Pa Sheehy told David Hennessy about his new album, the demise of his former band Walking on Cars and ‘unbelievable’ moments like supporting Bruce Springsteen and headlining Electric Picnic.

Pa Sheehy (37) releases his debut album, Maybe it was all for this, this week.

Pa rose to prominence as the lead singer and guitarist with Dingle rock band, Walking on Cars.

Known for tracks such as Speeding Cars, the band saw their 2016 debut album Everything This Way go to number one in Ireland.

By their own admission their second album was more difficult and they would scrap everything and start again before releasing Colours in 2019 which spawned Monster, recognisable as the title music to Netflix’s The Stranger, and would go to number 2 in Ireland.

It was in 2020 that the band announced they were to split with their final EP, Clouds.

Since then, Pa has been going it alone.

He released his first solo single, I Saw You at a Funeral in 2021 and it has all been leading to this.

Are you looking forward to the album coming out? “Yeah, it’s been a long time in the pipeline.

“I suppose up until now, I’ve been kind of working away on small bodies of work.

“I’ve done four EPs in the last couple of years so it kind of felt like the right time to give people an album.

“I know it felt right for me.”

Is that what the title is hinting at? I imagine you and others probably questioned what you were doing at times, or why you didn’t carry on as a band but it’s all been leading to this, hasn’t it? “It really has.

“When that title for the album kind of popped into my brain, I wasn’t sure what exactly I was referring to.
“I spoke with a lot of people about it and a lot of people get different ideas about Maybe it was all for this.

“It’s a very up and down kind of career I’ve had in terms of figuring out how I want to sound as an artist.

“I think it’s probably taken me 15 years to get to where I am and be really happy with the body of work that I know and am so proud of.”

One of the recent singles speaks to that. Towards the Water has that lyric of, ‘I don’t know where I’m going, but I’m going’ which I think you have said yourself is about not being fully sure of what you’re doing but going ahead as you figure it out..

“Yeah, 100%. I think it’s all about moving forward and kind of trusting your gut and trusting that things will work out.

“Particularly as a solo artist, I’m still figuring it out.”

There’s a different flavour to your most recent track, Under the Orange Sky which is a bit nostalgic, a bit wistful, isn’t it?

“Yeah, I think you’re spot on, man.

“It kind of hints at a past relationship and how you can look back at it with fondness and with a smile instead of kind of focusing on how it didn’t work out.

“It’s nostalgic, it’s also kind of hopeful and it seems to have struck a chord with people.”

Are these representative or what sort of themes run through the new album? “Unintentionally, a lot of these songs are about Dingle and the people in Dingle. Just growing up here and how the town has changed and what the town is like now.

“Dingle seems to be a very strong theme on this record.

“Like, I say, unintentional but kind of delighted it’s turned out the way it has.

“I suppose I look back at my early kind of teenage years and think that we were so lucky to grow up in that period because we didn’t have social media as teenagers, there were no camera phones.

“We were very free. We were very lucky, we were the last generation to kind of grow up without all that and the freedom that that gave us. It was just a very carefree time, I think, compared to this day and age. A lot of teenagers just carry anxiety around the place and always on social media their heads are in their phones.

“I suppose there’s not as much freedom when it comes to just kind of being.

“If you do something stupid nowadays, you’re on camera and you’re on the internet, whereas if you did something stupid 20 years ago, no one’s going to know about it. Your friends might laugh at it for a week and then it’s over.

“We were just lucky, I guess. Weren’t we?”

Your solo career, of course, goes back to I Saw You at a Funeral, released in 2021, which was a heavy song about grief. I remember you saying then you hoped some people got some healing of it, was that the reaction you found?

“I think so. I think a lot of people were kind of.. I don’t think they expected that kind of track out of me because a lot of the Walking on Cars stuff up until then had been kind of upbeat and kind of radio where this was kind of going down a different route altogether.

“I knew it was poignant and I knew it could probably help people.

“It was never going to be a big radio single by any stretch of the imagination but it just felt like the right song to go with at that time.”

