He's been called the Pied Piper of folk, but Fionn Regan's unique way with a metaphor and ear for a good tune is winning fans on both sides of the Atlantic. Larry Ryanwatches him try to crack New York
'Hi, I'm Fionn Regan," the singer says from the stage. "I was supposed to have a drummer, but the drums didn't show up. So it's just me. Does anyone have drums?" Then he adds, almost parenthetically, "If you've got bongos you can forget it." Regan accompanies his punchline with a loud strum of his acoustic guitar, then launches into songs from The End of History, his acclaimed, folk-hued debut album.
The Bray-born singer has just arrived in New York after a delayed flight from Texas, which might explain why the drums have gone astray, leaving his drummer, Brian Murphy, with nothing to do tonight. Regan is also accompanied by his girlfriend, occasional backing singer and, it seems, de facto tour manager, who goes by the stage name Gypsy L.
The audience is small on this cold Monday night in Brooklyn - probably not the best time or place for pulling in a crowd to see a little-known singer-songwriter. Regan, whose stature in Ireland and Britain has grown hugely over the past year, is undaunted by having to find an audience all over again in the US.
"You can't expect 500 people on a Monday night," he says. "It'll take time. I think it's great. A lot of bands get used to something somewhere else and run back with their tail between their legs, but I really enjoy it. I enjoyed playing in England and Ireland to a limited number of people, so why wouldn't I enjoy it here?"
The audience is attentive to his deft lyrics and strong stage presence; some of the crowd seem very familiar with the music, even though his album has yet to be released in the US.
The show ends, the crowd applauds and Regan returns for an encore. Then he and his cohorts retire to the bar. It has been a long day, and they have just come from a week at the South by Southwest (SXSW) music festival, in Austin.
This manic week of live music and record- industry flesh-pressing, an annual staple for emerging musicians, can be disorienting. "You play so many gigs, and some are like being at the junior disco with black bags on the window. It's kind of strange," Regan says.
Before SXSW, Regan was supporting Damien Rice, the reigning king of Irish singer-songwriters, on a two-week trek around Australia, as well as performing some solo dates. Australia was also uncharted territory for the singer. "When I got to Australia I felt blessed. I played the Laneway Festival and three of my own shows, and each one was sold out."
With a thatch of hair and 1970s-inspired clothing, Regan (26) certainly looks like a folk singer. His background, too, could give some of his predecessors a run for their money.
He grew up in Bray, in Co Wicklow, where he was raised mainly by his artist mother rather than by his father, a guitar composer. "Our house was a magnet for anything happening after-hours or anyone travelling through Bray: poets, pilots, an off-duty garda playing violin. I'd be there, and they'd say: 'Stand up on the table and tell a story.' We had a big bay window. Me and my brother, he'd pull the curtain, and I'd be standing there in a top hat, waistcoat and cane, and I'd do my piece. And then someone else would get up. It was that type of environment. Then there'd be certain months when there was no electricity, or we'd have candles and make tea on the fire. It was the sort of house where, when you did bring friends back from school, they'd look at you differently."
He left school at 17 and went to London for nine months. "I came back a year later [ to finish his Leaving Cert] and felt like I was 10 years older than everybody else. I'd been through it all: giros, rent allowance, council tax. I'm not saying there's anything really difficult about that, but it steps you up a bit. Any journey you take, the people you meet stands to you. I played in a band, I travelled around, I worked shredding paper for a while. The opportunities presented themselves at different times."
A line from his song Put a Penny in the Slot recalls those times. "At night-time I'd lie in Beckingham pike, with tears like flashbulbs." Many of his lyrics are like this: obtuse snapshots of the journey he has taken to get where he is today.
Since The End of History's release in Ireland and the UK, last July, Regan has been on a permanent adventure. Slowly the album has picked up rave reviews, particularly in the UK. "Folk has a new Pied Piper," announced the Guardian. "Regan sets his cap at the genre and sweeps it off its feet," said the Sunday Times. It made Mojo magazine's best 50 albums of 2006.
Regan was also nominated for two of this year's Meteor Ireland Music Awards and for the Choice Music Prize, which left him typically pleased but not carried away by the recognition. "It was great, an honour. There's that thing about awards, though - the quote Bob Dylan uses, which is 'an award is like trying to staple a headlight to your shirt'. I kind of feel like that."
So far he has sold 10,000 albums in the UK alone. It may not seem a huge amount compared with some big-selling Irish contemporaries, but it's a considerable achievement when you take into account the relatively low-key way this has happened, including the DIY way he recorded The End of History.
After making some highly praised EPs in 2002 and 2003, and flirting with record companies and management, Regan decided to strike out alone, to make an album on his own terms. "What I'd strived to have was a house with a bit of land around it. I didn't want to have everyone sleeping over and, you know, telling me what temperature to have the shower at or how much sugar to put on the cornflakes."
With very limited resources, he recorded the album in dribs and drabs over two years, attempting to make the most of the restrictions by putting together a stripped-down CD.
You could be forgiven for thinking that one of Ireland's leading industries was singer-songwriting. We keep churning them out, from Rice to Damien Dempsey, David Kitt, Gemma Hayes, Mundy and many more. It's an achievement to be heard above the din - Regan's success may in part be down to his avoiding Dublin's sometimes suffocating indie scene. "I don't think it was a conscious decision," he says. "You have a phone - if you're lucky enough to have a phone - and the majority of the calls were coming from different places. It wasn't people calling me to play in Dublin city centre. I just follow my nose."
At one point it led him to Bella Union Records, which released The End of History in the UK. Simon Raymonde, the label's founder, says: "Having seen so many singer-songwriters in the past few years coming to London and playing shows, and people hailing everybody as the next Nick Drake and the next Bob Dylan, one is always slightly wary of hype." But Regan stood out. "He tells stories but not in a traditional way, and he uses a language that is out of fashion in a way. It's very elegant, and he uses a lot of words that don't tend to turn up in modern songwriting. It becomes quite magical to go into his world."
The evening after his Brooklyn gig, Regan plays at the Mercury Lounge in Manhattan, where many successful bands made their first strides across the New York music scene. The audience includes people from the highly regarded, country-leaning Lost Highway label - home of Ryan Adams, Lucinda Williams and Van Morrison - which plans to release The End of History in the US during the summer. "The thing is, I get treated like anybody else on that label," Regan says. "I feel like part of the family."
Lost Highway is owned by the Universal Music group, so Regan can expect a bigger push than he has ever had before. "I'll come here in June and spend six months over here, playing gigs, playing all sorts of strange things I've never experienced before," he says with a mix of enthusiasm and insouciance. "I'm really excited about coming over to America. I've only done a couple of gigs here, so it's a whole new place. I've been around Europe and England a lot. Over here it seems like a completely new adventure."
Fionn Regan's Irish tour begins at the Spirit Store, Dundalk, on Wednesday, and continues to Dublin, Belfast, Letterkenny, Castlebar, Galway, Limerick and Cork. See www.fionnregan.com