Fusty - Interview

Starting life as a comedy indie band, Fusty has come a long way from beginnings they never thought until recently would be anything but humble. Releases on Brique Rogue, Siesta and now DHN Records have propelled these gang of old school friends into a global scene eager for their individual brand of house, jazz, funk and reggae. They are an example of what can be achieved by many budding musicians and producers with a mix of belief and talent, along with a bit of local encouragement and example. Here, Deep House Network talk to Darragh O’Connor, keyboard player and the chief producer of the band, about the Fusty sound, talking to 68 year old men, and weirdness dials that go all the way up to 11!

DHN – There are a lot of members in Fusty, how did you all get together?

Darragh O’Connor - Well, we all went to school together. Four of us started the band when we were in leaving cert. I began as lead singer and guitarist, believe it or not, and the only remaining members of that line-up now are the drummer Aidan and I. We went to college, and things kind of fizzled out for a year. Then Aidan and I got together again, and we brought in two more guys that we had gone to school with, who we both knew were good musicians. We started as an instrumental acid-jazz 4 piece. Then Barry, who was a very good friend of ours, said he’d like to do some vocals, so the Fusty we all know was born out of that.

When we started out, it was an indie, almost comedy act, then mainly acid jazz and jazz-funk, but I was really into house, and being a regular at Sir Henry’s influenced me a lot. Everyone in the band had intersecting influences; we all had our own little musical niches. Mine would have been deep house, some of the lads would have been into 70’s funk and that kind of thing, the guitarist was into Jimi Hendrix. So we had a good mix, it was nice and diverse. It enabled us to give Fusty its own sound, if that’s not a cliché. I was always messing around with sequencers but I never thought of merging the two. I can still remember the night where I just got into playing a straight 4-to-the-floor and started messing around with chords, and realised we could actually do house with them.

It seems all shit now, but at the time it seemed like the jazz-funk-indie band and the other project I had going at the time, bedroom producing I suppose, didn’t have to be separate at all. Even now, we try to keep it half jazz-funk and the kind of thing you expect from a band, and half the stuff you wouldn’t expect, like sequencers. We get a crowd that follow us who also follow indie bands, the live fans, the jazz fans and so on, along with some of the club crowd. Events like the DHN Records launch at Go Deep were very successful, and that has illustrated how we’re appealing to and merging the audiences of both cultures.

DHN - Do you believe that you’re attracting people that normally wouldn’t go to any live gigs at all?

DOC - Yes. Plenty of friends of mine would be old [Sir] Henry’s heads. We all started going there at 17 and 18 and there would be a lot of people from them who would have just stuck to seeing DJs, and never gone to see a band. It’s nice now that live music seems to be coming into house more and more, there are a lot of examples of that now.

DHN - How would you account for the rise in popularity of live music in the past year or so, and do you feel that dance-orientated bands are still given a raw deal financially compared to their more mainstream counterparts?

DOC - There are eight of us in Fusty, so if we were to share fees, individually, we would get practically nothing. If we were in this for the money, we would have gotten out of it a long time ago. One rule we’ve always had from the start is never to take money from the band; we’ve never paid ourselves. I’ve personally never made a penny out of Fusty. We’ve put it all back in. I bought a new laptop recently, so the band paid for a third of that, because the band will easily get a third use of it. So we’ve always had money to buy the essentials. Even before the DHN Records launch there was panic about the leads and microphones, but we can buy those things straight off. We’re playing a gig in Dublin next Wednesday, so there’s no problem flying guys from Sligo to Dublin for the gig. We call it “The Band Pocket”. We do treat ourselves sometimes, like at the Jazz festival, we have the annual Fusty dinner.

What is unfortunately happening around Cork, and we’ve addressed it with the cartoons [on the Brique Rouge release] is that there are a lot of fantastic live musicians around, especially jazz musicians, who are just playing in wedding bands. There aren’t many opportunities around, so they can be a little complacent about their role. I think that if they were in New York, for example, there would be more of a creative scene, and something more to aspire to. There are things going on here, but it’s mostly younger bands, and when musicians see that it’s very difficult to make it, a lot of them either give up, or turn to doing covers. There’s plenty of work in playing functions, I know plenty of musicians practicing for Christmas gigs at the moment. The response we’ve gotten from musicians we’ve worked with has been fantastic. When we bring them up to the studio and say, “Look, just play what you want”, the reaction can be like, “Yeah?!? Are you sure?”

