This is an advertisement for Tres. I'm shearling big, OK, seriously, this is an advertisement for trees for an initiative known as Wolfgang Reforest. Find out more at Wolfgang Referrers Dorahy. Right. And I'm very happy to be doing this ad because this this initiative is partly inspired by a podcast that I put out last year called Shocking Arlon. And in this podcast, I it was one of my climate podcasts. I was trying to get people to care about biodiversity and climate change, specifically in Ireland.

And I told the history of how Ireland had been deforested over the years as a result of British colonial rule like Oliver Cromwell cleared a lot of forests. Go back and listen to Chalky Garlan if you want to hear more about that. But anyway, Wolfgang ah, an Irish company, and they're one of the first people to ever sponsor this podcast at the start. And they decided to start this new initiative, this social enterprise, to begin planting native broadly forests in Ireland.

Right. And any profits made go back into planting more trees. It's a social enterprise with ethics and compassion at its core. In Ireland, planting trees is a radical act of decolonization because our forests were removed because of colonization. So with Wolfgang Reforest, you can gift a planted native Irish tree this Christmas, its 20 year old palm tree planted and they're planted in land in Wicklow acquired by Wolfgang, which was once the great orchids of Shillelagh. And your gift would get a start and a season of video update on how the forest is growing.

What makes me most excited about this is that they're planting native Irish broadleaf trees. OK, last year the Irish government announced they were planting a big load of trees and then and everyone was happy. And then when you looked into it, it turns out that the tree that they were planting were Sitka spruce, which are not native pine trees, and they're harmful to biodiversity. But Wolfgang Rainforest is planting native Irish trees, which benefit biodiversity and its reforestation.

It's reforesting a region which improves rivers, it improves soils, it improves insects, it improves pollinators. I'm very excited about this project. They're using a method known as the Milwaukee Method of Forestry, which it's a Japanese method, right. And it promises rapidly growing woods. Last year, Wolfgang Reforest Rice planted Ireland's first Milwaukie Method Forest. And one year after planting trees, which were expected to grow to a maximum of three feet in a year, grow up to eight feet tall.

And the rapid growth of this chart, that's fantastic for the climate because these broadleaf trees absorb carbon. That's what to do to absorb carbon. It's fantastic for biodiversity, for the animals living there. This is great news. So how about this for a Christmas gift? You're you buy someone a broadleaf, the planting of a broadleaf native Irish tree in a forest for 20 or. What a lovely gift. So go to Wolfgang referrers dorahy, all right, and you can you can buy one as a Christmas gift or you can become a monthly subscriber to social enterprise.

So all the profits go back into planting more trees and. Go listen to my podcast called Chuck Garlan, if you want to hear about biodiversity, how our woods were removed through colonization over the years, and why we should be replanting trees as an act of decolonization. All right, welcome to The Blind Bye podcast, you endless, brainless, you teary Kieran's. Welcome. We are celebrating this week 25 million listeners to this podcast. This podcast is just over two years old and 25 million listeners, which I never expected, never expected that would happen.

But here we are. There's been no advertising for the podcast. I haven't plugged it. I haven't put any money into poshness. It's all word of mouth. It's all because you're listening to the podcast and suggestions to people and suggest to friends. And it's gone from just a little thing in Ireland to now being completely global. And that's why it's got 25 million listeners. So thank you so much to anyone who's enjoyed the podcast and listen to it and told someone else about it.

So to celebrate 25 million listeners, I decided I would show you a live interview that recorded a little while back with Hozier, Hozier, you know who Fokin Hozier is is one of the biggest musical artists in the world. All right. And we had a fantastic chat and one thing I'd say about Hozier, an incredibly compassionate and beautiful person, but most importantly, a real artist. An artist to the core. In the way that he views the world and himself, he is an artist straight up, if if you're a brand new listener right here today and you're here because of Hozier, you're very welcome.

What's the crack? How are you getting on? When you're finished listening, please consider subscribing to the podcast and listening to a few other of my episodes. I've got loads, and I think if you're a fan of Hozier, you'll enjoy my podcast because Hozier is on this podcast because he's a he listens to his podcast. This is a podcast that he listens to and that's why we're here today. So thank you. Here we go. Boehme, iRace, Hozier, how's it going?

And from Brai, what's the crack?

It's all good. I can't complain. How are you keeping I'm I'm not too bad. I'm I'm imagining what I'm doing. You what I do every single day, I, I recognize that. Being alive contains a certain amount of suffering, it's inevitable, and once I do this, then I'm kind of OK, you know. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I that's a good it's a good way to to to look at it. I have been them not for this reason.

Now I just I'm doing it because of all the reasons and my friends are into it.

But I, I love swimming but I've been swimming trying to keep it up through as the weather gets colder. Yeah. And um I'm part of that is if you not even suffer but just experience the discomfort of it and talking about jumping into the freezing cold water.

Yeah exactly. Yeah. Exactly.

Yeah I can understand that. Yeah. And then and I know that that discomfort isn't going to kill you, you know, and, and you're kind of hesitant at first.

And then the day you feel a little bit more capable, you know, you see you're lucky because you're up there near the coast. That's it. Yeah. And so I have a similar kind of thing with my life where so instead of jumping into the ocean to experience that that cold, I'd go for a run in the freezing rain because it's it's Limerick, you know. Yeah. Yeah, I actually I tried. So the one thing I do have access to is a shallow river.

And I once tried to like, copy the people up and say, oh, fuck it, man, no, I'm going to get cold inside and this is River. Yeah, I ended up so what I did is I started I didn't have the courage to completely go into the water. So what I did is as part of my run, because I'm trying to I'm trying to suffer, like you're saying. Yeah. When you get up in the morning and you're drenched, wet and you're freezing cold and you're experiencing physical discomfort, but just at the limit, it wakes you up, it makes you appreciate things.

And it means as well that not much can stress me in the rest of my day. If I just ran for an hour in the freezing cold. Yeah, but I did start doing press ups on the river, right? Yeah. And then I ended up getting this. Very unique fungus on my hands. You get an impressive riverbed. Oh, it's like shit that Vikings used to get, you know.

I can go from hanging around riverbeds so that that put an end to my.

Oh, just itchy. Itchy on both hands. Any time you've got an ailment and it's on equal sides of your body. Yeah. You kind of go right. Something's up here. Yeah.

So, yeah, it turns out I was fucking big pretentious back down doing press ups on the river trying to fucking make spiritual contact with an otter.

You know, it is fascinating.

How did you find that? Did you look it up or did you get a test.

I to go to a doctor, to go to a doctor. And it was I was just like my my hands are unbelievably itchy and it's localized entirely around my palms. Right. And then he says to me, are you doing any fishing rights? And I don't have interest in fishing, but I have been doing press ups on a river bed. And then he started roar and laugh and I said, you caught this off a riverbed. So that put an end to it, you know?

Yeah, but so I don't think there's much I don't think there's great health benefits in jumping around rivers, but there is there is health benefits open.

Like you're jumping into the saltwater.

Yeah. You wear a wetsuit now. Do you wear a wetsuit?

I don't. The most the most I have invested into is because the pain on the far side of the swimmers is the worst part. So it's not even pain. It's just. So what do you do?

You jump into the ocean pretty much. Are you actually where there's a walk in, there is areas where you could jump off the rocks. But I would walk just walk in off the shore.

But yeah. And I think you just brace yourself. You try to prep the body for the shark. And then the most I've invested in is a wetsuit boots. So. Yeah. And it's just so that there's a rubber soul coming out of the boat. Don't want. Yeah. That, that stuff and Sweatman the stones just.

Yeah. It's when you're that cold you're hypersensitive. So you're and that's a luxury you know, that I just leaned into recently.

So I don't come from a culture of jumping into wood said the ocean because that's it's a brave thing. I do know what it feels like to go into freezing cold water and you know, when it feels like your chest is being hit with a mallet. Yeah. Yeah. Do you ever get used to that? Is that always something that you have to prepare yourself every morning? The yeah.

The shock is always it's never not cold if you get me and it is wild because you feel your whole kind of body tighten and you can kind of feel your your internal organs going into just going, you know, just going, I don't know, just kicking into overdrive. You can kind of feel the blood flow differently and stuff like that. So and that is a rush. And there's a spike of adrenaline and a spike.

Why do you chase and what's the what's the the dragon that you're chasing?

I think it is I think it is adrenaline the way I would I would do it.

And I was going to say about running why I have such so much more admiration for actually for what you're doing, like running in cold weather. There is you can stop at any point when you're running, when you're when you're you know what I mean? So it requires a conscious decision. I'm going to continue I'm going to push through this, especially that first five minutes of a run. Oh, yeah. That's not pleasant. It's not pleasant at all.

Whereas once like that, it's the kind of it's a cheating man's way of achieving that. Mindful I'm in my body now experience, you know, and I think because once you jump in the water, getting out of it is is is is is unthinkable. Because if especially if there's wind, the water actually currently as well too in the mornings and is of a higher temperature than the actual especially you get up so you achieve a comfort.

So you're now in the water and your body is surrounded by this freezing water. But there's there's a comfort there. And outside the water is is more harrowing.

One hundred percent, especially in the wind. So the water is actually warmer than the wind chill. And it's so once you're in, it's like the endorphins have hit.

The adrenaline hits immediately after. After if you say so. And then you're just splashing around, having a nice time, enjoying the light on the water and your feeling very present. And you're feeling very alert and you feel very grateful. I have to say it's you feel very connected. Yes. And so I think it's the easy way of achieving the five minute ten minute. I think you run something like 10k you.

I do, I do 10k. I do like an hour. I'm what I'm searching for is it's horrible at the start. I don't know how he does it. I'm used to doing it. I mean. I just get a very present, mindful thing at about 20 minutes in and, you know, it's one of these things, whereas I could technically I'm I'm Harten myself and put my body through pain. But it just I feel alive.

I feel the type of alive that I used to take for granted when I was a child. When you're a child, you feel like that all the time when you're hot and what energy you know, you think back to when you were a child and just the amount of things you would do in one day. Yeah, I remember. I remember being like six. And you have to run to the shop. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Fuck. Is that right. Can you imagine. No, I want sweets. I'm running for anything to the everywhere. Like what. What the fuck is that. No, no one's telling me to do it. It's just I must run. Yeah. And I'm trying to, I'm trying to revisit a bit of that. Yeah. Because that then from my wellbeing, from my mental health, if I have a bit of that in my day, the little things, the things that I interpret as suffering.

But I am an annoying Emelle. A shitty comment online. Yeah. Some work that I have to do that I don't really want to do. These things are now manageable because I've just run in the freezing cold rain this morning. Yeah. And I have this wonderful sense of completion and achievement that I had in the morning. And now I'm capable. I'm functional. If I don't do it, if I see the opposite of getting up for a run for me is staying in bed and just looking at my phone.

