Sean Taylor told David Hennessy about his new album that looks at the joy and despair of the world we’re living in.
Kilburn singer- songwriter Sean Taylor recently released the single Way Down In Enniscorthy.
The track celebrates the town in County Wexford which is home to the Blackstairs Blues Festival, which Sean himself has played at before and returns to this September.
In the track Sean, who has a strong connection to Ireland sings about local landmarks such as the Slaney River, Ballycarney Bridge and Vinegar Hill.
Way Down in Enniscorthy comes from the new album The End Of The Rainbow which is going to be released in September.
Sean told The Irish World: “I travel around the world a lot playing gigs, playing festivals and I find myself often in places that are very unique and very special.
“I played a little blues festival in Enniscorthy about three or four times called the Blackstairs Blues Festival and I go back there again in September.
“For quite a long time, I was trying to write a little story about Enniscorthy because it’s a very picturesque town and it’s beautiful looking but at night, it’s a little wild.
“My experience of it was pretty wild and pretty full on, like quite a lot of Irish towns but it’s also very incredibly beautiful looking as a town.
“The song goes, Slaney River glitters like a diamond crown’, because it does.
“I wanted to talk about the town and the different landmarks really because it’s quite a unique little town actually, I think.”
Originally from Navan, Sean’s mother came to Kilburn via Liverpool. Sean’s uncle Tony Birtill, who passed away in 2021, was a champion of the Irish language and a long serving board member of the Liverpool Irish Festival.
“My mum is from Navan. She’s born in Liverpool but her family are Navan, County Meath and my uncle Tony used to teach Irish in Donegal so there’s a big connection to Ireland.
“I’m a Londoner, that’s my home but London Irish was a big thing when I was growing up in Kilburn.
“The first music I went to was the Fleadh in Finsbury Park, that was a massive thing for me.
“I went to all of those pretty much from 1990 onwards and that was a huge musical education.
“I just saw some of the best music.
“I really did.
“That was important for me.
“That was an incredible period of Irish music for sure.
“But I think at that period in time, it was obviously the political element as well because saying you were Irish in London in the 80s, there was a lot of racism towards the Irish so it was a political statement to have the Fleadh, I think.
“It was nice to be part of that as just a young kid walking around. It was special.”
Do you remember becoming conscious of that anti- Irish sentiment as a kid?
“One of the worst things I ever remember- And it was something I always regret not doing something about- We were at school once and it was a play.
“I went to school in Cricklewood, Hampstead Comprehensive.
“I don’t know what it’s like now but when I went, it was a real mishmash of a million different things.
“But I remember we did a play in drama and you had to ad lib a joke.
“And this kid said, ‘I’ll do a joke’.
“It was just a straight up anti- Irish joke, and the teacher didn’t do anything.
“He just went, ‘Okay’.
“I remember thinking if that had been about any other culture or any other race probably, he would have been expelled.
“I don’t like the expression ‘casual racism’ because there’s nothing casual about racism. It’s ingrained.
“I remember at the time thinking, ‘Wow, that’s different’.
“I mean, you wouldn’t get away with that towards other races.
“I remember at the time being quite shocked by that and that would have been the late 90s so that was not that long ago.
“That was a shocking thing.
“It (anti- Irish feeling) was there for sure.”
The last time we spoke to you it was about the album The Beat Goes On which was written at the height of the pandemic.
Now we are out of that but into times that are dicey for other reasons.
Was it different writing this one?
“Every album I’ve done is different.
“The Beat Goes On was a lot more optimistic and then after that, I did a record called Short Stories which is a collection of short stories, very small little stories about travelling and touring and meeting people on the road and different things that have excited me and made me feel inspired.
“I think this record is not like the lockdown album, because that was a really pretty crazy album.
“It was really like some therapy session that just got out of hand.
“This one is kind of a more controlled therapy session, I would say.
“But every album for me is like a diary.
“They’re like these little things that I have to do every year.
