In the late 2000s, a bunch of school kids from Cavan got together to bond over their shared love of music that wasn’t exactly in vogue. These kids would form a little band called The Strypes, whose now-famous fashion and music would be more influenced by the past half-century than the then-current day. One of these kids was Evan Walsh, who became the drummer.

“We always grew up being into garage rock, rhythm and blues, psychedelic stuff, punk and new wave, pub rock, ska, reggae,” Evan remembers of how The Strypes began. “I had a big thing from an early age [with] rockabilly.

“We loved all those genres of music because it’s all out there, floating in the air. I think when we started out, in a pre-Spotify age, there was a little bit of an era where people were closeminded about, ‘Oh, you’re sixteen in this year. You’re only going to have this percentage of knowledge,’ which we rebelled against. We always thought, ‘Well, no, real, genuine music people were never like that.’”

When the band began, there were no legitimate considerations from its members that it would eventuate into something people would notice. “When The Strypes started, when we started out, we were very young when we came on the scene,” Evan says. “It was between ten to fifteen years ago, really, that we came on the scene, and we’re still only very young men, now. [Laughs]

“But we were very, very young then. We were teenagers when we had this little spotlight thrust upon us, and it was very much a completely accidental thing, as in, we had probably thought in our lives, if any of us get to do music professionally or have any sort of coverage of anything we do, musically, it’d be when we’re this age, now. But we were getting coverage and a bit of a spotlight when we were fifteen/sixteen.”

A huge springboard for the band that, like tipping the first domino, would see them achieve huge international success was an appearance on the 2010 edition of the highly-viewed annual RTÉ Christmas programme The Late Late Toy Show, where they performed a cover of The Beatles’ “I Saw Her Standing There.”

Reflecting on this appearance now, Evan says, “That was the pure, flukiest, most random thing, ever. That one literally was us just being a load of kids and… – what were we? Fourteen or something like that? – …and we just did it on a whim. […] We started playing together when we were about twelve, I’d say, and it was that thing of just playing in the school concert and doing that sort of stuff, just as a hobby in the real, classic, ‘Kids in the school have done a band thing, and we’ve known three songs or four songs,’ or whatever.

“So, that’s how that all came about, the Toy Show thing, because I think we had sent it off three years in a row, just because we were like, ‘Wouldn’t it be gas?’ Because people were telling us we were sounding good and stuff like that, we were like, ‘Wouldn’t it be gas to get on the telly and do a song?’ And if that was the height of it, then that would be great.

“We tried to get on the year before it; we actually did ‘Rockaway Beach’ by The Ramones the year before that, and we did…I think we were probably doing ‘Teenage Kicks’ or some really early beginner-type song the first time.”

From that one appearance, the band began getting requests to perform gigs, even at venues that would not admit people of their age. Like a chain reaction, each gig the band got would land them another, organically expanding their reputation and notoriety nationwide.

“All of a sudden, we’re fifteen and we’re playing gigs in Dublin,” Evan remembers. “We’re getting these gigs and people are seeing us and saying, ‘Well, will you come and play this night because you’ve done so well here?’ And because we were prodigiously ahead of the normal development rate that we should have been at, you know what I mean? For whatever reason, we accelerated past the school band phase.”

Soon, The Strypes began getting a lot of acclaim, which drew the attention of major labels. “We were influenced by indie label thinking, by labels of things that had gone before us, like Stiff Records and stuff like that,” Evan says. “We were totally besotted with all of that way of thinking and that slightly anarchic, anti-establishment way of doing things: Putting out music, the irreverence, the whole attitude of it all was exactly what we were into and interested in.

“But that did get lost, because, I think, we had this very strange thing where we were catapulted into the major music industry through no intention of our own, at all. As in, literally just being asked to do this gig, which led to this gig, which led to this gig, which led to us going to London, and major labels were going totally ballistic to us in the initial…

“There was a point, in late 2012, kind of autumn/wintertime at the end of 2012, where we were told, subsequently, that we were one of the most talked about bands in London in the music business, of ‘The hottest new properties,’ just because we got to this stage where we had this really unique selling point.

“We had this selling point about us that we had this prodigious level of musical ability or gelled as a band at a really unusual period. Compared to what most bands were like, we looked completely unlike any other band that was around at the time. We were doing the type of music that was completely unhip, untethered to any kind of movement or scene or anything that would have been seen as relevant to what the music industry was into, at the time.”

After The Strypes signed with Virgin EMI, they had an explosion of opportunities, like a performance at SXSW, appearances on Late Show with David Letterman and Later…with Jools Holland, a Rockpalast session, support slots for the likes of Foo Fighters, The Killers and Arctic Monkeys, a cameo in the Elton John biopic Rocketman, slots at the biggest music festivals across the world, and, most importantly, consistent international headlining tours that would sell out.

But, retrospectively, their success breathes some ambivalence for Evan, as he felt labelling and PR mangling derailed their natural course. “I came out of The Strypes, saying, ‘There was some fantastic times, great experiences,’ but that thing of ‘If you had your time over again, would you do it differently or change anything?’ I’m very unromantic; I say, ‘Well, I’m not fucking doing that again!’,” admits Evan.