Yeah. Yeah. If I, if I do that man I'm not going to have a good day. Yeah you're not. The smallest tasks will seem impossible. Yeah. You know, so I suppose that's why I do it.

And could you imagine doing it with time as you can imagine how much crack it would be if adults maintained like just climbing on things because you think you can like, you know, when you're six years old and you're just you have to clamber on thing.

That's like I'm hugely interested in that. No. Carl Jung, the psychologist Carl Jung, was big into that. Carl Jung used to make time in, like up up until well into his 80s. He would make time every single day to just get down on his knees and play with mud and sticks so that he can access what he's calling the free child. And the free child is it's it's you know, when you're if you're writing a song and you get to that lovely place where you completely leave your body and you leave your mind and your existing only in the music, that's the free child.

That's that's free of ego, free of worrying about what other people think, free of worrying about what you think about yourself. And it's this wonderful land, which is for me, if I'm if I'm doing anything creative, that's what I'm chasing. Yeah. Flow it's called. Yeah. But I try and exist as much as possible, not as much as possible. I try and make time in my day for being a free child. Yeah. Yeah.

And the thing is with adulthood and it's something I'm thinking a lot about recently. Sometimes we get fooled into this performance of what an adult is, you know what I mean? Yeah, absolutely. Real serious. You've got to be polite. Yeah, because for me at the moment, something I do not my time joint quarantine is I'm making live music to video games.

I've enjoyed some of this. Now I have to say, I see so much on Instagram. Yeah, I've seen that. And yeah, to read that which is I must meet you online at some point. I never played. Yeah, that'd be good.

We could write songs together on Red Dead Redemption.

You have a great track record and what it's it's fantastic. And I have to say I yeah it's great but thank you very much Joinet. You're really enjoying.

What I'm trying to do with that is I'm trying to be free child. I'm on a video game exploring a digital wilderness with my guitar, trying to write things that are really, really silly. And I'm trying to move away from what is considered appropriate adult behavior. And sometimes I get comments from people who beat same age as me saying, would you fucking grow up? What are you doing? Are some people think I'm having a nervous breakdown, you know what I mean?

They're just that that the idea of a man in his 30s on the Internet writing songs about a video game is so strange to him. Yeah. And the only reason it's strange is that it flies in the face of the performance of adult. Yeah, we're expected to perform as adults. Yeah. And adulthood for me has nothing to do with how serious you are or how polite you are. Has to do with how well you understand your emotions. Mm hmm.

Yeah. You know what, that's adulthood for me. Do I understand my emotions and am I not relying upon the approval of other people for my self esteem?

Yeah, I mean, that's that's a huge one and that is a huge one, I think.

How does that work for you now? Because it's something I wanted to ask.

Like, am I your fucking at your famous now you're fucking famous.

You read about yourself in the fucking paper, right?

I don't understand it. Yeah. How does it work for your self-esteem? How are you supposed to become someone who is just trying to be compassionate, someone whose whose sense of self-worth comes from within and all of a sudden now you get to read about yourself in the paper?

I, I it is tricky. And I don't think I, I don't think I've really mastered really mastered that.

And I don't think I've really spent enough time and sitting with it and maybe doing the work that needs doing or not because like it is a challenge and some days are great and some days are good and some days are, some days aren't, you know, like.

And what would you find particularly hard for.

I don't I don't know. I think yeah.

I think it's learning to step away, like the kind of comments online is is a thing that, you know, you have to be aware, look, you're in a space where people just say shit about you. And that is that is weird.

And it's not. That's them. That's and and then making the decision also for your own self and for your own health that you don't you don't you shouldn't go looking for that and you shouldn't you shouldn't be reading it.

And and so there's a lot of it, as I say, like a lot of it is work that you have to achieve for yourself, that you're not not driving that self esteem from from what other people think of you at times. I do. I think being an unknown and going back to being being the kind of underdog, it's a wonderful time. And because you have that freedom and you have a lot like when I think back to what I was kind of was going through my head releasing some of the first some of the first music, it was just like I said, you know, I didn't think I would have an audience either way.

So I kind of felt like, fuck it, I'll I'll do I'll do this thing I had written. I had spent years in the kind of development writing songs that I thought people wanted to hear.

And then I started, OK, you know, but I feel like that's what you were trying to do. More popular stuff at the start. At the start, possibly. Yeah, only because you're kind of. But this is stuff I never released, you know. And and then when you say development now, were you like working with labels? Were you someone who was considered to be in development with a label or was this something you were doing by yourself?

It was just something I was doing by myself. I use that term. It's a very industry term. Yeah. But I think what did I do in the early years? I think I got a m I got to.

Who in your mind would you have liked to have sound like at that time. Like on the radio or what space would you. Were you trying to occupy.

I didn't think, I didn't think initially that let's say when we let's see what was the very first single that I ever released was was Take Me to Church, which ended up being a big what ended up being a hit at that stage. I didn't think it was going to be like a radio song. And I think the producer also remember having a chat about it. We're going, look, here's a song that's going from three, four to four four and and has all these these weird.

Angular, chromatic noisiness, and it's a it's a it's about the institutionalized Roman Catholic Church wrapped up in a song about Ryden, I don't think it'll it'll it'll do well on morning radio. And and, you know, it would have been fair, fair enough to to assume that either put like thinking that it would fall into some sort of indie or alternative space. I think the songwriters that I I've always admired were people like Tom Waits and a huge like Paul Simon fan as well, too.

And yeah, you know, and I listen to what is it about Tom Waits?

What it is about, about Tom Waits. It's just might it's a kind of carnival mirror through which he kind of sees he kind of reflects back to the world. There was there's also elements of like his kind of character songs and his and his. Exactly.

That's what I was going to say, because for me, I find comfort in character, whatever I'm doing, whether it's writing books or whatever I find, and saying what Randy Newman, Randy Newman and Tom well, me, Jesus here. You like Randy Newman to big time here, big time. And he's a very brave writer. And again, here's a man who just doesn't give a shit what people you know, I think there's there's grace there's a terrifying freedom to some of his work, you know what I mean?

In some of the in some of the way he went about like, is it on sale or unsay the way out? And it's like, here's a 30 second song and here's me. And there's no chorus here. And it's just, you know, here's like a God song was it was a big one for me.

Oh, Jesus. Actually, I can hear God's song now and take me to church. Yeah. It's like, yeah, fucking hell yeah. That's a fantastic song is an Eastern Standard of work.

Jesus, for people who don't know, that's a song where Randy Newman wrote it from the point of view of God and his utter contempt for humanity.

It's abuse and it's mind blowing. I recoil in the vileness of the is.

That is how we all hope in heaven that the prayers you offer me and it ties in.

Lovely. There's a great Tom Waits lyric says that there ain't no devil. There's God when he's drunk.

Yeah, yet another wonderful song. And I think Tom waits for me. Actually he was he was my death metal as a teenager and I know that's OK. So he was kind of my Marilyn Manson or something. If he was like my tree house where I go and it was like this weird, twisted place and it was. And when you're a teenager, you want to hear that the world is an awful place. You feel awful about the world.

That is. So Tom Waits with a song like God's Away on Business. And yes, the first lyrics are I Tell Your Heart to the Junkman for a book like this, very twisted character.

It was like there's no he always had this perfect ugliness or a crookedness to his work, which I just was very unique to, to his own self. He lent into the the to traditionally what we might like, the unpretty sound of his voice.

And he kind of just leant into that. I think the character.

There's that too. Yeah. The character things fucking. Yeah, that's another thing. That's the one thing that Randy Newman said about his own work. And when I heard Randy Newman says it changed my view of songs. Randy Newman said he wants to elevate songwriting to where shark stories are. Right. So he's like, stop looking at my songs as songs. They're short stories with music. Yeah. And when I took that lens. Yeah, because there's a freedom that literature has that sometimes music doesn't know.

Like if. Yeah. If a songwriter writes a song you immediately assume, oh that's about the songwriter, the songwriter. When they say I'm the I is the songwriter. Whereas with a short story writer you can write the whole thing as I and we just understand it's not literally the art or it's doing it in first person 100 percent. And both Tom Waits and Randy Newman's work, I view them as short stories and then that gives me a freedom act as a band I'm listening to now at the moment actually that I enjoy called Whitney.

Have you heard?

I've heard of Whitney. I think their first album I have listened to I haven't listened to much of their I'm not sure what they really sense, but they are really good crack.

They sound a bit like kind of America or bread. But one thing that I found interesting was they were in a couple of bands beforehand and Whitney is actually a character they've invented, which is like a kind of a kind of a Tom Waits type character. Sounds like just someone who wanders and drinks a lot of whiskey. And that's what Whitney is. It's not them. I say they've created a songwriter. And within that then they have this. Yeah.

Freedom to write. Yeah. Yeah. David Bowie as well. Yeah, very. Character-based is that's actually how much of Hozier is a character compared to Endace.

That's, that's a that'll be a tricky one and one I would struggle to struggle to answer I think especially on the second album. And maybe this wasn't something that I didn't really fail to mature, I just assumed would be picked up. But the way I viewed the second album was that every song was was very different, was a very different character or ways of viewing a very sort of doom and gloom end of the world type. Reeling from a very different perspective and in some of the songs, there's certain lines that reference lines from other songs and like little nods to but they're all sitting around what I kind of described as the same kind of bonfire of our of our time.

They're all kind of watching the world burn and we're all commenting on it or we're all trying to.

And it was sort of it, I suppose, influenced by. And how we're experiencing the kind of tumult of the world through a kind of a hyperreal lens and everybody, you know, how everybody's kind of commenting on it. So some some of the some of the voices on that, the second album were hopeful and whatever, and some more were not. And some were happy about it, about the world burning and some certainly weren't. But I think there's and I'm sure you would find this also there is a freedom in the character thing, but you do find and maybe you have a love for your creation and you have a love because you find elements of yourself.

And, you know, it's I don't know if you if you're if you view your short stories or your or your books nearly like they're your children. But in a feeling something like that, you you love them for their for their what they try to achieve what they do achieve and what they unconditional love. Yeah. There's a man that's a fucking beautiful way to look at art.

Yeah I, I know it sounds, it might sound pretentious and sounds but.

No, no I understand that completely man. That's a struggle for me. Yeah. To allow your work because when you love a human, when you truly love a human, you love all aspects of them, including what they perceive to be flowers about themselves. You just love it all. Absolute and. That, for me, is I would love to completely be at that place with my work, you know. I mean, I am on until someone criticizes it and then when I see someone criticizing it, yeah, I focus on that critique.

