In the late 2000s and into the mid-2010s, the unsigned and independent music scene in Ireland began growing through a combination of self-taught musicians consolidating, forming bands, getting records made independently, and finding a small but extremely loyal audience who appreciated these acts trying to do something new and interesting.

One such act was the Clonmel-based experimental blues rock band, Crow Black Chicken, which became one of the largest exemplars of the independent Irish music scene at that time. Unlike a lot of their peers, who eventually disbanded due to attrition, Crow Black Chicken never split up and have continued playing across Ireland and abroad.

“I just like writing music and being in the band,” bassist Stephen McGrath says of the band’s longevity when he spoke with us. “It’s funny, because we released this, and then I put up this thing online, saying, ‘I think we’re the last…’ because I’d say we started around in 2009, and there was a crop of bands then.

“I don’t know if you’re familiar with Sweeney’s in Dame Street in Dublin? That used to be the mecca of unsigned bands. Even though we’re from Cork and Tipperary, we were never part of the Cork scene. We had a little scene in Clonmel, but it’s just a small town.

“We were actually part of that dime store scene, and we played [the now defunct independent Irish festival] KnockanStockan, and we were friends with all of those bands. If you get up a poster of KnockanStockan… – we played every KnockanStockan – …there could be, like, fifty/sixty bands. I’d say none of them are still going. We’re the only ones still going.

“Maybe it’s our stubbornness and pure ignorance, just to keep going, but I don’t know why all those bands stopped. It’s hard, and you’re not always going to be getting bigger and better gigs, but if you’re enjoying writing music, and you’re enjoying playing the gigs…And, for us, something always comes in. Like this thing, we’re going to Romania in July, [to play] the Brezoi Festival. We’re supposed to be going to the Czech Republic in 2028. I can’t even think that far ahead, but it’s booked, anyway! [Laughs]

“Yeah, I just like doing it, and I don’t understand…I guess bands just burn out, and they don’t want to do it anymore, but it would be really cool if more of those 2009 batch of bands were still going and releasing albums, and it’s nice to look back and say, ‘We’re still at it, somehow.’ I think it’s just blind ignorance and, ‘Just do it!’ [Laughs]”

Not content to rest on their laurels, the band continue to write, record and self-distribute. Released on this day last week, Ghost Dance is Crow Black Chicken’s first studio album since 2016. For Stephen, it hasn’t felt like much time has elapsed between releases. “It’s just life goes by, and I suppose we had the 2020 whole thing, and that took away a few years, and we had a live album, and we’ve been gigging,” he says of the gap. “So, it doesn’t feel that long. And, it was crazy, we just did it so quickly in the end. I was wondering, ‘Why didn’t we do this ten years ago?’ [Laughs]

“You know, it’s just one of those things. Every band kind of slows down with releases as they move through their career. You can’t be like Black Sabbath. What did they do, six albums in the first five years? Like, in the ‘70s, bands used to do that, but these days…Well, we don’t have a record label, so we have to pay for it ourselves, so that also hinders how much you can release, like.”

Crow Black Chicken have always released their material sans label, and accruing funds is always a consideration when embarking on a new project. For their previous studio album, Pariah Brothers, the band used Kickstarter to crowdfund its production and distribution. Not only did the campaign successfully help to accrue the required budget, but it also helped them gauge interest. For Ghost Dance, they chose to crowdfund again, this time through Indiegogo.

“I think it’s great if you have the fanbase there,” Stephen says of crowdfunding. “We weren’t sure what we’d get for this one. We put up that we wanted €10,000, and we got nearly €15,000 in the end, which is crazy money, and we raised it in two days or something. So, we were like, ‘Whoa! There’s a bit of an interest in this!’

“But it was great. Everyone kind of felt like they were part of the album, and then we had the special rewards. We’ve sent out all the special perks to the fans. So, there was a double-printed tee that has all the tour dates on the back, and every gig now, those funders are coming with the special t-shirt, and people are coming up, saying, ‘How can I get that t-shirt with the tour dates?’, and I go, ‘Oh, that was a special for the funders,’ and then they feel that they’re more a part of the whole process.

“I think it’s a good way for bands to go, but, obviously, a band starting out, you don’t have that fanbase; you just have your mother, and your cousins, and people like that, and that’s not going to add up to enough for an album. So, for young bands getting going, it’s not much of an option, but for someone like us who have a loyal fanbase… – we’re not a huge band, but our fans are brilliant and really loyal – …it’s great for us that we know that the option’s there, if we wanted to go again, that we probably would be able to raise the funds for another album.”

Although Stephen does qualify that with, “We had this fully mixed and mastered by the time we put up the campaign, but all the other stuff takes so long, people were still getting a bit annoyed. They were like, ‘Where’s my album?’ So, we did it in December, and we’re after posting it to them there, two weeks ago [at the time of the interview]. So, it took us five months to post it to them.

“One guy rang me after the campaign was finished, and he was like, ‘Can I buy an album?’ [Laughs] I was like, ‘We don’t even have it printed, yet!’ […] For advice for any bands listening, I researched the best strategy. So, they say if you have a flexible goal, you don’t usually get as much money, because people don’t have that sense of urgency to pledge you. So, that’s why we set the goal of €10,000.

“And they say about forty days is about the optimal length. If it’s too long, people get bored with the campaign. If it’s shorter, people get excited. We had it finished. We got a loan to pay for the album, get it all done, and then we used the funds to downpay the loan and pay for everything else.

