Hip Hoedown

Praise the Lord and pass the tequila

Praise the Lord and pass the tequila. After generations of listening to country 'n' Irish bands destroy American C&W - courtesy of lumpen chick-a-boom rhythms and vocal mannerisms that took the lonesome steam train to Nashville via Nenagh - Ireland has finally produced a bona fide and hip country band - with a difference.From Dublin, The Great Western Squares don't have the usual country 'n' Irish constituent parts: the majority of songs on the band's second album, Almost Sober (Independent/Blunt Records) are extremely good originals; and lead singer/songwriter, Gary Fitzpatrick, and Oona White, look less from The Carter Family than The Addams Family. As if this wasn't enough, Gary used to pummel guitar in the Dublin hardcore punk band, Pincher Martin. It's a safe bet you won't find biographical details like that in Big Tom's CV.The Great Western Squares first came to the attention of country music aficionados last year with the release of Judas Steer, a ramshackle affair noted for the band's staunch adherence to playing country music as if they hadn't really heard it before."With Judas Steer, we didn't know what we were recording from minute to minute," explains Fitzpatrick over a cup of coffee and several indiscreet, prolonged glances from other customers. "We'd try out a song and if it didn't work, we'd go on to the next one. That said, the reaction to the record was astounding.

We were utterly amazed by it, and very satisfied by the fact that people would sit down and listen to music done on a shoe-string budget."The band's approach when recording Almost Sober was more coherent: they had definite ideas and not as many cover versions. If that meant more sense of identity and an accompanying lack of spontaneity, then so be it. They also had a bigger budget to record the album, which meant filling for the sandwiches and a few more beers, if nothing else. Yet there was a novelty element to Judas Steer that bemused most country lovers, and caught hardcore punk fans off guard. Suspicion on both sides threatened to undermine what was at the heartof the band, which was a genuine love for old-time country. But the Squares were not of the conservative C & W breed. Garth Brooks and line dancing didn't light their collective fire. In their eyes, Nashville was dullsville. Or, if you will, Nashvile.Born of weekly country gigs at Phibsboro's Hut pub (under the title of The Johnny Cash Appreciation Society), The Great Western Squares evolved from casual alternative country rockers to seditious purveyors of homicidal hoedowns. "The Squares are very punklike. We do pure honky-tonk, ballad songs but also quite a few asfast-as-possible songs. We play to the crowd, basically. If we're playing acoustically, we play more mellow, laid-back songs. If we're playing on a Saturday night at the Mean Fiddler, you're going to get people who want to jump up and down, so we instinctively respond to that."At the centre of the band's appeal is Fitzpatrick's song writing, which is not only a homage to the great C&W songsmiths of the 1940s and 1950s, but also a connective addition to Irish melancholy, Americana-based song writing that reached an apogee in the mid-1980s with The Stars of Heaven. Aged 27, Gary has been playing punk rock and hardcore music for the past 10 years. The first albums he bought, at the age of nine, were commercial ska - The Specials and Madness.

He has since gone through a vast number of obsessive musical phases (The Beatles, The Rolling Stones and, dearie me, Dire Straits), latterly culminating with his current need to listen to as many country acts as possible. "I try to write many different types of songs to keep the diversity there," says Gary. "I get bored very quickly, and despise the idea of being pigeon-holed. I go through a process of writing songs over a period of a few months. I record them, and stop fretting about them. Then I go on to the next song. It keeps me from going insane. It's natural for me. I love music, writing, recording and playing it. The idea is to make sure you don't repeat yourself."Gary and the rest of the band (which includes Stan Erraught, former Stars of Heaven guitarist and lyricist, who contributes two superb songs to Almost Sober) don't listen to "new" country from Nashville, preferring to stick to classic old material, a form of music he describes as "old folk songs, a lot of which can be traced back to Ireland, albeit with English language lyrics"."New country tends to work on hooks, based on little choruses that circle around the head," Gary contends. "Old country tells stories. It doesn't matter what the chorus is like. I find that production values on the new stuff has no sense of danger. I can't imagine any of the songs mentioning wife-murdering or other such domestic details."According to Gary, The Great Western Squares never practice. In a live setting this means they don't know whether any particular song is going to fall apart or not, another important aspect of the band's appeal and one that ties in with the altogether American slacker attitudes of many of the music's exponents. "Everybody else in the band has a job except me - that's why I do most of the interviews," says Gary who, despite not being interested in the business side of things, is close to signing a publishing deal. "I'm hopeless at a 9-to-5. I had a succession of jobs where they just told me not to come back. Too much of a daydreamer: I like physical exercise when it's in short periods and when you're getting paid well! If it's a day-to-day thing, it's not for me. I'm too much of a social animal for that. I'm still waiting for my big sponsorship deal with Arthur Guinness."The Great Western Squares play The Half Moon Club, Cork on Friday.