Mass effects and presidential gigs
Ahead of his New Zealand tour, Irish singer Mundy talks to Hannah McKee about how a motorbike-riding priest changed his life.
Irish singer-songwriter Mundy says it pays to be nice to strangers, you never know who they might turn out to be. Had he not chatted to a helpful stranger outside one of his gigs in New York a few years ago, it’s unlikely he would have found himself performing for the Obamas at the White House a few months later.
It’s just one of the many surreal experiences Mundy’s had in his 20-year music career, in which he’s also toured with the likes of Neil Young and Alanis Morissette, and featured on the soundtrack for the Oscar-nominated, Leonardo DiCaprio film Romeo + Juliet. It’s a career he owes in part to a guitar playing, motorbike-riding priest he met as a teen.
Fresh from creating his selftitled, sixth studio album, Mundy, real name Edmond Enright, is taking his folk-rock tunes to nine centres on a national tour of New Zealand over the next month.
He’s one of a handful of Irish acts booked for the Kapiti music festival Coastella on February 25, some of whom are joining him for his other nationwide gigs.
Originally from the town of Birr, which he describes as the ‘‘bellybutton of Ireland’’, Mundy picked up a guitar at the age of 14.
‘‘A priest arrived at our school, around 1987 or 88, named Father Pat Gilbert who had a drum kit with him, a bass, and an electric guitar, and he cycled on a motorbike.
‘‘He turned Mass around, he started bringing in gospel and making it more friendly for the kids.
‘‘He made the kids two years above me create a band for the annual Mass and me and my friends were like, ‘wow, this is pretty amazing’, and all the girls started looking the other way instead of looking at the sports players.’’
Suddenly, learning the guitar seemed to make a lot of sense, and Mundy found himself and his friends staying late after school to play music.
‘‘It was quite a revolutionary time in our lives because all the other years would have been to play sport and go home, or stay back and study, and we were given this opportunity to get into music totally because this priest made it happen.’’
It helped that Mundy’s father owned a local pub, where he would later perform to punters hits by the likes of Bob Dylan, U2, Simon & Garfunkel, The Doors and R.E.M.
‘‘Basically, I learned how to play in public while everyone was looking, I was reading off the hymn sheets and got better and better, and it took control of me a bit more than anyone had envisaged.’’
Fresh out of school at age 17, Mundy moved to Dublin, where he enrolled in courses, but found himself spending most of his time busking on Grafton St.
Two years later, with creative and emotional fuel from a recent break-up, Mundy was picked up to tour with Alanis Morissette in the UK, and signed a record deal for which his single To You I Bestow ended up on Romeo + Juliet.
‘‘The soundtrack sold over 11 million copies and it put my music out into places around the world where it never would have got to otherwise.’’
Now a husband and father-oftwo, with six studio albums under his belt, Mundy is looking forward to sharing his music with a Kiwi crowd.
His St Patrick’s Day gig at the White House was his second time performing for Barack Obama, after the former US President visited Dublin in 2011.
It was one of the best days of his life, and one of the worst St Patrick’s nights of his life.
‘‘Washington is very funny, it’s very dead after 10 or 11 in the evening.’’
The night was saved when he found an Irish pub, was handed a guitar, and made fantastic music with strangers all night.
Mundy performs with the Seamus Begley Trio for his North Island gigs, and with ALDOC in the South Island. See Mundy.ie for more details.