Listen. Yeah. Yeah. And you want to just how are you for that? That fuckin breaks my heart because it's I love the process of creating.

I love it to bits and then you put the work out and it's critiqued. Yeah. And I understand that's the game. You put work out and the work gets critiqued. That's the fucking game. Yeah, but how do you avoid number one, the heart of it. But number two, this is the kicker. Yeah. How do you fucking avoid a negative critique of your work? How do you keep that out of your creative space? Because that's what will stop you create.

You know, the I talk to another musician about this, I, I won't I won't mention them by name, but I remember having a good chat with it with another guy my own age, and he was like, I don't I don't know how you stop yourself getting hurt by it. I think after the fact initially when you when you see it, it's tough.

I think and I was talking to a musician, it can be potentially a you talking about a bad review. Like a bad review can be tough. Yeah, it can be a tough thing to read, but it's one of those things intellectually you distance yourself from. But at the same time, you have to if you're going to be brave about it, you have to intellectually distance yourself from good reviews too. But I think that's the. Yes, you know, natural.

Now we do our best to have that natural.

When did you learn that? Because that's the one that a lot of people don't know, that if you don't want to be hurt by the bad, you really can't let yourself feel good by the good.

I, I, I think I kind of naturally fell into that and I look, this might just be tied in with like a healthy, healthy lack of self esteem, but I think, you know, that kind of thing where people are kind of patting on the back when things are going well for you and complimenting you and stuff like that.

I just never I never really was able to internalize praise. Wow. All well, you know, so I think.

So you've made low self-esteem work for you. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So it's like, you know, but that's the other the second edge of that sword is that when when something comes in that's negative, if you already believe it.

And so you know or you're very quick, you're very, very quick to believe that, you know, so you you can it enforces and you something that you've already tried to hold on to for yourself. And I, I fucking missed a trick. You were a genius with the with the with the mask. Oh.

A lot of people say that with the amount of people who are in the public eye that say to me, you fucking you absolutely did lovely quiet points. I can do what I want. I can kill for my own gigs. Yeah, yeah.

No yeah. Yeah. No I'm thinking thinking I had there is great. Um actually.

Yeah. How do you find that man. Because because you are very tall. Yeah.

And I stick out like a like a six foot three or something aren't you. Yeah.

Yeah I'm about six five. I think they leave you alone and break em. Yeah.

Like usually locally like it's, it's hello and how are you. It's never too bad. And I think as time has gone on it hasn't, it hasn't been too bad. I think at first when you're at this rare operation I just appears it's like Jesus, he's there, he is in a spa and you know, and it's like yeah of course I have to pop in spa or whatever it is for the person.

You know, I think initially you are just an odd apparition and it's just the novelty of of you appearing in space. And then you have to come to the it's just come to terms with me. Being inspired is not a novelty, but for them, let's say you've been wherever the heck or in that pobre in that bar or in that restaurant, it's fine.

I will say at first I find it really, really difficult.

And and and I just kind of just pushed through it, I guess. And I still I think I've just pushed it just it's gotten easier, you know what I mean? Being recognized at first I think I was super self-conscious and yeah, I found that. I don't know if I just I just find that you didn't feel more. It's you. I think I think if I was to if I was to just hazard a guess as to why it feels uncomfortable.

I think if you if you walk into a room and everybody stares at you and if they're not staring at apartness, but I think you instinct, your instinctual reaction is one of being threatened or feeling alienated and feeling outside.

It's not normal. It's it's in what order situation. The only reference is like, I don't know, you can walk into the classroom when you're five and you have to drag and dog shit in with you.

Yeah, yeah. It's OK, you know what I mean.

So when it's because I understand that feeling to and one thing that I, I always speak what with people who, who have a bit of a notoriety is. How do you feel when. When you meet somebody now and they know who you are, you don't have to put in the effort of. Showing them you're a nice person anymore. It's like they've made their mind up already and they're they're like, oh, I told you, oh my God.

And the kind of normal human thing of here's a stranger. Now, I have to gain this stranger's trust by being sound and prove to them that I'm worth talking to. And once you become famous, that goes, yeah. And that's that's a that's a big journey of being human, you know. Yeah. It it.

How do you find that you have to work backwards. Yeah. It's a it's it's a funny one. I think I'm a bit more at ease when people haven't a clue or don't give a shit who I am if that makes ok.

Yeah. Yeah. It's just, it's just I don't know, it just feels, feels more natural and you're at an even. I don't know, it's just I just find that far easier. And are you still able to get that in Ireland. Yeah.

You can in certain places. Absolutely unlikely, you know, locally of a lovely, lovely community where I'm living.

And like you go to places like, like Dingel or something like that, or you go to certain places and it might be a novel like, oh Jesus, it's yourself. But it's nice. There's something, John, I don't know if John Moriarty had said about about living in a world that mirrors it. He's referring to being in Connemara in the in the pitch black night of a kind of a night of a kind of a darkness that you don't really experience all that much.

And it was walking through the hills one day and he thought, my God, like that all mirror rings is gone from the world is what is what. He described it as a night that is so dark that like mirrors themselves would be useless. They reflect no light. There's no light to reflect. Yeah, he would not. So he's lost himself in that in that darkness. But he's referring to living in a world of mirrors and that we all we all mirror each other in some way or another.

Your your mother mirrors to you that you are a child and you'll always be a child in your mother's eyes, I suppose. In some in some in some regard. But then people tell us who we are all the time and when we walk to the world, you know what I mean? And so your identity is kind of is kind of bounced to you and as you go about as you go about the world.

And I think that if there's anything that being recognised and thing is, it is a challenge because you are you're seeing yourself mirrored in other people. But it's it's they have ideas of who you are or if they it's because they've seen you on on this thing or they've seen this element or they've seen you on TV or but it's never yourself. You know what I mean? It's it's it's a spectacle of hozier, the spectacle. Exactly. Yeah, exactly.

So it's you kind of see a distorted, distorted mirror or of some of way, but it's.

Yeah, exactly. So and the danger is, is how do you then separate yourself from the spectacle and not become the spectacle consumed by the spectacle. Yeah. Keeping those two things separate.

Yeah. It's Yeah. That's, that's a tricky thing then is it. That is a tricky one. And where just I don't know, I think over time I've become very protective of my internal life as it were, and, and my immediate external life. So my, you know, my friends and family, I try to keep myself to myself a little bit and not not not caught attention too much. That's that's and not for the purposes of of doing something that I've done.

I'm definitely doing for either work or whatever else, you know, like a really tall Enea.

Exactly. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Are you into anyway.

I am, I haven't, I haven't leant into her kind of back catalogue, but I've, I've a lot of respect for the kind of the sound that she had that she's kind of chased. And I think it's great. It's fantastic. I mean. I think Anya should be viewed the same way that braining always viewed yeah, as in any Ania's called New Age. Yeah, yeah. Boys and she called ambient.

I mean it's like ambient is one of these phrases that it's like satire versus comedy. When somebody says something is satire, then you go, oh it's the clever type. Mm hmm. When someone says ambient, it's like it's the clever type. Yeah. But when they say New Age, it's like, no, that's what you put on in the background when you're getting.

Exactly. Yeah, it's very true.

And I just I think Ania deserves a place as a she took fuckin Irish folk in the 80s, mixed it with synthesizers and was like, here you go. Here's something new that no one's ever heard before. Yeah, very true. Um, your process first for for songwriting.

OK, what I'd like to know is, is what do you do? Let's just say you decide I'm going to try and write a song this evening. What do you do?

And I God, I wish I wish I would. I was thinking recently of just leaning more into just start pick an idea and just go go with something. And I'm quite a slow starter and I'm quite I can be quite a slow self starter and. And having said, let's say sit down, go modelling around with ideas, and then you stumble upon, as you say, some piano or guitar, what will be your first AM at the moment?

It would. It has been piano recently, OK? And if it's guitar, it would be in some odd tuning that I'm not comfortable with. I think part of the reason for that is that I'm not good at piano and I'm not. And if I choose a tuning it, it might be one that I've never really played before. And I do think that there's there's something nice about figuring out something that you haven't played before yourself, that you haven't heard yourself play before, and your hands are going to places that they haven't gone.

And OK, right now I am kind of enjoying that a little bit. And and I just find that I don't know, I just find that you you fall onto something that feels fresher and more exciting to you in that moment because it's like you're not terribly there's a lot to be said about not being a master at something at that time. And and again, like now and now, Randy Newman is a master at the piano. I would say he's he's pretty shit hot.

Tom Waits is not a master of an instrument. Tom Waits is not someone I would describe as as a a brilliant musician. He's a competent musician who's an incredible songwriter. Yeah. The same with for me, Lou Reed, Bob Dylan. Sam, carry on. You know. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Very true. Neil Young as well. Jesus, Neil Young. Sometimes you listen to him playing guitar.

Sounds like like a ladder at at a party at two in the morning, you know, but he makes it work, which is going to take a little break from the interview right there. Right. A small little break for about a minute because we're going to do what we call the ocarina pause on this podcast. Basically, digital adverts are inserted. And I don't want to surprise you with this big, loud advert out of nowhere. So I'm going to play a little ocarina, a Spanish clay whistle, a South American clay whistle.

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I love it. It's fantastic. So come join me and like the podcast, subscribe to the podcast. You know, the crack. God bless you all. Let's go back to chatting with Hozier and you how the lyrics work. Do you so do you like find melodies when you're with the piano and then add the lyrics afterwards. Do you. What a first, a first demo. Is it simply melody and music or do you actually try and get lyrics involved in the first demo?

I would. How far are they from the end result.

Yeah, I would try to get lyrics involved by the first by the end of the first time and maybe to its detriment. The first demos are usually I've sat with them for such a long amount of time that I've started probably over overproduced them, if that makes sense or overthought about them, which creates a whole other problem called Demo White, what I would refer to as demo itis, which is that, yes, you fall in love with the demo and then when it comes to being in recording, you're going start with something to the demo that I haven't got.

And you don't know if it was actually there or not. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, exactly. It may not.

It's something that you've just sat with it for so long and but I would I think the if I'm playing around and it's let's say I arrive on a guitar, a guitar riff or melody or something that feels nice and or a piano line or a piano, you know, progression or something, I find a melody and melody just just finds itself there.

It doesn't. Yeah. It just comes to it. Or if you listen to it a amount of times, there's something that I don't know if it's a thing of just getting out of the way of the music, but that if once there's a certain progression, once a certain melody and sometimes it, that's just how it feels. And that's just maybe the intuition side of it. And sometimes a certain melody wants certain words and you can feel they the somewhat the contours of vowel sounds or consonants or that that come with the melody.