“I have to put down where I’m at creatively, artistically, what’s going on in my life.
“They’ll find their way into songs whatever way they can.
“I’d say there’s light to this album but there’s also sadness to it as well.
“There’s songs that are about the political element.
“2024 is a song that’s on the album.
“That’s about the bleakness of 2024 but the chorus is always, ‘Ask for more, 2024’ because it’s trying to find some hope in resistance and hope in challenging the system that is leaving the world very much in turmoil.
“There’s a lot of conflict in the world and it tries to encapsulate that but then at the same time the album starts with a song called Berlin which is about a trip I made to Berlin last year.
“It’s just the story of my five days in Berlin which was really invigorating and inspirational.
“So there’s just a whole mishmash of different things that have excited me over the last 12 months especially.”
When you say there is a lot of bleakness around, are you referring to the political situation?
“Absolutely. I think the growth of the far right is really scary.
“Unfortunately racism is mainstream in this country.
“That’s why Nigel Farage is allowed to go on one of these stupid shows with Ant and Dec eating slugs.
“They’ve let the racists become mainstream and that’s one of the many reasons why they did so well in the elections.
“Obviously Trump is just terrifying.
“Around the world is this authoritarian far right that have become very much part of our day to day.
“People are already getting ready for Trump’s take two, ‘Oh well, he seems a bit more in control this time’, but this guy is a fundamental racist, the people who support him are really scary and that makes me feel despair.
“I think that the levels of inequality make me feel despair.
“One of the lines in 2024 is, ‘The queue for the food bank curls around the block. Prices keep rising, when are they going to stop?’
“Because people go to food banks.
“As well as food banks, there’s additional food charity centres that you don’t need to go through as many hoops for.
“To get to use a food bank, you have to get certain certification and whatnot.
“But where I’m living now, there’s an independent food centre where you don’t have to provide any information, you could just go there and it’s kind of less demonizing.
“Obviously, food banks do a really good job but what I’m trying to say is if you’re poor, it’s there all the time.
“The day to day of being poor is bleak and hard and sad.
“And I felt that at different times in my life for sure, so that’s definitely on the record.
“There’s a song on it called DWP which is a true story of me trying to claim some additional help as a self-employed musician.
“I was really struggling after COVID and I went in there and thought, ‘Right, I’ll prepare a case. I’ll put forward my business’, because it is a business, and it was just this stressful humiliation of going into a job centre in which there was no privacy between all the different kind of desks.
“So when I was telling my story of my life, there’s all these people that are listening to me talking.
“I’m laughing because it was so crazy but at the same time, there’s a G4S security guard on the door.
“All I could think about was all their escaped prisoners when they used to be Group 4. G4S used to be Group Four and they were always losing prisoners but now they look after job centres with mean looks that are meant to kind of antagonize the people in there.
“It was a really horrible experience so I wrote a song about it called DWP and it was about demonizing poor people because many people have left DWP interviews and actually committed suicide.
“There’s a lot of documentation of that, people just so desperate.
“I get why you would feel like that after that, because it is a grilling of what you do.
“If you were rich and you were doing tax evasion, you wouldn’t get that level of grilling. You wouldn’t be held to account like that.
“They’d give you ways you could save more money.
“There is definitely bleakness on the album but I think there needs to be at the moment.
“I think the world is quite bleak.”
I think I know the answer, but did you get any help from DWP?
“No.
“It was (for nothing).
“I was writing the song as I was walking down the street so what came out of it was a song.
“I mean, I could have appealed.
“I did a complaint actually about it and just ran through all the list of things that happened and all the kinds of things they do.
“There’s extra appointments.
“Your first appointment is just to give ID.
“I know it’s a small thing but if you’re self-employed businessman, you’ve taken an afternoon off work just to do that.
“That could have easily been rolled into the second interview.
“Everything is to put barriers in the way: ‘Oh, if he or she doesn’t turn up to the first ID check, we might be able to get rid of their benefits and push them off the list’.
