Singer- songwriter Linda Moylan told David Hennessy about her new album, being inspired by the her Irish heritage and growing up in pre- gentrified London, and the advice that Finbar Furey gave her.
Following 2021’s The Merchant, Linda Moylan has just released her third album The Fool on Talking Elephant Records.
The ten self and co- written songs draw on Linda’s London- Irish background and experiences growing up in pre- gentrified East London.
The album concludes with The Green Fields of France which many Irish ballad bands, most notably the Fureys, have been known to sing.
RnR magazine says: “Moylan’s a storyteller through and through, her voice shape- shifting into each song to bring it right to the listener’s heart.”
Are you looking forward to the release of The Fool?
“Yeah, I am. I feel very happy that it’s finally come to this point that it’s out because it can take some time to bring any project together, so I am excited.
“The last one was produced by an English folk artist called Phil Beer and I think that was done in Covid.
“Over that period, so many of us went through a lot.
“I lost my mum so when I thought I was in a better frame of mind, and it was the first album that I’ve produced and sort of got hold of in a way that I feel creatively is me, not just from a singer songwriter perspective, but from a producer perspective as well.
Obviously Irish Love Song is the first track on the album and the lead single already released so you clearly feel it is representative, what inspired it?
“Firstly, I think it’s one of the catchier ones.
“It’s sort of unapologetically what it is.
“It’s kind of working class pub music and with realism underneath it, in its belly.
“And that’s kind of what I like.
“That is probably inspired by my life in my late teens, early 20s, and going through a journey becoming a young mum and also a reflecting on the changing face of London.
“Somewhere where you might go and have a drink and everybody be sort of bit rough and ready now has changed and mutated into something a little bit shinier.
“So it’s a combination of things, I think.”
That scene and time has gone, hasn’t it. It took me back to a rowdy pub that just doesn’t exist anymore..
“It’s unashamedly what it is, a bit it’s rough diamond.
“It’s a feeling.
“As you say, you either know it or you don’t.”
You were born in Ireland but moved to London when you were still very young, is that right?
“Yeah, absolutely.
“I’m this weird dichotomy.
“I say I’m Irish and I’ve got this very flat English accent.
“We came over in the 80s from Dungarvan in Waterford.
“My mum came over with my brother and myself and we landed in the hostel here which a lot of 80s immigrants did from the lower working classes and the poor, if you like.
“It sounds kind of dramatic but it’s true.
“We landed over there and then we got housed in Poplar, so I grew up in that environment. My father sort of followed us on later.
“They (my parents) were separated so you’ve got this- I say two households.
“There was two colourful places that sort of impacted my childhood.
“Then I just spent my teens kind of growing up in East London in a very multicultural environment so a lot of first generation immigrants were all sort of this mixed bag all trying to get on together and desperately trying to hold on to our own culture and then trying to exist in another culture.
“It does cause, and a lot of my peers have this, a weird displacement.
“I was on a really nice radio station interview in Ireland and the guy looked at me and he said, ‘But you do look Irish’. But he couldn’t quite understand the accent, it’s a weird dichotomy.”
Do you remember becoming aware of any anti- Irish feeling at that time?
“Yeah, I was born in 1980 so I went to school in the ‘80s in East London.
“I didn’t get direct aggression but I did get that my accent was ‘different’.
“My accent was kind of, I would say, schooled out of me because I was a toddler, I could speak. I’ve got an Irish accent so that’s sort of perceived as something that’s different, that’s odd, which is fine.
“However, peers who are slightly older did have a challenging time and felt quite alienated because of their Irish background.
“And in East London, especially in the ‘80s into the early ‘90s, I think once you have that feeling of alienation, it stays. It does something.
“We’re already battling with various social conditionings from our upbringing, our family and all of that, especially if we’re first generation.
“They’ve left Ireland for whatever reason and not everybody’s managed to get on their feet. It’s a combination of things.”
Did you go back to Ireland on summer holidays etc?
“Yeah, my grandmother lived in Kilkenny and she lived in, I think until the late 80s before she got poorly she had like a prefab in half an acre of land and had no electric or gas or anything, so we had this real rural experience and I loved it.
“That was really what enchanted me.
“I think it’s in you.
“My dad says, ‘I’ll give you an ounce of feeding for a tonne of breeding’.
“Music is kind of in you to some respect.
“Music was very important there.
“Storytelling, ghost stories, all of that, that everyone chats about, it was very important.
“She had a really good sense of rhythm.
“She was an accordion player, good singer and she knew how to bang her foot on the floor.
“As a kid, I really loved it.”
So your love of music started there with Irish family and over Irish influences?
“Hugely, I got hold of the Fureys.
“We were taught songs in Ireland.
“We learned loads of songs with my grandmother, that was really important.
“I remember my dad had a bedsit up the road from us, and I’d go up on the weekends and he had a record player and the Fureys album.
“That was when I heard The Green Fields of France when I was about nine or 10.
“Can you imagine this kid trying to write down the lyrics with a record player?
“Irish music was really, really important.
“My dad was a Hank Williams fan, Mum liked Patsy Cline.
“Then you go to school and then you get all different other influences.
“I guess you become without sounding corny, a melting pot of everything.”
You mention The Green Fields of France which, of course, closes the album…
“I’ll tell you something else, honest to God.
“I met a lady who was working a bit in music. A lovely girl actually, and she happened to get a few tickets to go and see Finbar Furey at the Union chapel.
“I was like, ‘Oh my God’. I’m fangirling, right?
“So we went. I got to meet him. We went backstage, had a chat and that was really lovely.
“He probably won’t remember it but for me, that was a really big deal.
“Anyway, I was sort of struggling to express myself, my identity, I guess, in my music.