“It would’ve been a stupid idea of us, if we got the money first and then had to go and record the album, because it was two years between us going into the studio and having physical copies. So, that’s a good point for someone not to do. I’d say have it finished before you go to look for your money. So, get a loan to get it out of the way, like.”

The majority of the songs on the album have been in the band’s repertoire for a while. “We had a lot of them knocking around for the ten years,” Stephen explains. “It was funny, we’ve been playing them live, and some fans…One guy was loving that ‘Hot Molasses’ – it’s kind of a ballad-y kind of song – and he was really drunk and he recorded a voice note of it, and he was sending me these terrible voice notes, saying, ‘What is this song, and when can I get it?’, and that was about six years ago. [Laughs] So, some people have been waiting a while to hear these!

“So, I’d say about… – what is it, eight tracks on the album? – …I’d say about three of them might have been written in November 2023, and then the rest, they were knocking around. So, I think we had about four practices, maybe, to tighten them up, and then we went and recorded it in less than a week. Just boom. Just got it done, all in the studio.

“And then, Phil, we didn’t talk to him for about six months. He just went into the shed – literally, his shed in his garden in Swords – and he did his magic, then he just emailed us and said, ‘Lads, what do you think?’, and that was it. It was pretty much done.”

The Phil that Stephen mentioned is the Dublin-based producer Phillip Magee, who has worked on music from the likes of The Script, Aslan, Kodaline, The Coronas, and Westlife. Phillip produced Crow Black Chicken’s first album, 2012’s Electric Soup, and their third, 2016’s Pariah Brothers. He was unavailable when they were making their second, 2014’s Rumble Shake, which Stephen retrospectively regrets not waiting longer to record.

“I think for the last one [Pariah Brothers], we gave ourselves a release date, and it was very rushed, and that wasn’t a good idea,” Stephen says of working with Phillip. “This one, literally, we sat on it for a year, and listened to the mixes, and gave ourselves more time.

“Working with Phil is amazing. He’s got an amazing ear. He’s a people person. Like, he makes you feel…even though you are kind of shit, sometimes, in the studio, making mistakes, he’ll never make you feel like that! He’ll just say, ‘Go again. Go for another take,’ and he just makes you sound amazing, like.

“Every musician has tropes that they get stuck into. Like, for me, I’ll often play the same lick at the end of a lot of lines, or the same fill, and it’s a cool fill, but I’m overusing it. So, on the record, he might take out where I’ve played that fill too many times, and just have it on the record once, or maybe he’ll find my best fills and put them in. So, he just makes you sound better than you’ve ever sounded, but it’s still organic. We play the tracks live; he just comped in the best parts of everything.”

Stephen adds, “This is the first one, I think, since Electric Soup,where we took our time, and we had Phillip on board again, who’s like the fourth Chicken, and I think that’s why it’s really resonating with people.”

Comparing the final version of Ghost Dance to the rest of the band’s discography, Stephen states, “I’d say it is very consistent with the other releases. I’d say we’ve a lot of what people refer to as ‘album tracks,’ that we don’t end up playing live a lot, where we experiment a bit more, which often end up not being fan-favourite songs, so they kind of get pushed to the wayside. [Laughs]

“So, I put up a poll on Facebook about this one… – we have a group page, ‘CBC Fan Army’; a fan page – …and not one person voted for the last track on the album, and that was us being experimental. That was literally pre-written in the studio, that song, ‘Heavy Rain.’

“So, a track like that and ‘Dark Matters’ is different. It’s more kind of…I don’t know. Does it have a U2 vibe in parts? But it’s definitely different, but I think it’s consistent with our records. We like to have a mixture of heavy songs, ballads, funky stuff – a mixture of everything. But I would say, yeah, it’s not a massive departure; it’s quite consistent. Some people have said it’s our most consistent album.

“It kind of shows everything we do. There’s the bluesy bit, the heavy bit, and then the little bit more experimental bits. One song, ‘The Longest Time,’ to me, it sounds like Limp Bizkit or something, or a Mastodon riff at the start. So, we do throw in that stuff, but people don’t notice it often ‘cause Christy’s [O’Hanlon, their vocalist and guitarist] guitar playing is bluesy, and then I might play a more metal riff, and he doesn’t follow the riff, so if he was to follow it, he’d be like, ‘Oh, that’s really metal there,’ or whatever, but because he’s more blues-based, it just creates a completely different sound.”

With their new album finally out, the band are going on the road to support it. Throughout summer and autumn, Crow Black Chicken will be playing across Ireland, the UK, and Romania, including a headlining show at their own festival, Chicken Stock, in their hometown, next month (which we discuss in tonight’s episode of our podcast). Their tour begins tomorrow at the Toales Blues Festival in Dundalk.

“We’ll probably come back around in November/autumn, that time,” Stephen concludes. “We’re going to England in November, but after the summer, we’ll hit up any towns that we missed. So, if people don’t see where they want us to play on the website, just send us an email. There’s somewhere to play in every town in Ireland! We’ll find somewhere!”

Crow Black Chicken’s latest album, Ghost Dance, is out now. You can buy a copy, see the band’s tour dates, and keep up with their social media accounts through their website.

Tune into POSTBURNOUT.COM Interviews… tonight at 21:00 (IST) to hear this interview in full. Available on YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and Amazon Music Podcasts.

Aaron Kavanagh

Aaron Kavanagh is the Founder and Editor-in-Chief of Post-Burnout. His writing can also be found in the Irish Daily Star, Buzz.ie, Totally Dublin, The GOO, Headstuff, New Noise Magazine, XS Noize, DSCVRD and more.