“There’s all these little small things like that.
“And then the room itself.
“As I said there was no gaps between all of the desks so you told all of the information to everyone in the room.
“I was talking about personal things about different times of my life, being depressed and struggling and needing music to get through it.
“I’m telling everyone in the job centre about all this stuff.
“People go on about GDPR but what is this about?
“It’s meant to make you feel shame.
“It’s a hard system, very brutal.
“But they won, I guess because I gave up and didn’t appeal it
“But I’ve got to live my life.”
You speak about demonising the poor.
It reminds me of the song you did for Grenfell. I know they held that very damning inquiry..
“And no one’s been brought to justice, no has been held to account.
“I mean, I wrote that song very soon after it happened.
“I went down there a couple of weeks after with a notepad and just wrote down everything that I saw, just documented every little thing.
“It was so harrowing, I remember walking down and walking straight into a funeral for one of the victims.
“There’s a church that was a kind of focal point for a lot of it and just walking straight into it.
“It was just horrendous.
“I mean, handmade hearts and candle shrines.
“I wrote that in my song but that was what I saw.
“There was handmade hearts everywhere around Grenfell and candle shrines.
“It was just horrendous, and it still is horrendous.
“I mean, the community around there are absolutely incredible.
“I’ve been on the silent march quite a lot and that is just London at its absolute best: Every culture, every different nationality, different ages, different people from all around this West London community and it’s just the most brilliant remembrance.
“It’s a really powerful thing and the community are just incredible.
“The way they’ve continued going.
“I think they should be given so much love and respect because it’s still heartbreaking.
“It was very upsetting for a long time.”
I bet it is emotional to sing, what are the reactions when you perform it live?
“Very good.
“It’s a song that’s hard to sing to be honest.”
Back to this record, what is key is very much the mix of hope and despair, isn’t it?
“Yeah, hope and despair. I was gonna call it something similar but I thought that was too similar so instead the title comes from a lyric in the second song.
“It’s called Eternal Damnation.
“There’s a lyric ‘at the end of the rainbow’ and I thought that’s a really great line for the album.
“But the next song is Invitation which is very much about relationships and trying to understand the good and the bad in people.
“I’m not an easy person to live with, a musician.
“It’s about that as much as anything so there’s a lot of themes in there of different things that have touched me and made me feel creative.”
And one of those things is clearly Enniscorthy.
Do you think your creativity, musical inclinations come from your Irish side?
“Part of it, absolutely.
“I would describe myself very much as London Irish and I think it’s a different thing.
“I love Ireland and it’s a magical, magical place. Very complicated place, I have to say. Very complex and there’s so many different contradictions that are magical but also very at times challenging.
“It throws me off whenever I’ve been there, there’s things that are like, ‘Okay, that’s different’.
“I recorded in Dublin in 2009 and that absolutely blew my mind.
“I find the celebration of Irish artists within Ireland really special.
“Unfortunately in England, we have a habit of celebrating generals and people who’ve committed atrocities that are not very good obviously but I don’t think we celebrates artists enough in England.
“People want to talk more about Winston Churchill than they do about William Shakespeare and that’s just heartbreaking for me.
“But the celebration of culture in Ireland, that has always been a huge thing for me and you can see in the type of artists that Ireland produces for a country which is relatively small in terms of population.
“It’s unbelievable.
“I remember walking along and there’s this great thing, the Brendan Behan statue.
“All these drunks were sitting around it which was quite poetic because he was a pretty hard living guy.
“Being London Irish is a big part of my upbringing and my identity for sure.”
Way Down in Enniscorthy is out now.
The End Of The Rainbow is out in September.
Sean Taylor plays Great British RNB Festival, Colne on 23 August, Over the Hill Festival in Oxford on 26 August, Callander Blues Festival 4- 5 October and Hallelujah Festival in Hartlepool on 26 October.
For more information, click here.