Well if people were expecing something more radio friendly, they got it with y our next song Róisín which was a very catchy and triumphant love song. I guess those two songs show your two sides as well..

“Yeah, it’s not all doom and gloom.

“I can write horrendously sad tunes but I like to think that I do leave a bit of hope in there.”

The grief seemed to return in Through the Fields, can you tell us where that song came from?

“Through the Fields was a song that I had in my pocket for, I’d say, two or three years before I released it.

“It touches on grief.

“It touches on togetherness, community.

“I suppose it’s a very Irish song, a very kind of rural Irish song in the imagery.

“I look back at that and think of going to mass as a kid and just how rich it was at the time.

“All the people I know and I grew up with, none of us go to church and go to mass because of all that’s happened but there was definitely a richness in what we were doing back then, and there was such a togetherness about it: Just walking up the aisles with your cousins and sitting next to your grandmother.

“I just thought it was a very simple time.”

The video for Through the Fields shows some scenes from Cork City which is where you did some studying, isn’t it? In fact your track Glasheen Road comes from that time too but university was not for you..

“Yeah, I lived on Glasheen Road with a few friends of mine.

“Yeah, college did not work out at all but we had great craic, probably had too much craic now to be fair, and I didn’t last long in Cork.

“I did a year and a half and I dropped out, but there was definitely good memories.

“You know that saying: It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.

“I suppose, myself and my friends, it felt like we only fitted in during rag week which is the week where you just stopped studying and go drinking, so there was a lot of that.

“It’s another nostalgic tune. Anyone that’s been to UCC and studied there would probably be able to recognise a lot.”

It’s just as well uni didn’t work out for you though, isn’t it? Because if it had, there would have been no Walking on Cars and perhaps you wouldn’t be where you are now either..

“Yeah, I guess college didn’t work out for most of the Walking on Cars crew so it was kind of just good timing in terms of, we were all just kind of at a loose end.

“We just took a risk back then to just see what happened: Moved in together, wrote a load of tunes.

“For the first while, it would be fair to look at us and think, ‘Jesus, they’re a bunch of wasters’.

“And then after a while, your songwriting picks up and the songs kind of start coming together.

“And then next thing, you play a gig.

“Then, I suppose, the mentality around the whole thing kind of changed  when we sold out our first couple of shows and it just went from there, and it never stopped really.

“It kept going to the next level and the next level until we got to arena level in Ireland.

“It was just this mad journey.

“It was some craic and yeah, like you say, if college worked out, it wouldn’t have happened.”

When Walking on Cars took off, did it feel like a whirlwind? As you say it didn’t stop with going to the next level, the next country..

“Yeah, it was mental.

“At the same time we were very driven.

“I was always a dreamer and I think we all dreamed of doing bigger and better things so anytime we reached one level, we always kind of looked at the next one and as a group, I think that was really, really powerful.

“And then album one happened and that was a brilliant for us because we had a number one album in Ireland and we kind of opened doors in Germany and Europe and stuff.

“That was cool.

“And then, your classic album two.

“We struggled hugely with it and that really, really took its toll on the band.

“We lost a member.

“We changed management.

“Then we had the pressure of album two being signed to a major label.

“Between everything, it kind of went from this exciting, unstoppable force to.. we spent a lot of time in meetings.

“A lot of the fun had been kind of stripped out of it for the first time and the excitement was starting to fade because there was so much pressure on us, and we kind of put it on ourselves.

“But yeah, a lot of things happened in the space of a year that kind of stopped us in our tracks and ultimately, that was kind of the start of the end really.”

It sounds like far from it being an acrimonious split or anything, it was just a case of the magic not being there anymore..

“Yeah, and I think if you hear our last EP, you can probably tell that, artistically, we were probably confused.

“I think there’s a couple of songs there that are in a different world altogether compared to what people I suppose associate with us.

“I think, like you say, the magic was gone and it just felt like the right time to move on and do something new.”

How do you look back on that time though?

Would you play a Walking on Cars song at one of your own shows?

“I’ve consciously never played Walking on Cars songs at my own shows, I suppose, just out of respect to the band as well, that I’m not kind of going off what we did and making a career out of what we did.

