GREEN CURTAINS; GRÁ
Grá is more than a band. Embodying joy, community, and truth, Grá approaches the scene with an aura of sincerity that feels incredibly refreshing. The Dublin based collective is comprised of seven core members; Lu Hope (Lead singer), Niah Donnelly (Keys), Shae Walsh (Sax & drums), Norah Stevens (Fiddle), Chlöe Fitzgerald (Fiddle), Ciara Shortt (Synth & flute), and Eoin Dillon (guitar, sax & drums) the groups manager. Off the back of the group's Egan's Sunday residency, Grá are pulling Irish music back to its roots. We caught up with Lu and Chlöe to chat about the origins of Grá, the spiritual pull of Trad, and the importance of art as a political expression.
Tell us about Grá. How did the band start?
Lu: The band, or project so to say, was started by me and Niah, our keys player. I had played in bands when I was younger, but kind of hated the lack of comradery in the scene: I felt like there wasn’t a space for women, especially being a bassist in a boy band at the time. I just didn’t feel safe on the scene at all and I just ended up leaving that band. It was probably a year and a half ago, maybe? I had shown Niah an old demo of mine from a few years ago, and at first we were just jamming in her bedroom, just doing covers and that. Then I moved to London for a little while and whilst I was there I loved it, and I think being taken away from Ireland, and Dublin in general, made me realise how much I missed it and how much I missed home. I think I felt disconnected culturally, that I wanted to come back and reconnect with everything, and the culture within myself a little bit. I wasn’t raised on Trad, I’m not a gaeligor or anything like that, it’s just politically I was really into Irish culture I suppose. I just wanted an excuse to play music with my friends and have the opportunity to engage with Irish culture in a way that was accepting and non elitist, which is so hard to get in Trad sometimes.
Grá doesn’t seem defined as a band: are there set members? Or is a trad collective that is ever growing?
Lu: It is quite fluid, when Niah and I started out writing stuff for Grá, and playing together, I feel like when other people start bands their goal is to like get a good support slot in the Olympia or a spot on Ones to Watch and stuff like that, our goal was that we wanted a residency in a pub every week. That’s all we wanted, an opportunity to play with people. Then we just ended up running gigs for fun, and we ended up getting quite lucky with some bookings. Eoin (Sax / Guitar / Drums) is also our manager, and he just kinda does it for us and we are very very blessed. Now that we have the residency, there's almost like two parts of Grá, at the moment it’s plugged in with a set seven of us, and we’re the driving factor and we write everything etc etc; then the residency, I think we have a group chat of like 17 people.
Chlöe: From a group perspective, as you were saying the plugged in is the core seven, but the concept of having the group in Eagans and having it being a structured open table thing is a rejection of the scarcity mindset that a lot of musicians face in Ireland at the moment.
I find the call back to trad incredibly interesting. In my personal opinion, I believe Irish trad to be the original punk music, as it is born of political strife; It's intuitive as to why it's coming back at this time too. The circumstances our ancestors wrote this music under are the same circumstances that we find ourselves coming back to the music with. So how did you guys come back to Trad?
Lu: I think all of us are very spiritually cultural, I think all of us were in tune with Ireland in that way, especially because only two of us are from Dublin, so the rest of us grew up in the country and it was normal to just be looking for the fae. I wasn’t brought up playing trad, Chlöe I think you were but, I was just listening to it in the background of pubs a lot. I think because I didn’t play an instrument because I was a singer, it didn’t peak any commitment to it. Then the revival is music but also Irish culture in general. When you’re witnessing a genocide you have to become political, and this is the only way that we feel useful is by engaging with our culture. Our most asked about songs are the political ones, they’re the ones we’re complimented on, I don’t even think that’s intentional, we just feel that way, if we have a voice we want to use it, because apart from that you feel powerless. That trickles down to everyone too, when there’s nothing to do you revert back to art, and what you were saying, it is very political in its nature, Irish music.
Your covers, particularly of ‘Bella Ciao’ and ‘Grace’, are very poignant. Let’s take ‘Grace’ as an example: you were saying we are watching a genocide unfold, and we’re also watching the production of martyrs constantly. Do you feel that the art you're making is the most human reaction to the news and the state of the world right now?
Lu: Yeah, I think for me, I write the lyrics and I am lucky that everyone in the band is a wonderful composer in their own right, I think we all mold well together. I come in and tell them the vision in my head, but what I choose for us to play is always politically driven, any of our originals, like uisce beatha, which we haven’t done in a plugged in set actually, is about joining the IRA and becoming a martyr, and having to leave your home because you can’t afford it and all that. I think our music is an output of our emotions.
Chlöe: Even from the composition process, it's almost more freeing. I’ve never played in a band where theory hasn’t been the whole problem or the whole issue, like “oh this isn’t the formula, this isn’t the way to do it, it's not the way to write”, and that can be so restricting. Then somehow, almost by accident, we’ve become the best versions of ourselves instrumentally because we haven’t had those restrictions on us from the beginning.
Lu: I think because it is emotionally driven, and why we say it's a project and not a band is because, there is a band aspect to it, with what you see on stage when we play gigs, but in the end it is an output for our emotions, we want an opportunity to connect with our culture, to weaponise our creativity to make a point basically. People can be quite baffled as well when they ask us what our goals are and I don’t care if all I do is play in a pub with them every Sunday or if we’re playing Madison Square Garden some day in the future, I am happy with either as long as we are saying what we want to say.
What is next for Grá?
Lu: We’re playing the Grand Social Day Party on the 22nd of May, we’re supporting Conor Kinsella on the 19th of June, and we play every Sunday in Egan’s Aungier St 6 -8pm!
Written by: Shar Dullaghan @killrockshars
Edited by: Jules Nati
