent country special, as Louise and David Holden confirm, but that didn’t seem to bother the siblings when I spoke to them this week.
They are happy to have found favour in the country that largely inspires them. Their American tour, which starts this week will be their 14th since their formation 10 years ago.
‘We’re not like a rock or an indie band where we go over and play industrialised cities. We play these whacked-out places in the middle of nowhere,’ Dave says.
‘We played in a place in Wyoming on the last tour, which really was like a wild west town and not in a self-conscious way,’ Louise continues. ‘It looked like one you would see in the movies. There was even a bar with swinging saloon doors. Wyoming is an open-carry state – people in the audience had guns on their hips, a beer in their hands and their kids running all around them.’
‘We’ve also played in a Basque settlement in the middle of the desert in Nevada,’ Dave says.
I had to ask again. I thought initially he had said a ‘vast’ settlement but, no, Louise confirms it is a settlement of Basque people in the middle of the Nevada desert.
‘It has Basque architecture, Basque food, Basque whore houses,’ she says.
Their extensive travels will see them perform at the MerleFest in North Carolina next week; one of the foremost festivals in the American roots music calendar.
There they will play songs from their fourth album, the excellent Turn Your Face To The Sun. It broadens their musical palette to include a Tex-Mex influence. But we must back up and ask where this love of roots music originated.
‘We listened to quite a lot of country music as children –that was our parents’ influence,’ Louise says. ‘Then myself and Dave moved away from roots music. We got involved in musical projects playing jazz and funk. But somehow, we always suspected we would come back to it.
‘Then Dave met an Appalachian musician while he was living and working in Australia. He reawakened Dave’s love of roots music. That fired Dave up to suggest we should try writing in the genre when he returned home.’
That they did. Generally speaking, Louise writes the lyrics of their original songs, with Dave composing the music. Sometimes their songs involve each singing a verse in answer to the other. On the new album the song Garage Flowers is a case in point.
‘Given that we’re brother and sister it can lead to some weird situations where we’re singing two perspectives of a love song at each other,’ Dave says. ‘Garage Flowers would be an example of that.’
‘Flowers In The Attic,’ Louise quips, recalling Virginia Andrews’s novel.
They say they are looking forward to this US tour – particularly as it is their first since Donald Trump’s election.
‘We will be playing in some diverse places politically, so it’s going to be intriguing to get the different perspectives,’ Dave says.
Unlike many Irish bands who travel to the States, they don’t feel the need to trumpet their Irishness as a selling point.
‘Obviously on the east coast in Boston and New York it’s different,’ Dave says. ‘But in many places we go to, people haven’t a clue about Ireland and don’t even know where it is. One way or another we usually have a lot of explaining to do.’
I Draw Slow play Whelan’s in Dublin on May 14, and Cyprus Avenue in Cork on May 20. Turn Your Face To The Sun will be released on May 12