“This is just something I wanted to do completely fresh, completely new, clean slate and if it’s meant for me, it’ll happen.

“I’ve kind of left it all behind.

“I’ve listened back to some of the songs and I think there’s huge pride and there’s huge accomplishment at what we did and where we came from to where we went to, and ultimately, probably a bit of sadness that it’s over but I guess that’s life. You just never know what’s going to happen in the future.

“If Oasis can get back together, who knows? You never know, but for now, I’m really happy with where I am in my life.

“That’s not on the horizon at the minute but you never know.”

The band broke up in 2020 and then you set out doing your own thing. But of course those times were in COVID. How was that for you? Was it frustrating in that you couldn’t get out there and play?

“When COVID happened, it was the first time I’d stopped kind of thinking about the next album or the next song or the next gig in about 10 years because the band was busy, it was buzzing So we were kind of on it and it was rare we kind of have a really long period of time to kind of chill out.

“So that was the first time in years that I had time to think about my life and kind of ask myself, ‘Okay, well, where are we? Am I happy? What’s going on here?’

“And then when I made that jump, I think for the first year or so, I was definitely a bit lost and scattered and not sure what I was up to.

“I knew I was going to be doing music but I didn’t know in what sense.

“And then the first EP came out and that kind of built a nice foundation for me to kind of move on and keep going.

“It’s been a funny couple of years for me.”

I remember you saying around the time of the Walking on Cars split when many were disappointed to see the band breaking up that you hoped the fans stayed with you doing your thing. Do you feel they have? You talk about labels and management there but your fans haven’t deserted you..

“There really has been a small core group of fans that have just kind of been there from the start of it and without them, I probably would have just given up a couple of years ago.

“They’ve been unbelievable and they show up to all the shows.

“They’re just a really loyal, amazing group of fans.”

Would you really have given up though? Because I get the sense you wouldn’t know what else to do if it wasn’t music.

Could you have seriously packed it in?

“I don’t know, man. I don’t know.

“I think I’d take a break for a while.

“But you’re probably right. I’ll probably never give up.”

Your track Meet Me at the Record Store is all about discovering music. Do you remember a time when you knew you wanted to pursue music?

“I suppose it was a couple of little moments throughout my teenage years and early 20s.

“I was in a band as a teenager.

“I didn’t play an instrument, we were jamming in a friend’s house and one of the lads just threw a pen and paper at me and says, ‘Here, write some lyrics there’.

“That was the first time I had written a lyric and it was just very daunting but at the same time, it was kind of the start of me coming up with lyrics and just letting lyrics fall into my lap.

“Other Voices in Dingle was a huge inspiration on me.

“Bell X1 were a huge band back then and I saw them live once.

“I looked at them as like, ‘This is what I want to do’.”

You played the recent Electric Picnic, what stands out as a pinch me moment of the things you have done as a solo artist?

“I think the highlight was probably in London last summer.

“I played support to Bruce Springsteen at Hyde Park.

“Watching him perform, it was just completely surreal.

“And I was never a huge fan of Bruce Springsteen. I obviously knew his hits but I didn’t dive into his catalogue at all and then after watching him play, it kind of gave me a new found respect for him.

“There’s one album called Nebraska from 1982 which I dived into and kind of fell in love with.

“That actually inspired a nice bit of my record, just how simple it was.

“I kind of took a lot of that energy into my own record.

“But that’s definitely been the highlight. It was supporting Bruce Springsteen.”

And looking back again, what was the highlight of what you did with Walking on Cars?

“We headlined Electric Picnic and I remember our booker at the time was like, ‘Halfway through the show, take a breath and look out and just stand there for a couple of seconds and take it all in’.

“And I did.

“I remember thinking, ‘Jesus, this is unbelievable’.”

The album Maybe it was all for this is out Friday 11 October.

Pa tours the UK and Ireland in December, playing Birmingham Academy on 1 December, The Cavern in Liverpool on 3 December and O2 Academy in London on 4 December.

For more information, click here.