“Believe it or not, Saints and Sinners is actually about homelessness. I don’t know how many people copped that because it sounds so happy,” says Paddy Casey, about the danciest song in his repertoire.
“The first version was kind of slow, then the first time we played it live I turned around to the drummer and said ‘why don’t we try this beat?’ Then people loved it. Nobody liked it before that,” he told Róisín Ingle, presenter of the Róisín Meets podcast.
The singer has been on the Irish music scene for over 20 years at this stage, having left his mother’s house in Dublin at the age of 12 to busk on the streets of Galway, during which time he went through a period of homelessness.
Saints and Sinners is about the people he met on the streets and was supposed to show how none of us “is ever a million miles from being homeless” he said.
Paddy was joined on the podcast by his daughter, Saoirse Casey, who said that while her father tried to keep that part of his life a secret from her, she found out all about it on the internet.
“I probably thought I could do that too when I was that age, but I’m glad I didn’t. I like to be looked after,” she laughed.
Making music is not as hard as having a “real job”, according to Casey, because it is “work you want to do all day”. There are frustrations, however.
“You don’t have something solid you can hold in your hand at the end of it. It’s like making a chair. It would be easier if you made chairs because at least you know you have a chair. It’s a chair, it works. With music you don’t know what you have,” he said.
Solid or not, after a break of “a few years” he is back with a new single, Everything Must Change, and an album will follow early in 2017.
Saoirse Casey is also planning to release an album before the end of the year. Her father said he never pushed her into music, but he is glad that she has chosen to follow in his footsteps.
“She’s really talented,” he said, “I think she’s way better than any of my gang were at that age.”
To hear Paddy Casey and his daughter Saoirse sing four songs live in studio and shoot the breeze with Róisín Ingle, go to iTunes, Soundcloud, Stitcher or irishtimes.com.
The new single Everything Must Change, by Paddy Casey, is out now