After The Strypes split in 2018, Evan and some former members formed the short-lived band Zen Arcade, named after the Hüsker Dü record, which, despite the Hüskers’ post-hardcore and early alt-rock stylings not neatly aligning with any of Evan’s work, he found common ground through the album’s hints of psychedelic and ‘60s bubblegum textures.

“Like a lot of bands and people or whatever, your musical tastes has that kind of tentacle-like thing,” Evan says. “It’s stretching from one scene to another scene, but, I think with most people, you’ll find some musical throughline. So, Hüsker Dü, they’re putting their spin on that style. I think you might come to different scenes and different genres at different times in your life, but you kind of find that there’s a throughline of your own tastes running through these different things as you discover things and change with time.”

When the COVID-19 pandemic hit, Evan found himself alone, writing songs and wanted to develop these creations into a larger project. After much trial and error, releases, and line-up changes in the past two years, today he is the bass player of Cavan’s fresh rock ‘n’ roll band, The Savage Hearts.

“It differs from other projects because a lot of it is my own undiluted voice,” laughs Evan when discussing what makes The Savage Hearts unique. “Which is very unusual because, in the Strypes days, we were only finding out feet, creatively speaking. Like teenagers who are just getting into music and developing as musicians, we were only kind of finding where our voices were and where our strengths were and everything like that.

“So, early Strypes days, I would have had more of an input into the arranging and the window-dressing of the songs more so than the actual content in the early days, just because we all develop at different times. Myself and Pete [O’Hanlon], the bass player in The Strypes, we co-wrote a lot of songs for the later Strypes albums, like the third album, in particular. The third album, we did about half of it, really, and we were really chuffed with it, and that was a big development on my front into the more legit songwriting sense.

“Then, all of a sudden, you hit that vein or you find what kind of angle you have as a songwriter based on your previous things. You look back and you think, ‘Well, I think that bit worked and that bit worked, but, no, that bit’s making me cringe now, looking back at it.’

“So, this now, this is the first time in my life, really – my creative life – that I had an album-plus’ worth of songs that I deemed playable, good enough to do. Through those teenage years, you’re like, ‘Well, I have one or two,’ or, ‘I have ideas that I’m happy with and ones that are making me feel like I’m banging my head against the wall, here.’

“So, it was the COVID thing. I think Zen Arcade, for various reasons, we couldn’t continue with that because of people’s personal reasons and things like that. It just wasn’t to be. It wasn’t the right time for some of us as it was for others. I was kind of rearing to go, in some way, shape or form. I didn’t know what way it was.

“I realised, late ‘21/early ’22, that I have a lot of stuff coming together here and a lot of ideas and potential material. Even though I’ve been in a band since I was twelve and we’ve done all these things, I’m still walking around, thinking, ‘God, if I was in a band, I’d love to do that!’ The passion for ‘The band, man!’ was totally undiluted, you know? It was just as strong as ever.”

Today, The Savage Hearts released their latest single, “Silver Locket,” with its press kit boasting that it is Evan’s favourite track that they have released thus far. “[Compared to The Strypes] it brings far more neo-psychedelia…kind of sinister, garage rock, psychedelia into proceedings and [is] more experimental with the tones and textures in a way The Strypes never was,” Evan says of the single.

“It was a bit more, straight, ‘Call it as you see it,’ kind of stuff with The Strypes. Whereas, I think with The Savage Hearts, part of the intent is to kind of bend the format a bit more and bring in different textures and different ideas.”

For those looking to get into The Savage Hearts, they, thankfully, have a bunch of live dates coming up that you can bop along to and support live, independent acts. “We have a couple of things coming up,” Evan says. “On the 30^th of November, we’re playing in The Foggy Dew. That’s our new Dublin gig.

“We’re supporting The Undertones, actually, before the year is out, which we’re buzzing about. A big favourite band of ours, as well. We’re supporting them on the 6^th of December. We did a gig with them in Limerick earlier in the year and now we’re doing another one with them, funnily enough, in Cavan. So, it’s a hometown show, as well.

“We’ll hopefully be heading over to the UK again, as well. We were over during the summer, but we’ve more UK stuff lined up for the new year, as well. […] We’re doing the Dublin David Bowie Festival in February, as well. Tune into the Instagram and Facebook and all that kind of stuff, so any more short-term gigs and events will be there, as well!”

The Savage Hearts’ latest single, “Silver Locket,” is available on all streaming platforms from today. They will play The Foggy Dew, Dublin on November 30^th. Free admission at the door. Tickets for their show with The Undertones at The Townhall Arts Centre, Cavan on December 6^th can be purchased here. You can keep up with The Savage Hearts on Facebook and Instagram.

Tune into POSTBURNOUT.COM Interviews… tonight at 21:00 (IST) to hear this interview in full where we go into more depth about The Strypes, recording collecting, Evan’s musical loves, working with the independent Irish record label Blowtourch Records, the experiences of supporting Foo Fighters and Arctic Monkeys, and much more. 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.