There’s a buzz about it now, and regular musicians and people like myself who would have a decent knowledge of producing and arranging are starting to work together more and more. Being in Cork, in terms of the size of the place, probably doesn’t help. I don’t think the whole thing will explode or anything, but for a long time, in Cork particularly, we have been big consumers of music, but with very little original electronic music being produced, besides Fish Go Deep. Thousands of punters went to their gigs, loved it, roared and shouted at a kick drum coming in, but for all the talk about it, very little came out of it creatively. That’s one thing that’s driving me on. A lot of people come up to us and say, “I think it’s great what you’ve done”, but I don’t think we’ve really achieved that much yet. There are a lot of people out there who could do this also, maybe even do it better. It would be nice if more people started to do it, because then other people would start believing in themselves more.

Ideally, we’d like to be in San Francisco, New York, Chicago, London or Manchester - a bigger place with more venues and a bigger potential audience. At the same time, there’s bands of a very high standard in those cities, so any time that you think you’re doing well, you look at them and go “Shit! Let’s not get up ourselves here”. It’s a case of having a bar to rise to, you know?

DHN - You’ve said that some band members will be moving to different locations soon…

DOC - Yeah, they’re all gone already unfortunately. Ed [Guitarist] is in Sligo, Aidan [Drummer], Barry [Singer], and Ian [Bass] are all in Dublin as well. Aidan’s an engineer, and Barry’s going to be a barrister. Ian’s in art college, and I’m down here as an engineer. Pat [Sax] is another engineer here in Cork, so we’re split up all over the place. Unfortunately, that takes its toll on practice and getting original stuff together.

DHN - Although you’re hopeful the recording will continue apace, you’ve said that this will impact on the live music. It must be very disappointing given the local buzz generated by your live show…

DOC - Absolutely, because even a year ago, we recorded a demo and we weren’t sure what was going on. I think at that stage people would have been quite content to move away to other paces and do different things. Nevertheless, we said we’d give it one last go, did the demo, and got a fantastic response. There were lots of people looking for it, and then Siesta picked it up. We were over the moon about that. Suddenly things started happening. Ronan C sold about 70 in his record shop, and could have sold more, and that looked really good. We were in the papers, there was publicity, and we were taken aback by it ourselves. The DHN Records launch was fantastic, great feedback on that one. It gave us an insight on the benefits of bringing out a record and being on a west coast label. People pricked up their ears when they heard that people outside of Cork were talking about us. We were on national radio as the No.1 gig of the night, so we were delighted when we were able to follow through with it.

I’m still pushing on the producing, but I now have to wait until the lads come down for the weekend, and they say to maybe change this or that, and I say ok, and re-arrange it, and then it’s another two weeks before they are down again. The most frustrating and disappointing thing about it is that we want to do gigs all over the country, and there are plenty of offers there as well, but people just can’t take the time off. We could all turn up and rush to a gig of a Wednesday night, but I wouldn’t be in favour of slapping something together for the sake of it. If you’re playing, you want to give 120%, and make sure everything is really, really tight. On that note, we decided that we would cut right back. We’d come out once in awhile and make it really special rather than playing around and doing the same set. It is disappointing. It would be great if everyone was in Cork, but at the same time, music isn’t something we can give up our jobs for at this stage. It would be nice if someone could wave a magic wand and say, “I can give ye a career in music that’s more secure than the one ye’re in”, but we know that’s not going to be the case. Fusty as a group may be short of practice sometimes, but there is never any shortage of ideas, and that’s half the work really.

DHN - What do you feel you offer the audience at you live shows, and do you have a favourite gig thus far?