And sometimes sometimes the melody comes with lyrics intact.

And that's a rare and beautiful occurrence where it's just like, you know, you could be in the shower going for a walk and then a line hits it or something like that. And does that line hit you with the melody? It can do. It can do. It's very often more often than not, like a couplet or a few words will just land into your head and you scribbling down and you scrap them in later on.

You kind of you find it find a home for them later. Sometimes, yeah. Sometimes I think a melody will arrive and there's words there are either there are words that are leading you to other words or there are words that just make sense in that melody. Like you wouldn't hammerin that you just know that there's there's certain things that that work in the contour, in the shape of whatever thing is just is just passing through your head at that moment or whatever melody or whatever tune or whatever you want to call it.

And and I think it's just a case of following following that and letting and letting us find itself.

And and what you're describing there as well as is it's it's one thing. So there's this mystery of music, right. That's I'm always trying to figure out, like I can figure out. Why a song is catchy. OK, I can figure out, OK, that's a decent chord progression and the melody is really, really catchy. The one thing I can, no matter how much you think about it, I can't pinpoint the why is. When a lyric and the cards and melody come together to form a new meaning.

Yeah, you know what I mean. Like like take me to church. Take me to church. That the actual lyric. Take me to church. That sounds quite enthusiastically happy as a set of folk and words. But the way that you combine that as a melody and with the cards, you've now created a new meaning where I don't think I want to go to church. I don't know what the church is talking about is whatever fucking church this country to talking about.

It's not a good one and I don't want to be there. And without even hearing the rest of the song, the pain is involved somehow. And I know this. What is that in between? You've got to take me to church and something has happened in the middle with vibrations of air. And now I understand the feeling. The pain. Yeah. What is that? I don't know. I don't know.

And it's I think I think the human voice has everything to do with it.

And I think the way human beings hear human human voices and how they express themselves. Yeah, I think they pick up on on nuances there. And I think there's probably a lot to that. There's there's all the ideas that I mean there's there is a well, you're definitely there's a there's a sense of wailing in how you sing that line.

Yeah. And I like like I've read, I've read that review as well to where it's like it's like, you know, this is not a wailing of wailing from this lot. And so it's definitely you know, I kind of have a voice that that maybe lends itself to when I heard that wailing and then I saw something else where you said you weren't in the song house.

Yeah. And I saw that I was like, fucking hell, yeah. There's Stonehouse everywhere. Any time I hear you hit certain notes, I hear what song House was trying to do. And I'm a huge Stonehouse fan. Yeah.

Yeah. So, so big time. Yeah. And a lot of Delta Blues players was when I was 14, 15, I kind of fell head over heels for and my dad was big. My dad used to play drums and all the blues bands, but he had a big collection and this big kind of CD collection of like loads of kind of blues guys. So Robert Johnson, obviously everybody falls in love with them and like Stonehouse is big on Siff.

James has this kind of scatting James man.

Yeah. With the piano and his lovely falsetto.

Yeah, exactly. And like, not a lot of blues guys would sing in falsetto like that.

No, he really stands out doesn't he, Blind Blind Willie McTell as well. Oh yes. Towra, that's strange. Yeah, man, he used to he's, he used to write songs on his mother's grave. I didn't know that. Yeah. He used to write songs on his mother's grave and he his mother died and I think he very much relied upon her for care right away. And there's so much of that sadness in his songs. But the the way that he can inject sadness into music.

Yeah, yeah.

And it's and it's what made you fall in love with that, because I'm the same like when I was a teenager, like a part of me was gone. Jesus, these are really poorly recorded because they're from nineteen twenty. I shouldn't like this and I spent time getting over the fidelity of it and then I just connected with whatever the fuck it was. I was like, oh my God. Yeah. And they're all using the same cards but yet they're all so different and something deeply connected with me.

What was it for you with Delta Blues.

I don't know if it's if it's like if it's like a folk thing. I don't know if it's I think it's it is not. I think it is the bare bones sentiment. It are the bare bones of of of storytelling and the bare bones of kind of of musicianship and so on. Songcraft and and the bare bones of of of expressing something is is at play there. There's also I also had this appreciation. I was probably being like a bit of a like a pretentious teenager into some to some degree kind of scoffing at music that I just.

Yeah. You know, I just wanted something that was not what, you know, kids in my class were listening to and and something that that to me I could turn to and and probably projected, you know, all sorts of values, whether this is something that's substantial and this is something that sense.

And also and there is some truth to that. This is folk. It was folk music. You know, it's folk blues. Yeah.

And and so it's it's you know, a lot of those recordings are our guys coming down from the city finding, you know, and commercializing what was what was folk music, you know, and some of those songs could have been a half an hour long, but we only heard that the three, four minutes, that's all the technology would allow. Yeah.

Yeah, quite, quite possibly. And then I think also I just I appreciated it then as like all of this other music, be it rock and roll or pop music or it it all was stemming from everything. Of course it was all stemming from this, you know, and and and ever shall it be like that's the that's the root. That's the kind of the beginning point of Western pop music, as we I believe is as we as we.

See it all, if you follow every thread, it'll all go back to that 12 bar blues structure which became rock and roll, which became, you know, or if it if we got to like soul music and everything that stand out of soul music goes back to gospel. And it is that tradition of of of of of of black music in America, you know. But so I was kind of fascinated with that.

I was fascinated with that as a as a as a as a cultural entity as well, like just to take it there.

So a lot of that is like gospel music is spiritual music somehow. House is definitely spiritual music. And a lot of gospel performers will literally say, when I sing, I'm it's not just me. I'm trying to I'm trying to get a spiritual communion here. Like I remember watching. It was like X Factor, right? It was like X Factor, but it was X Factor for gospel music. I'd say that's off the charts. It was amen.

That the simple the standard of musicianship as a given. They were just and gospel drummers are my favorite drummers, gospel drummers. My God.

But it was all these incredible acts and it was like an X-Factor panel, but they weren't just being judged on how good they were. One of the criteria was whether the judge judges felt the presence of the Lord in the room. That's amazing. Yeah, and just no irony.

Yeah. Just I really felt the presence. Yeah. Yeah. And is there an element like do you consider a degree of. Irish Catholic spirituality, like, is there a spiritualism in in what you're trying to do or even what do you intend to or not?

Am. That's a that's a that's a hard one, I, I wouldn't I wouldn't be so I wouldn't be so bold as to say that, you know, that that I'm that that there is. But I think there is for me, I think creation it's it can feel like I mean, it's you know, the actual act of creating is it is is to me and I'm not saying anything like and I'm not kind of I this is not hyperbole or not I'm not exaggerating.

It is, I think, one of the best feelings I've ever experienced in my life, you know, and you probably would agree me to that one hundred percent.

That's the feeling of flow. Yeah. When I'm writing whatever, that is what I exist for. Yeah. And that when you feel like you've you've conceived of something in your mind.

Yes. That has not existed before and you're holding it this kind of this kind of seed of an idea that is that is it could be anything at that point you haven't quite flesh and afterwards of where the fuck did that come from.

Yeah. Yeah, totally. And it feels like you're standing with divining rods and there's something you can feel something. You know what I mean? You're like there's some rewritten.

Sometimes it's it's like it's pre written and you're divining it from somewhere.

Yeah, totally.

And and what's exciting about it, I say if if I was born 200 years ago, I would literally think that it's God telling me stuff.

Yeah. And Lance is here and Lance. Absolutely. Have you ever had to go divining rods, actually. What is in literally trying to find water, you have a few rods, I think you haven't, have you? Is that a brave thing? It's a brave thing.

Yeah, well, if I ever if I ever have a hangover, I'll take it over the fields.

You've had to go without it to go of it, actually. Yeah. How to hold it. Is it real? Do you literally feel water. I swear to God. So I was I was doing some when I when I decided I was like I was going to set up a home in Ireland. This is going completely off topic. So I'm really sorry, man. This is what I want to talk about. Men, do you think fucking Pitchfork are going to ask you about divine water?

Sanaz When I decided I was moving home, this is yeah, this is fucking ma. Am I when you try to explain this to Americans as well, to they just they this is where they really just think that, like, you're a fucking leprechaun.

They fell out of the forest. There you go. That's the thing that this is the thing is that there is a perception of you in America. So I see comments online from American people and it's like Hozier is this fairy fairy God who lives underneath a waterfall.

And like, I'm going, I know what we're told.

It's lovely. It's a lovely place, lads. Come on. And one thing I do love is within our Irish culture. Yeah. Is our ability and capacity to speak about fairy forts and these things like this. And we can speak about it in the pub and we you can embrace it and understand it and you can be critical of it, but at the same time understand that it's part of our culture. So when you say to me, divining rods, I'm not going to shut the fuck up.

Yeah, yeah. I want to know about this. Yeah. Told let's go. Divining rods. Totally. I think there's, I think there's something wonderful about and I think there's some there's a there's a constant duality and I look at that, I'm going off on one again the constitutionally to to a lot of Irish thought and its values where you can at one point value something and at the same time undermine it and scrutinize it to the ends degree.

And I don't know if it's if it's something to do with having to live under like, let's say, colonial brutal colonial rule and then also the kind of shadow of of the Catholic Church that at one point you have to maintain a sort of respect for something, but at the same time a healthy disbelief or healthy contempt for something.

You know, there's a equality how we speak English to like there's a theory about how Bano English and how we speak. It's like we contradict ourselves in the way that we speak English. We say something like, are you going to the shop? You are. Yeah. We've just asked and answered your own question. Yeah.

And one theory I heard about that is like it's just 800 hundred years of not knowing which answer will get as a box into the head from the landlord or from the soldier that we developed a way of speaking which contradicts itself. And then we're perceived as stupid. Yeah, you know what I mean. Yeah. Yeah.

And having to codify I mean, we have to codify everything I'm codifying erm even like national pride into songs, thrashings and stuff like that. So yeah. Pretending like it, like there was a whole, there's a whole genre of Irish poetry and song which is called an ASHLYNN, which is just a dream and it's a, it's a codified way of going, oh jeez, I saw a woman in a dream but she always represents Ireland and she's always crying and she's always in bondage or tied up or in distress of some kind.

And because it got to a point where, lads, you can't be singing about Ireland anymore legally, you know what I mean?

When you band that those there is a kind of them.

But again, I'm immediately thinking Robert Johnson squeezed my lemon into the juice. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Because he can be talking about sex, you know, I don't know. There's a there's there's loads to unpack there. And then also and I think it's a terror. And you know what, man, one thing I'd love to do over the next few years is just go back and learn, learn Irish again properly. But it's like that kind of duality. And I go back to the Divine and Rossana second, because I think you will get a kick out of this.