DOC - I have a couple of favourite gigs, I don’t know if I could pick one over another. What we would offer is the blend of live music with electronic music, house primarily. I think our show sounds like any record that might be sequenced with drum machines etc., but in fact, it’s completely live. To the live music fans, we appear like an indie band on stage, and then we’re almost masquerading as a house band. What’s really interesting is when you play local events such as the Jazz festival and you see the wide range of ages of the people who are into it. You would normally associate with the under-20 audience, although I don’t know, maybe under 35 audiences at this stage (laughs). Well, youth culture and dance music are supposed to go hand in hand. So it’s nice when you have an audience that ranges from 18 up to 58 or even 68. We have guys with grey hair coming up to us afterwards and saying, “I really, really liked that, what kind of music is that?” We would answer “Oh, that’s house music you know, dance music?”, and the response would be “THAT’S dance music? Is that not that drug music I heard about?” That’s why I used the term masquerading earlier, because people’s preconceptions are put aside when you’re playing something like a jazz festival. They automatically presume you to be extremely competent musicians, and that it’s going to be very chin-stroking stuff, so we have that side of it nicely covered as well. I suppose that is what we offer really, a nice blend between the two, and both audiences can really enjoy it. St. Germain, I think, were the first to really make that breakthrough on a global scale, and now every second TV show uses their music. It is that fusion of jazz and house that has lifted house out of people’s stereotypes.

DHN - You have gotten a positive response to your releases so far. How important is the appreciation of the press and DJs to you as a band, and has any of it ever influenced you creatively?

DOC - I don’t know if it influences us creatively, but it defiantly gives us confidence in what we’re doing. I haven’t really come across any bad reviews, so that has not been a factor yet. Some have been really encouraging and it’s been funny really because, say, with the Siesta and Brique Rogue stuff, the record sleeves are not that informative about where we’re from. There’s a picture of a beach, people we know ask us where we took it, and we reply, “We don’t even know who those people [on the sleeve] are!” You can see from what some people have written that they don’t realise that we’re from Ireland. There were a couple of reviews that we did smirk a little at. I think some assumed when they heard Barry’s voice that he was African-American. In a way that’s an advantage, there’s not a big Irish accent shining through - although we wouldn’t be opposed to that.

DHN - How influenced would you say the band has been by your partners on the Deep House Network release, Fish Go Deep, and how many of you were fans before joining Fusty?

DOC - Well, I would have been a big regular there, at least three Saturdays in the month; I think the 7th birthday was my first gig. Patrick, the sax player, used to be a regular there as well. One of the most influential things was the mix tapes they used to bring out. If you were having a house party, I would put on Sweat ’97 or ’98, and all my friends were into it. It was a huge part of my teens and early 20’s. In terms of their influence, the records they played, and now their production, it gave us the confidence to believe that people in Cork can produce records. Before that, it was something that was left unsaid. By releasing records, they influenced people in Cork in the same way that, say, famous local sports stars influenced kids to get out there and believe in themselves. Without wanting to exaggerate it too much, the fact that Fish Go Deep are on about ten labels at this stage, DJing and being respected all over the world shows that it is achievable for others. They’re just guys like us, you know?

DHN - So would you say that before then, you thought that being a few guys from Cork meant it literally couldn’t be done?

DOC - Yeah, you just didn’t know anybody doing it, or even how it was done. I know now how to take an idea and turn it into a record, how to make the whole process work, and basically how get the stuff out there. Just knowing that you can do it is important. I remember meeting Greg on the street, and him asking me for demos. I said, “Yeah, we have some stuff” and he would say, “Look, everyone says they have stuff in the pipeline. I don’t want to get anything from you until it’s finished. I don’t want any half-baked ideas”. He also told us of the importance of being endorsed and getting out there, because you are going nowhere until you do. When we released on a West Coast label, suddenly people said “Hang on, guys from outside the country are saying that their ideas aren’t bad”. That is when people’s ears started to prick up. We also learnt a lot from their DJ gigs, not just the music, but also the atmosphere they were able to create. I learned what gets people going, the way build-ups are constructed, how producers arrange tunes to build up tension, climaxes, breakdowns, and the right place to put them. Bringing in a chord at the right time can get a huge reaction and make a crowd cheer. That whole era was created by them.

DHN - What other artists would you say have been the main influences on the Fusty sound?

DOC - From a live point of view, Ed [Guitarist] would be into Jimi Hendrix, he learnt to play because of him, whereas Ian [Bass] would be into Grand Central and all that stuff. The rest of us, well, we just love music, you know? We used to have this joke before when we started the band a couple of years ago. People would ask us, “Oh, you’re playing in a band? What kind of music do ye play?” We’d say,
“Well, do you know Death Metal?”
“Yeah”
“Do you know Whitesnake?”
“Not really”
“Well, do you know Metallica?”
“Yeah”
“Nothing like that” - that is how we described our sound!

In terms of house, Kevin Yost would have been my favourite for years. The combination of jazz and house he has got going on appealed to me. Julius Papp, Masters At Work of course, and Kerri Chandler too. Plus a lot of guys who released one tune with only 8 or 9 hundred pressings, but that tune could have been the most influential for us. That’s what is nice about house music, there are thousands of artists out there, and there’s no dominating force as such. It’s not too commercially motivated, and not run as a business to the extent the pop music industry would be. You are not stuck with the same twenty bands in the charts every week because the record companies have decided to pump all of their money into one or two artists. It’s more of a level playing field in house and dance music in general. It doesn’t matter what you look like, or whether you are 25 or 45. We haven’t had a high level of communication with Siesta or Brique Rouge, but in a way that shows that they’re just interested in the music, and that they love the music.

Personally, I am into everything, like Stevie Wonder, Femi Kuti, Curtis Mayfield, Herbie Hancock and a lot of 70’s soul - but I will always come back to house music. No matter what the financial situation is, I’ll always produce house music - I couldn’t sit still without it! I was away on holidays recently, listening to some music, and I suddenly got an idea I was bursting to get back to the laptop. I was thinking “Oh no, I’ll forget that now”, and I was even singing to my girlfriend saying, “Make sure you remember this now”. There were probably a few drinks on board at that stage I’d say though.

Say, with something like hip-hop, I really like it, but most Irish people would be a little cynical about the culture of it. It is profoundly American, so I wouldn’t really get it a lot of the time. It describes something very different from the kind of society we live in, but house is a kind of genre that does not really have any image associated with it. I think it has completely shrugged off the drug-orientated image that it was stigmatised with for a long-time. The popularity of bands like St. Germain has done a lot for that. It’s fantastic in its lack of image, in a way.

DHN - What are your hopes for your new release on DHN Records, “Blackens As It Dries”?

DOC - It was fantastic to get the release on DHN Records, and being on the same label as Fish Go Deep and Aruba also, who has a very nice discography, is a great endorsement for us. It’s a strange-sounding tune, I suppose. Greg Dowling [Fish Go Deep] thought it was Moodyman when he heard it first, which was a compliment in itself. I gave Barry [Fusty lead vocalist] the CD with the music, he came back with the vocals, and we said, “Yeah, this is defiantly a bit weird”, but we felt good about it. At the same time, you don’t really know until you send it out there. There aren’t many live elements in “Blackens As It Dries”. It is something that could be done live, but it would take a lot of reworking. To practice a tune to get it right, we’d need at least two sessions of four hours to get it really tight. So we’d rather leave it out rather than trying to bang something together for the sake of it.

The reaction we’ve been getting to that, and our other records, has been nice though. When you hear them on national and local radio stations with DJs saying, “You’d never think that this was from Cork” gives us great confidence to come up with new ideas, and say, “Well, we’ll try something even weirder the next time. We’ll push it to limit until they say ‘That’s Crap!’”, then turn the ‘Weirdness Dial’ back from11 to maybe 5 or 6!

DHN - Finally, what are your hopes for the future?

DOC - Well, in the short-term, it’s difficult to say. At the moment, we don’t know what we are doing in five days time, never mind five years! I would certainly like to have a career in music if I could. I will certainly keep producing anyway, whether it gets signed or not. For Fusty, we would hope that we’ll keep producing records. We’re probably working on too many tunes right now, but we defiantly think we’re improving all the time. We are looking forward to spending some time on production, and maybe getting in a bit of practice as well if we can. Who knows what will happen? I’m going to get stuck in with Bob Jackson doing the cartoon project, like what was on the sleeve of our “First To Break EP” on Brique Rogue. I don’t think the current situation with Fusty is helpful, but we have all decided that we’re certainly not going to split up or anything. Going on a full tour is probably out, but we’ll still be gigging as much as we can. When you send out demos to record companies, that’s where the excitement comes from. You never know what e-mail is going to be in your In Box. I would like to think that we won’t get complacent and not produce anything for a year. As house acts go, we are still pretty young, the average age of the band is 23, so we’ve a fair bit to go yet.