But the like in the Irish language, the fact that like Lannan, let's say like the word for lover or beloved, it also means, you know, a chronic syndrome or a chronic affliction.

You know what I mean? The lovely. Yeah, there's always this there's always this nuance in this kind of there's a dry there's a dry sort of self-awareness. And this is a kind of a contradiction allowed there in the language, you know what I mean? That that and like I Kelaher, something could be a husband.

Could be it could be, you know, your partner. But it's also in context. It could be an opponent, you know, it could be it's your enemy, but it's also your your your your literally your spouse, you know. And and I think there's there's there's there's an acceptance of nuance. Yeah.

And ambiguity 100 percent. And I suppose which would be very confusing for people watching from the outside. Yeah. Yeah. 100 percent.

So in that same in the same way as I say you could say very fort's and I have a respect for, for faries, you know, at the same time I don't want to disappear or natural, you know.

Yeah. But I want to I love fairies and fairy forts and all this stuff because it's ours and someone tried to take it away once, right?

So I don't have to believe in fairies, but I sit down for an hour and someone talking about them and give it the utmost of respect because it's ours.

Yeah, yeah. Yeah. It's a fact. It is. And the more I look, the more I read about it and learn about it.

And then also how it came to be that we imagined these like ancient Neolithic burial sites as a course. You just like where where do those come from if you're a Celtic society or whatever.

And then what, what's this thing that has always been there in all written history and oral history that we have? There's this structure there and it was put there by somebody and it looked it just looks like it's magic, you know what I mean? And don't f with it. That's an early people. That's that's the first. And the idea that the the first people of Ireland, the kind of the and the the what are they the two of them then they had to do that.

They, you know, they, they were the you know, they as time went on and we became a Christian society, as I understand it, there is a theory that we just they were kind of they became what was then known as the fairies. Later on, you'd have a better I'm sure you've talked a lot to contradict that or maybe that maybe are completely off off to be completely incorrect on that. But but fairies being not just something that but, you know, it goes back a long, long way.

And I heard a similar thing about leprechauns that leprechauns represented almost like a Paleolithic form of human that was just really, really schadt that existed in Ireland. Then when when modern humans came, there was these small little humans there and they used to just get really angry at these. I'd always write and perform tricks on them. Right. OK, like there's no proof to just one thing.

I've hard you know, it's just like that that there was a race here already of Australia to play. The scenes are just a hominids. Yeah. Yeah. Earlier versions of humans.

It's you know, I wouldn't I wouldn't write that one down in the Levens start. I need to hear about these divining rods.

Oh yeah. Sorry. Um, when I decided to kind of move, you know, that I was I thought about I was coming home from tour and I was like, well, you know, kind of pick pick a home for myself because I kind of went from. And what you were saying earlier on about how do you cope with with, let's say, get to the point where your name is in the paper and stuff like that. Yeah.

And I never really I never did. It was kind of like I went from being a broke college student in a college dropout to releasing a song that became this this hit. And then it was just I was just catching up with myself the whole time, you know, I really was catching myself emotionally and the energy wise and intellectually as well, because you must have been, what, twenty four. Twenty five. And I was twenty to twenty four.

Twenty five.

Yeah. And that's a lot. At the same time I'm really glad that I was twenty four, twenty five and not seventeen eighteen you know. OK, I wouldn't want to be and she's, I wouldn't want to be seventeen. Eighteen now in this world I would certainly want to be, wouldn't want to be, have that amount of eyes upon me at seventeen, eighteen, nineteen.

You know my heart breaks for some someone like Billy Eilish. My heart absolutely breaks for him to have that level of fame right now. Yeah.

And the strength, the strength that, that, that, that, I think that requires the pressure and and again in this world again where you know, you have your phone literally if you want, unless you change it, it's buzzing at you every every you know, it's a direct line into the toxicity of, you know, of other people's behaviour and what they're saying about you. You have a screen that you carry in your pocket all the time that if you look at it, it'll tell you exactly all the nasty things people are saying about you, not something we have to deal with.

When we were fourteen, fifteen, school was torn off, you know. No. And I think, though, I, you know, teenagers, I think have a hard time anyway. What was I going to say? So coming home needed a place to decide to and that I would make a home. I was going to make a home in Ireland and settle into Wicklow. And there was a place I was looking at and there was supposedly a well on site or water moving underneath it underneath and on the course that what you refer to as.

And so I asked my uncle, who has done a lot of building work over the years, and he was kind of helping us out with kind of. Managing this project and getting in the very early stages of like, OK, well, you know, let's let's let's explore what's on site, let's find the well, let's find the actual well itself. And I was like, wow, how do you do that? Surely there's a there's some sort of echo, what are you x ray the ground or do you surveyors or things like, you know, I just can just just get a diviner on site and see, see what the crack is.

And like Hoda like is the Diviner advertising in the paper as a designer or is he just a lad who's known locally as a designer?

He came to us through through a there was a contractor who was who is like an expert in kind of landscape and trees and stuff like that and really, really wonderful, wonderful guy. And he works with this. This man was a much, much older gentleman. And I don't know if it's advertised in the paper. I did come across a diviners society on Facebook. I'm sure you can find it. And I'm sure it's an active advertised group. And and I was like, are you sure you just, you know, on all the building works that you've done, like, is it still a common practice in Ireland that you might just a man will just show up on site, walk around with some sticks in his hands and tell you where the whale was unsure as sure as hell like he he showed up.

And within within a moment, he he had found it. And we we dug there and first chat, first try.

There was no there was no hesitation. There was no. And there was no questioning.

And he so he has to twigs in his hands and he's able to you can tell by the way these twigs move, whether there's water underneath the ground. Yeah.

And if it turned out so, he had found the well, I wasn't there that he actually found that the well it's OK, but he had showed up and I found it quite quickly. But he did say he wanted to come back and speak to the owner and he said it was quite important, OK? And he kind of you know, he felt obliged to do so. Yeah. And. And so I get that message sent through my uncle, he said, this guy wants to talk to you.

He said it's important. He feels that there's something he needs to tell you, a few things he wants to tell you about the site and how it how it pertains to you. And I'm actually I'm just remembering a lot of this now. And so my uncle was saying, listen, I know you're busy, but if you can make it down, look, you don't have to do it both at the same time. And I suppose it's kind of like a Pascal's Wager delice, you know, the same it may be nothing, but at the same time, it will cost you nothing to just check it out.

You don't want to be 40 years old and some. Some bad stuff has happened to the site, and you're kicking yourself, even if for no reason, you're kicking yourself. You didn't listen to the man who who who the diviner. This kind of this magic man, let's say. Yeah. And, um, yeah. And so I kind I kind of pop into psych one day and he's there and he's this lovely, sweet old man and.

And he was he had sensed or he was of the mind that and again, this due to just made a beeline for the whale that finds us. But he had sensed that and this is these are his words, that the water wasn't moving as it wanted to move, OK? And and that under the ground, the water wasn't wasn't doing wasn't flowing where it wanted to flow. And he was of the mind. That's some form of ritual or sounds a long, long time ago had maybe taken place.

I mean, and again, it's it's in a part where it's right. While Kastle Field. Yeah. So there would have been communities in this place over, you know, centuries and centuries. Yeah. Yeah.

Thousands of years I would say and or over a thousand years but. He wanted to he said he got clearance, but he needed he needed me to be involved, right. And he asked me to go and buy something that he could use as an offering that I could offer that he could use to clear the magic from the site.

So you're now being asked to be part of an ancient ritual to make water flow correctly on where you're building your gas, which was wild.

And there was so much so many other things that he felt he wanted to tell me. And we we kind of spoke about and we spoke briefly about like I was just curious about I was curious about him as I was about seven sons. I have been to seven, seven years and years and years ago, just again, as I said, I am a skeptic. But yeah, it is just a fascination with the. I suppose with the folklore that that's that this is tied into, that these things are tied into and and tradition and I don't know that just a tradition of it.

Yeah. And the old kind of culture of it. But so I go down to a local shop and he had said, listen, you just have to make sure that you buy it yourself and make sure that this thing that you offer, you have to buy it yourself. And I just hopped in my Uncle Uncle's car and we spoke to the man who said, listen, it could be bread, it could be biscuits. And but you have to pay for it with your own money and you have to bring it up here at which he he he hammered the point down a couple of times as we were leaving.

And so I just picked up a packet of biscuits and a packet of digestives is a great deal.

And he took a few and he kind of stood over an area on the site and he crumble them in his hands and he spread them down and kind of mumbled a few words.

And I realized I was very it was very sweet.

It was just this man who was looking at me. He wanted to tell me some stuff that he felt was worth No. One. And a lot of it was to do with them and. He was advising me also on certain plants that that, you know, that would bring out, yeah, positive energies and creative energies in me and stuff like that.

Very, very interesting. And a super super cat. Yeah. And that I thought I did the right that I kind of went for it, but it was just an interesting thing of have. I don't know. Hold holding. Holding it in one hand, holding it with great reverence and respect for that, for the being, that old tradition and the folklore tied in to where these traditions come from. Yeah. And at the same time. It also engaging in that as this sort of in not an irreverent way, but it's a gasp at a crack at the same time.

Yeah, but anyway, that was the yeah, that was the definer I was actually given by the man who had introduced us to the refinery, gave us two rods and he just made them out of two pieces of of metal. Like to invite you into the process.

Yeah. He showed, he just showed me how to do it. And and I think he only just described to me was like some people some people have it and some people can feel it and some people don't.

His idea was that it's not magic taken place, but there might be some electromagnetism taking place. But I will say, if you. It's worth it. It's worth experiencing. It's not I don't as I understand, it doesn't work too well in cities. People are going to be commenting and in this guy is not his absolute lunatic.

You felt this. How was yours gone fucking. And he is away with the fairies and he can smell water.

Exactly. Yes. But they, they just move, they kind of pulse back and forth like in your hand. You hold them limply. There are two right angles. Yeah. There are two pieces of of metal, very thin rods at right angles and long longer pointing forward than they are hanging over the part that hangs over your palm. And you do don't grip them. You just hold them and you walk, walk in fields and they will react to where there are maybe pockets of water.

I don't know how to describe it.

I have no explanation if you try doing this on your own for the crack.

Pardon me. Have you tried doing that on your own? I just did. For the crack. Yeah.

And once once you gave me the rods, there was a few days where I was fascinated by it and I just would go for a wander up in the fields and see.

And you can follow what's interesting, if it's happening and if it's happening by yourself and nobody is around to observe it, then that to me would suggest that it's real. Because like with something like a Ouija board. Yeah, a Ouija board is about is present and there's a collective kind of energy in the room and everyone pushes it. It's unconscious. Yeah. But if you're on your own, like Ouija boards don't work on your own. Yeah.

I've heard, I've heard that there is a collective like yeah. It's subconscious moving, not even subconscious but I am conscious. Moving out is a fact. I don't know.

But if, if, if you're off on your own with these divining rods and there's no one else around to either influence your thoughts and your experience in this, then that's real.

It's it's it is it's a funny feeling. And like I am the biggest I'm a huge skeptic. And like I like I you know, I am a skeptic. And I think there's a lot of I think that comes through in the work. Like, I'm not I don't kind of and I don't lean into too heavy for a religion for for the sake of it or anything like that. I'm not saying I'm not a spiritual person. I definitely am.

But but I am. I would be a bit more I'd be quite scientifically minded, I think. But I it all I can say is what I experience. What happens is once you pass by a concentration of it, you'll actually notice that the the rods just turn in on themselves. So they stop pulsing and stop wobbling and and they get to a point where they cross over and they they point backwards towards you. And it's just as mad. I don't know how to describe it.

But if you could, do you feel more aware? That sounds like a very meditative practice. Like if I was doing that, I'm not worrying about not because I'm concerned about. Is the rods in the water. Yeah, it's peaceful. It it's quite a bit. I suppose it's a peaceful thing and you don't move around too much and you're trying to keep your hands perfectly still and you don't want to. Yeah. You don't want to be moving your body thinking about it too much.

And also you are just trying to especially if you're trying to follow just for the crack, if you're in a field and you're following a water course under the ground because you will notice that you stand look two feet or three feet to one side of something and it'll it'll it'll go away. The rods will start. Stop reacting. If you go on the other side, four feet, the rods will stop reacting. But you can actually follow like nearly a trail.

And you can you could like in pockets. You can see where you can kind of follow where this where this water is going. That's how like, again, I've no explanations. I'm sure you'll have a mad heartache take just arrived into my head. Go on, please. Right. So, you know, auto tune, obviously auto tune that used to tune up. Yes. Yeah.

So auto tune actually comes from people trying to find oil. So what you're describing there, water in America, when they were trying to find oil underneath the ground, they developed this technology that would basically send notes down into the ground and it would come back up and they would kind of adjust the vibration of sound and auto tune as we use it in the studio literally comes from this technology that was used to find oil. Yeah. And I would wonder, is something to do with you being.

A musician and sensitive to whatever vibrations, is there a relationship there if autotuning oil is related to find oil underneath the ground? Why is the part of you that sensitive to musical notes? Could that be a factor?

It's interesting, actually. We were talking about flow. Yeah. And where ideas come from and what for him, like he's kind of as he put it and these were his words. And I can only interpret his kind of reading of energies and reading of and feeling of of where things are feeling of where the water is flowing, where the well was.

And he described to me as, as, as and as and it's the same. It arrives to him and is in a similar way. It seems it seems to be something that wow. That kind of comes to him or flows flows through him. OK. And with that same sort of feeling of just intuition to something that that you feel and you follow. He was I think he understood that I was a musician. Mm hmm. And he. Was saying and he said in a kind of a matter of fact way, which is absolutely correct, sometimes ideas just come to you as if as if they're coming through you.

Yeah.

And I was like, yeah, you know, I good day that sometimes it just arrives. And he said it was a very same for him and the things that he thought that he needed to tell me. He felt that there was there was an obligation to tell me I'm going to I'm going to start doing that.

Man, that sounds like something I could get interested in. No, it's it's better than a fucking riverman with a coat hanger looking for water underneath the ground.

Yeah, but, you know, I thought, like, there's so much stuff that. We say folklore or whatever has known for years, and we've rubbished it and then all of a sudden science goes, oh, that's true. Like I interviewed two scientists there a couple of weeks ago about the relationship between the human cost and the brain and how different foods can impact our brain. Now, people who have been into health have been saying this for years, but it's been written off and now science is gone.

And they were right. The other thing is, well, this is something I've yet to speak to an expert about it, but it's an accepted field. Have you heard about the mushroom Internet? Yes.

So I don't know a great deal about it. But how roots and plants kind of interact and share resources and network, yet what's their use?

And so the roots of trees will go into the ground. But beyond these roots of trees is this vast network of fungus. And the tree's roots will use the fungus network like the Internet, to communicate with each other. So if a tree is heart or if a tree is injured or if there's I don't know if a deer is coming along and eaten the back of a tree, that tree will send distress signals to the rest of the trees and those trees can release a toxin into the bark that makes deers not eat it.

Right.

OK, you know, and loads of people for years and years are the forest is one. It's one. Nature is one. Now science is gone. Are it is actually you know, if you build a forest and this forest doesn't have sufficient biodiversity and this forest doesn't have a good network of fungus, then the forest won't survive.

Yeah. Yeah, it's. It's it's it's fascinating, I, I need to read more, and I've heard it referred to as the World Wide Web.

I don't know if that's the worldwide web. Yeah, yeah. I need to I need to seek out an expert. And I want to because it's it's just one of those things. I could just disappear for hours and Wikipedia learned about it.

But I want to hear an expert talking about 100 percent whatever it may is one thing I meant to ask you about. Right. So, um. You're someone who was quite outspoken about things like direct provision Fairplay, right, for those listeners who don't know what direct provision is, direct provision, is it a system in Ireland whereby asylum seekers and refugees are effectively imprisoned in quite inhumane conditions and it's run for profit? And it's a system that the United Nations has described as a severe violation of human rights.

It's a stain on an Ireland. But recently both you and I ended up getting our tweets fuckin flagged by the Irish government. Yeah. And put into this weird report. Yeah. What? Because ourselves and other people with a platform are trying to draw attention to the cruelty of direct provision. It's it's like, look, we put it up on the Internet.

It's there. It's in public. I just personally, I don't like the idea that they secretly put it into a report. And the only way to find out they were doing it is that a journalist had to apply for a Freedom of Information Act like, yeah, why are you doing it in secret?

What's going on here? Yeah, it's how do you feel about that?

I kind of I've I've mixed feelings about it and I've mixed of mixed like I'm in many minds around it at first. Obviously, my first initial reaction was, well, that's effed up. And also, what are you doing? Wasting resources. That sounds like a big team, by the way.

Like, oh, yeah, by the looks of things, by the amount of emails, like there was ones like I don't really tweet all that, but I'm not a dedicated.

You're kind of gone off Twitter now, aren't you? Well, you don't use it that much. I yeah. Recently, especially this year. And part of it is a huge part of that is just mental health. Part of that is Twitter's particularly bad for the old mental health really is like it really is.

But you know what?

I don't think Twitter is. So I think Twitter is actually a video game that people don't know they're participating in, where they play a character of themselves that's a bit meaner. Yeah, because Twitter Twitter would reward you for being mean in a way that other websites don't. Yeah, yeah. I think I find myself like trying to stop myself being a prick on Twitter because I know that's what gets rewarded. And I have to go. Hold on a second.

Yeah, 100 percent. I know. And also enjoying enjoying the kind of takedown, you know what I mean. Like so if not you stop having to stop yourself from saying something snide or smarmy about something or somebody or something or something that has happened or throwing in your two cents and on something. Also just the act of enjoying that somebody else is being humiliated and is itself is like it's it's just not good.

I don't, I just that's not at all. Yeah. And so for all sorts of reasons, I kind of decided to step off it.

Also, everything that I say, the more I find myself going on the record, I'm going to be in the hours after this job, the more find I go on the record over anything, I am so anxious on the far side of it, like a really and truly, you know, I really see that sometimes they can turn it into a headline man in the headline, while technically being true sounds very different to the context that you actually said.

Is that what you saying? What you saying about them, that being, let's say, monitored and ending up with tweets and government reports? Yeah, it's it's it's it's it's it is mad, especially when when you think, look, this is a this looks like a department or a subdepartment. All all of it s there's there's an email for every tweet that this I can remember the name of the journalist who was one of the guys being monitored. And so it's like this is this is hugely time consuming.

This is a few people's wage. It's like this is this is a full time job for somebody. And which is which is wild because it's like, well, these are resources that could be going into alleviating the issues that are. Yeah. That these that these tweets are are writing about. Also, the fact that you are monitoring it knows that you can't claim ignorance. And when people are talking about these issues, it's that we cannot. And we and I think why you and I maybe speak so, so you know about us and when we can draw attention to it is because we've done we've institutionalized people in our in our nation before.

And we we cannot this time say that we didn't know what was happening. I didn't say and I don't want to be that fucking generation where, like, I speak to my parents in the same way I'm sure you do. And when I ask my mother about Magdalene Laundries, she she just goes, I didn't know I knew something was going on, but we didn't know all of it. The walls were really high. We didn't really know. And I don't think I don't want to be that.

Yeah. I don't want my grandkids saying what was going on with direct provision for me to go. I didn't know they didn't because that's what we're doing. They're not telling us enough. Yeah, 100 percent. We just have an idea. Yeah, that's something really bad has happened in there. Yeah.

And look, there will be inquiries like we know we look ahead. There will be inquiries to this.

You know, we just. Follow the natural, awful course of history, there's going to be inquiries into this. We are 10 years, 20 years and 30 years time, and it will be there will be cases of abuse. There will be I mean, there's there was a life lost only there about a month or two ago. And and it was it was a man took his own life. And that's that. There will be countless there will be countless cases of that.

So it's upsetting. It is upsetting. As I say, there's considerable resources are putting into the monitoring for the sake of optics.

And I think it's for the sake of how how bad, how bad are we looking out there, boys? Like how bad is it?

That's what pissed me off, you know, and if they were listening, if they were literally if they were because some people said to me, listen, the government are looking at your tweets, why aren't you happy that they're looking at your tweets and taking your opinions on board like they're not? If the government were actually saying, we're listening to Hozier, we're listening to blindly, that they'd make a big deal of it. What they did instead is they did it in secret.

And the only way we got to find out is because a journalist had the time to access a Freedom of Information Act. So what it is, is it's a PR exercise. How do we continue to do the bad shit we're doing but change the perception of it? Yeah, and I don't like that one bit.

Yeah, there's a lot of play there, I would think is I think a lot of it is for it's nearly research for poor management. So it's like you could say, OK, well if we know what criticisms are being said, we can prepare for them. We can we can write responses for them. We can we can we can arrange responses so that we're not caught off the court on the hop in an interview somewhere down the line. And I would I would say, look, there is like like anything like any like tool or any infrastructure.

There is a potential for it to be, as you said, like, isn't it good that that the government is is is aware of it? There is there is potential. There is there is potential positives there, especially if they if they see mounting pressure. They're also trying to say, look, how much what can we you know, what can we not get away with, as it were? Like what what what's maddening? Because all those emails as well are measuring how they how many engagements they got.

So it's like so-and-so said this, but only two people. Yes. You people like the tweets, so and so said this and whatever. So they're seeing how much pressure there is. They're, you know, trying trying to trying to gauge how serious this is in the collective consciousness of of of of of people, a collective conscience of people. And I still think it's it's considered a fringe issue by I think by by most people, sadly. I think when you go to it's not something that we chat about in the pub.

And and then unfortunately, unfortunately and and I think I think some of that is just trying to manage that. But potentially there is. Yes.

If it as you said, if if the government was transparent about it and said, oh, yeah, we're keeping an eye on these criticisms and we take them on board, it doesn't seem doesn't seem to be that case. There is potential there where it is there. It's good that they are aware that of that mounting pressure. And I think that that would that could and should encourage us to mount that pressure. Power concedes nothing without demand. You have to make somebody swear.

My my also my other worry for them is if you again, if you look just through the course of history and infrastructure built in a government department that is monitoring the conversations and yes, public conversations and stuff that we put up in public would more often I think it would be easier for that fall into a place of of that infrastructure. Is that quite powerful infrastructure being abused? As you know? It's like my fear, like my initial fear was right now it's like, OK, fine.

They're probably not going to do it's more irresponsible, but it's like, what if I just don't want I don't like a government document existing where it's like I'm on a list of people who are critical of the government and then as well, it's simple things and it's it applied to you as well. I'm sure you've gone through us security at the airport is is is is not never fun now. OK, there's always a grilling and I just don't want to go over for work to the US and the US department.

Go blind by. What have you gotten him. Oh I see he's on a list of people who critique the government. Yeah. And hopefully no, Biden will be better. But under the Trump administration and stories I've heard of journalists and things being absolutely grilled by US security, I don't want them going. Here's a guy who was on a list of people who critique the Irish government. Should we let him in or not, you know, or any other country in the world.

It's like, where's our consent with data around this?

Yeah. Yeah, like, yes, the tweets are public, but it's like I didn't consent to them being recontextualized.

Yeah. I mean, look, it's it's it's especially if if it's, you know, it's something that potentially is informing policy or is informing response. And the government, I think, like I think history is clear on what that is, infrastructures, you know, like it's not like we haven't seen in recent history, like, let's be honest, smear campaigns carried out about people who are, let's say, whistle blowers of some kind in our own country either.

And I'm not I don't want to go into it. But like, yeah, we've seen we saw cases of that, like there is there is an ability for for an infrastructure like that to to to be used incorrectly or in bad faith or whatever.

But also, as you say, with mass information being collected, there's also that argument that let's say, whether it's the NSA, the case with, you know, that revelation that there's that there is and what's the metadata being collected and everything that you say is is being sifted or collected somewhere, maybe not eyes upon it, but the very idea, the very idea that the government is monitoring what you're saying is itself. Er if if that if that it's the spy.

Yeah. If that's as far as you to filter of that is itself a a a suppressing element. You know it is, it is.

I still Fokin, I'm not going to shut up about something like direct provision, but I still have to mind myself now going Oh the government are watching and then I have to go off Fox and then sometimes I feel like actually just tagging the Justice Department in it. And what I mean yeah.

Just to say I have my rights and my right to I have a right to draw attention to this stuff. So I won't allow I can't I can't allow it's immoral to allow something to stop me. What I compared it to is it's like when you were a kid, when you're like 13, 14 and you're hanging around and the guards come over and the guards are like, I'm just taking your name and put it in my notebook. But they're not like, you're going, oh, wait, am I in trouble?

Are you going to tell my parents? No, no, no, no, no. I just I need your name in my notebook because I've been hearing reports about trouble around this area. So it won't go farther than my than this notebook. Yeah, but I all of a sudden now I'm terrified and I'm adjusting my behavior. Yes. Or when the teacher says they're talking about, you understand from my suspended. No, no, no.

They're just you're being talked about in the staffroom. Yeah. Yeah. A harmless thing that says you're being watched and then you change your behavior the way it comes from a prison called the Panopticon that was invented by Falko, Jeremy Bentham, where it was a design of prison where the prisoners can't tell if the guard is watching or not. So it's as good as being watched all the time. They change their behavior.

Yeah. Yeah, that's I mean. I mean, there you go.

I suppose in a God, Dionysus, the omniscience and omnipotence of God is a panopticon, too. Yeah.

Yeah, very true. And actually, yeah. That's a that's a huge I mean. Yeah, absolutely. Santa Claus. Oh yeah.

Santa Claus is the big one. Yeah. Big time.

Santa Claus is a big fan of the book. Fucking hell.

Were you told that the birds were watching it. That was, that was one a little bird and not the birds that were watching. But I was told that a little birdie told me this. OK, OK. So that would imply that birds were watching.

OK, I was I'm terrified. Birds. I don't know why. No, I, uh, my folks was definitely that the birds were messengers for for Santa Claus. So if you if you were, if you were caught and also there's birds everywhere like you.

I was told that about the Robin. What was it. I was told me that the rock I know the limerick thing, that the Robin, uh, y is the robin's breast red because because he was blocking the thorns of Jesus's head and he got his blood in his chest and the stain never went away. No way. Which is bewell. That's fantastic.

What a beautiful explanation for a Robin's, right. Yeah. Yeah. I was going to ask you one last question. Is that all right? Yeah, please do. Yeah.

I was going to dance in the rain as well to just as you're on that. Well, what about the rain? You know, the rain like again, it's Christmas thing there on Stephen's day at the rent. The rent that the king of all birds, there's like, no, I don't think people do it anymore. Right. But they used to do it and carry it. They probably do it and carry this the whole rentboy thing. But then yeah, but you would chase around and you would have to go and actually catch Iran and you would.

Oh I don't know. But they would be killed or sacrificed.

But it goes back to this, there's this all sorts of stuff. So one is that there's a God trapped in it or there's it's an incarnation of God. But then also there's a story that there was a raid or enduring, I think in like the 1798, Noah would have been earlier than that. There was a raid or a military action of some kind where it said that the soldiers who are about to be ambushed were woken in the middle of the night by Iran packing on a drum skin.

And they were they were either Norman or British British forces and scuppered the raid. Essentially, it just it just wrecked the ambush. And ever since then, this man is that is kind of seen as a messenger, seen as a disaster.

And it's and it's and it's kind of now I'd have to read into it. It's an interesting one, but that's apparently the reason. You know, Gever here at the Poch Fair. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, so they get the they get the gold and they elevate the gold and they make the gold a king. Yeah. Apparently the reason for that, too, is around the time of the Cromwellian invasion, whatever village this was, when crime was, Army was approaching the village to massacre everybody.

They disturbed a herd of goats and a billy goat ran toward the town and everyone was going, This billy goat belongs in the mountains. What the fuck is he doing down here? What I was something's wrong. So they all ran away and Crumm was Army arrived and didn't get the massacre. Anybody. Right. OK, so that's what I heard about that. Fastnet Um, so that that the one last question I have is just. Your mental health and creativity, how important is the act of creating art to your personal mental health?

I'm actually realizing a bit too late how how important it is.

And and as in that it's there's a circular thing at play that if I'm not creating, I think I think of maybe too much of my idea of my self worth is probably is wrapped up in whether I'm creating or not. Yeah. I don't really have any other applicable skills or, you know, I dropped out of college to write songs. I think there's something that I, I get by and get by with and that's making music, writing songs and singing.

And so like if you're in a bad place, if your anxiety is flaring up, if you're feeling a bit blue, are you also saying that you won't create and the two things feed each other?

Yeah, 100 percent. So I would find it hard to find the motivation to to sit down and write. Also, you're just wracked with either self-doubt or a kind of just your you're coming off the grand self-loathing. So you don't really want to, you know, in that moment what you create and everything that you've created is something that you can't face and you don't you don't like, you know, because you're not happy with yourself and that moment.

So it's very hard to say what would you do. You ever beat yourself up if you find yourself playing video games too much or watch Netflix or things like that, how do you how do you find that behavior? How does it sit within you? Definitely. I think yeah. Like I think like anyone I would escape into into things. And whether I am escaping into I definitely definitely over the years, you know, had to realize, look, this there is escapist behavior here.

Sometimes it might be a video game, you know, sometimes it might be a TV show or it's finding something else to to do with my time, you know what I mean? It's it doesn't have to be drink or drugs. Like, it's it's there's there's other things that I that I, I find, you know, you can get kind of not addicted to, but you just lean on for it for as a skill in the hole that songwriting should be filling.

Exactly. Yeah. I know what I found over the years. I've because I used to be like that, I've become a bit more compassionate with myself. If I find myself binge on Netflix, playing video games and I'm not writing or doing whatever, I chill out and I say to myself, I'm feeding my unconscious mind. So what about this activity? Instead of flagellate myself saying, why aren't you inside writing? Why aren't you inside creating? I say to myself right now, I need to fucking relax.

And if I can effectively relax. Yeah. Then this Netflix show, this book I'm reading, this game I'm playing, if I can actually relax, it will go into my unconscious as a value, as a valuable nugget and will inform when I do create. Yeah. And that changed a lot of shit for me. Yeah. Yeah I, I definitely going to try that a bit more.

I think I, I always do that thing of gone. Look, when I do this thing waiting for a time that I can quote relax or enjoy myself, you know, you know, and it just becomes, you know, it just never does.

Do you have a writing room? Do you have a little place where you go to to work? I do, yeah. I have a space and I try to keep I remember reading the thing about trying to keep your workspace a workspace. And if you're getting distracted and you want to do something else, like go on like Netflix or go on a you watch stupid videos on YouTube or something, get up and out of the room and do it elsewhere, if that makes sense.

I think that that helps. And yeah, it does.

Um, one other thing as well, just to top it off, and it's just a piece of a piece of advice around around reviews because like yourself, if I see a negative review. The problem isn't I'm a big boy, so I can deal with the heart of it and I can walk away from that, but what I what I can't allow is for that heart to internalize to a point where when I start to create, I'm now afraid. Yeah.

If I am sitting in front of a blank page and what I'm thinking about as a review I got six months ago, that's negative. Forget about it. I'm not writing. And if I do write, it's going to be shit because I'm not coming from the inside of my heart. Yeah. Yeah. So one thing I do which really, really helps with this, OK, think of, I don't know, an album that you would do for a Tom Waits, a Randy Newman album and then seek out the bad reviews.

Yeah. Read the bad review of a piece of someone else's work that you would draw. And when you do it, you're able to look at that review. Yeah. And go, I don't give a fuck what this person says. I don't give a shit because it's not your own work. Yeah. Yeah. And it's such a liberating feed and it really puts perspective on the whole thing. It really does. It's interesting, actually kind of lose lose the power.

But we bitch and oh yeah, all the power has gone out the window. It's just one person. There is a reviewer and their name is Dorner and they don't like what I'm doing. And that's fine because someone else does.

And I'm always I'm always really touched by. And when you meet people after shows or let's say somebody who just listens to to music because they fucking love music and they go to shows because they just fucking love it, I'm on it.

And there's a great there's a great there's a great freedom in that there's a great freedom and just and just like in something and I'm enjoying it for what that is similar to what you're saying early on, which for me if a piece, any piece of work that makes me want to go and create, that's what I'm chasing in other people's work.

If I hear something. Yeah, like when I when I first heard Take Me to Churchman, I wanted to write songs for six months. I'm honest to God, not genuinely, because it was just it just knocked me off my chair. Actually, here's one question.

Take me to church when I remember watching that one had five thousand views. Yeah, yeah. And it was quiet for a while. Yeah.

And I remember and, you know, you were saying earlier when you were like, you know, when you were in school and you had Son House and Robert Johnson and you had almost protected them as here's this little jewel now and I own only I know about it. Yeah. Yeah. I was like that would take me to church for like a month. Stuff. Really. Yeah.

I was like, fucking hell, no one knows about this no matter, you know, the hipster in me. Yeah. And it just fuckin exploded. What the fuck was that. How? Because I couldn't understand it, I was literally it was the song I was sending to everyone I know. Yeah. And I was like, how the fuck does this song only have X amount of shows? Why the fuck isn't this on the radio. Yeah, because I could hear it's just it's a great song.

What the fuck. How did that happen. How did it go. Quiet and then just exploded. It was so it was quiet for a while.

We actually it was free on Bandcamp or. I think it was yeah. It was free. You could just download it are going to give what you give it to what you like and what was it.

So then if it is forward, the I think the music video that was directed by Brendan County and Tom Thompson of Krukow feel good lost based on they did that that kind of and that music video. I remember it went viral on Reddit.

This is also a time when there was less avenues of things kind of going viral as there are, you know, time. And yet so it went kind of hit the front page of Reddit then. It's the music video itself. Got loads of them. It's on YouTube. The song then started taking off in like I remember again. So it was organic, but it was just it just was late.

Yeah. Because it had it had been sitting it just hadn't been it hadn't been seen. It was started then. I remember getting emails from my manager. Look at this. You're being Shazam. Dunn, Alabama Mountain Radio. So one of the first radio stations that played me in America was was Alabama Mountain Radio, which I didn't know of course existed. And and soon after then you're kind of talking with guys and I don't know.

Yeah, it just it just it just started to pick up momentum. The thing is about marketing something in America is it takes about they work a single for, you know, months and months. You know, it could take take months of promotion. And let's say they they release it and it might be six months later, a year later, that it's actually gained its full steam and that it's if it's if it's to pick up in the charts, as it were, not maybe not so with with with superstars who are, you know, who are already household names and are dropping them into to to a fan base.

But kind of building something like that takes a long, long time in America.

So and er but yeah I do remember, but I do remember certain there were certain moments that give it a jolt forward. There was an iTunes campaign or which LeBron James was involved in, which gave it another massive jolt forward of just a year. And I would say it is weird because I remember being like for a moment for for a hot minute, for a very short time. It was kind of like, jeez, who's this kind of unknown Wicklow guy who's making music?

That that just sounds a little bit I feel I for one moment, your you're kind of this, as you say, this kind of unknown, like little hips, like hipster oddity of like, have you heard of this guy? And then the last moments you are ubiquitous and it's if it's an onslaught of them, you go from being hyper cool to just super, hyper uncool. And yeah, I am. And I hope to God every every hipster out there experiences that pain because it'll mean you can maybe, you know, what do you see?

I was old enough as a hipster to consciously not allow myself to do that. Right. Had I been younger, I'd have been like Hosea's class. And then all of a sudden it's like being played inside. And Santara. Yeah. And then if I was younger, I'd go, don't like that anymore. Yeah. But I was older so I was like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. That's my insecurity.

The song is fucking good. You're not.

I mean look but I still can't escape that hipster part of myself. I can't escape it. The power to myself. It's I think if you really love art you want to be it's like it's like divining the water. You want you want to find the fucking spring that no one knows about. You want to have this to yourself.

Yeah I, I'm like yeah totally. And it is, it's a weird feeling from like from being, being that artist to that. But I was like so blessed. I mean I do jokingly say I hope artists out there experience what that's like and the decisions that you make when your music is being discovered by people and stuff that you as a teenager were thought, oh, that's that's the uncool thing to do. You're just doing that for success. But at the same time, it's like, you know, if you believe in your work, you want you want to.

You want to. You want to. Do you want the best for it, etc..

Some some artists get that success and then they go fuck that and they try and do the exact opposite. Now sometimes it works like a neutral for Nirvana, like in utero. Was Nirvana going, I hate this fame, let's destroy it.

Yeah, but then. Other times, I won't mention any names because it's not fair, but there are artists who got huge and then they're like, fuck this, I need to do something completely different. And it did not work in their favor commercially. Yeah, yeah. It's it's tough. And I'd look even where they're making it the first time round or trying to trying to hang it, hang in there and look, it's, it's a really it's a it can be a fickle business.

It could be. It can be. It could be tough. You know I, I've been blessed so far and and I think just I was going to say on the point of what you're saying of that thing of where people let go of work or turn against work, because now it's it's it's known and it's it's. It's known by other people and it's enjoyed by more people than yourself, and it's no longer the secret thing. It is a really interesting thing and it's something that obviously we find as an element.

It's not like we've all been that kid. We've all been that person. We find it synonymous with hipsters. Oh, that's that's cool. Therefore, I must say, you don't want to be doing a past twenty five year tune and doing that, doing that type thing.

But if, if it's funny because it's like how are we view and what does that say about how we view art, how we view somebody else's art as, as an accessory to your, you know, there you go.

You know, as an art. Yeah, exactly. As as an accessory or a fashion statement that you carry around with you as opposed to something that you that you that that truly enriches you or that you that you admire or that brings forth some sense of of joy or fulfillment to your life. It's something that you you wear like a hat on your head.

And if I was 19 and someone if I was at a party and someone spoke shit about Tom Waits, I would experience it as a deep heart, you know what I mean? And I used to think I love Tom Waits so much. And now being an older person, I realize, no, no, no, my I had attached my identity and self-esteem into being someone who likes Tom Waits and everything around that. And I've now worked really hard on not being that person because I like I self identify as a hipster in that I say, yes, I do search for things that are authentic, rare.

I love that. That's very, very healthy. What I won't do is be elitist about it. I consider myself better than other people because I know this music and they don't. That's the stuff that's toxic. But it's still OK to be like I fucking love art and I love finding the thing. It's very enjoyable to find a piece of music or a piece of work that your friends don't know and then you share it with. I love being that person.

How could you not 100 percent.

And people get it all.

Yeah. And that that feeling of exploration and yeah. That's you know, it's unchartered ground for yourself, like diving into. I remember you were standing on Italian disco a little while ago. Stuff, stuff like that.

Or or be it like, you know, like I'm just trying to think of examples. Let's say you get into like music from Mali or something like that. And there's this feeling of, you know, you've you've cut out from from a from a from a path. And there's also an element of your own creative process is goes into the discovering of this work and the experience and processing and interpreting of this work. So it's something that you feel it's that you are taking an active role in.

It's not just and maybe that's why it's an enriching experience. It's not just sitting. And this is what the radio is telling. It's active listening. Yeah, it's real active. Like I did a podcast recently. And have you heard of Cape Verde music for No Town? So it's it's so it's it's a it's an island off West Africa. Right. And in the seventies they came up with this mad sense music that was unlike anything anyone had ever heard because there was an expo of synthesizers in Brazil.

So they ship for the sense was heading for Brazil, but it got lost at sea and the crew abandoned it. So this entire ship full of like Mogs and Yamaha, Cassady's and all these incredible sense shipwrecked on this African island. Amazing. And the the leader of the country at the time was like a socialist. So he said, I'm taking all these saints and where we're claiming them for the country and we're putting them into every school. And you ended up with the folk music of the people of Cape Verde doing it with sense.

And you just have this music that's like there's nothing like it. How could there be anything like it? Yeah, they they'd never heard it. They had to figure out how to use it, how to have to program it.

Now, like, I love finding that, you know, I love that. So I fuck. And it takes every single, every single bone in my body that loves music. I adore that. And I love the narrative of it. You know what I mean?

I totally and the story behind that and also what you're going to get as a product that is completely unlike, you know, with it, you know, completely unlike that of any other any other community or culture that's going to it's going to work with those tools and create you know, you're going to end up with sounds and music and storytelling, which is just totally different, you know, from and if you love music, that shit's fascinate. Yeah, 100 percent.

And my job is to just not use that as a stick. If I say to someone, have you heard Cape Verde music? And then they go, no. And I go, you haven't heard Cape Verde seem to say, look, we all do.

We we'll do that stuff like, you know, we do.

I try not to though. I try. I try and I go, Oh, you haven't heard it. Let me show you let me give you a gift, you know what I mean? And then I'm then I'm doing responsable hipsterism. Yeah.

Yeah. Here I'm going to be empathetic.

I really vigano because I've got a lump of bacon outside on the boil which is is threatening to burn. Right. Yeah. Oh yeah.

Oh thank you so much. Thank. So much for that, Chad, that was fucking fantastic. Oh, thank you, thank you. It was great. Really great crash. I'm delighted to get to sit down and have a chat with you. A nice one. Yeah. So there you have it. What a lovely chat there with Hozier. What a lovely human being. That was an absolute pleasure for me to do. I hope you enjoy this.

We cottage had chatted for longer. I'd have literally burnt my dinner. I'd have literally burnt my dinner that I did I put into.

I didn't put enough. I know I put in just enough water in the pot with the bacon just enough. But it was down to the end and I could smell it. I could smell it through the door of the studio. And I was like, fuck this man. I'm not having a house full of burning. You know, you're going to burn the bottom of a pot. So. What a great. What a fantastic fucking chat. And I'm going to catch you next week if what me and Hozier spoke about on the second part about direct provision, if you want to learn about direct provision, a good charitable organization that's trying to end direct provision is is Massee Massee dorahy as I dot IHI.

Also, if you want to listen to one of my earlier podcasts, I speak to an activist called Alec Zombi, who is an Irish activist who is has actually lived in direct provision. So you can hear about direct provision from her lived experience. I believe actually Ali is one of the activists that appears in Hosea's video for Nina Kreuzspiel. Right. I'll catch you next week yacked. One thing is certain, we all need something to look forward to.

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