“So she went, ‘Why don’t you give Finbar a ring?’
“And I was like, ‘Woah, I can’t do that. I can’t do that’.
“She went, ‘You can’.
“She says, ‘It’s fine to call him’.
“I do and he goes, ‘Hello’.
“I’m like, ‘Oh God, hello. Hello, Mr. Furey. My name’s Linda, and our friend said I could call.
“And he’s like, ‘Okay, hang on’, because we’re strangers, he only met me once.
“Anyway, after a little while, he warmed, and we’re chatting and I’m sharing about my background and how I feel and all this.
“And I said, ‘Finbar, how do I really get to express myself?’
“I really want to be true to myself.
“He went- and it’s in one of my songs- He goes, he did swear a little bit, but he said, ‘When you want an apple, you don’t go to the barrel’.
“He goes, ‘You go to the **** tree so get yourself a really good engineer and just do it for yourself, just be true to yourself’.
“That’s what he said to me and that phrase really stayed with me so when you hear the song Shadowboxing, he really inspired that.
“What Finbar said really stayed with me and it’s really come in to this album.
“And he doesn’t have a clue.”
Really? To him you were just a strange woman who rang him up one time?
“Yeah. Very strange.”
And in spite of that, just great how he was so generous, wasn’t it? “That was very generous because it could have gone either way, couldn’t it?
“He doesn’t really know me, he just knew my friend.
“’(He must have thought) she’s not going to give me a complete lunatic to talk to on the phone’.”
So that was the story behind Shadowboxing, let’s talk about the next track Hide Me London. I can imagine that being about the anonymity of it or feeling lost in London…
“I think it is.
“My mum, bless her, had a psychiatric illness. She had schizophrenia with some other stuff going on.
“So you’ve got your child, you’ve got your mum, you’ve got your life and you’re trying to do music, and you’re looking up to the sky going, ‘Come on, London’.
“Everyone seems to be getting ahead and I’m here in ‘my hand me down shoes’ and I don’t mind hand me down shoes, I wore a lot of second hand clothes.
“I’m not ashamed of it and I still love a charity shop to this day except now we call it vintage.”
As well as giving the album it’s title, it is also a song that contains lines about watching sons cry and running to stations with daughters in the night..
“I had to run to police stations in the middle of the night with people.
“I’ve seen young men cry.
“I’ve seen all of that.
“We all have when you start to live in the realism of London, it’s a brutal but beautiful place.
““I think in its essence, it’s quite a true song but it’s also a song of acceptance because you think, ‘You know what? I am the fool. I am it. I’ve become this. I’ve got no desires to be anything more than who I am’.
“So it’s a song of acceptance as well.”
If there is a theme to the album and your work isn’t it the forgotten people? You seem to be interested in them and not in a way of romanticising their story or sugar coating it either…
“You’ve really connected with that because it is the forgotten people.
“They’re here, they’re all around us.”
Do you back to Ireland much?
“Yeah, I’ve got a deep love for Ireland.”
Does it feel like home? “Yeah, I have a real strong resonance with Ireland.
“It does feel like home.
“I feel a sense of peace when I’m in Ireland.”
I know your start in life but also that you did not release your first album until 2015 so what were you doing in between?
“It took me time to go for it.
“It wasn’t even in my head to do music.
“As you know, you go anywhere in the Irish community and 10 or 20 people can stand up and start singing.
“It’s not that singing is not in in us to do, but I would say I had to stabilise myself before I could even think about taking music seriously.
“Without sounding like ‘power to the people’, I think a lot of people from the lower working classes perhaps don’t enter into music because they’re not stable enough, they can’t earn a living from it.
“And I’ve noticed, especially in folk music it’s missing some of that realism because of the lack of regular people involved in it.
“I was just working, taking care of my family and not seeing music as a real thing but then in my 30s I thought, ‘Sod it, I’m gonna give it a go’.”
Linda sang with Julie Felix before the great American- British folk singer passed away in 2020.
“Julie Felix was probably one of the kindest musicians and really one of the most generous musicians I’ve met.
“I was at one of her gigs and I really got on with her manager at the time.
“She sort of took me under her wing a little bit, I guess, and we wrote together, and she shared stories with me.
“I write a lot with a chap called Ian Montague.
“He’s a good friend of mine and a really generous musician also.
“We got to hang out and work with her.
“Julie Felix absolutely had so many stories.”
I also found in my research you chatted to Trisha Goddard a little while ago.
What did you speak to Trisha about?
“Mental health.
“She was interviewing me about my last album but we kind of had a rapport and understanding about mental health and stuff like that.”
Was your last album concerned with issues like mental health?
“Yeah, definitely.
“It’s called The Merchant.
“One of the songs, the lead tracks, is called Ordinary Merchants and that’s inspired by my mum.
“So it was something that it came out in my music.”
You mentioned before your mother’s issues including schizophrenia.
Do you think things are improving in regard to that in that people are talking about mental health more in recent times?
“I think it is changing.
“It’s shifting. Dialogue is opening up. I think people are happy to talk about mental health when it’s easy, if it’s palatable and not too uncomfortable but I think psychiatric health is slightly different.
“I think people really struggle to get into that because it is so uncomfortable, or we wait till something really bad happens and then we all jump on it like a collective.
“I think that people are doing loads, people in the communities, people on the ground are really open.
“I think there is a long way to go.
“Is it needed to be talked about? Always, I think because it makes it easier for the people who’ve got it. It helps build bridges connection, and then we have acceptance.”
Back to the music, we spoke about how The Green Fields of France is included on this album, you also had The Star of County Down on your last offering and have been known to sing Black is the Colour so you’ll always sing a traditional Irish number?
“I think it’s sort of a duty to bring songs with you so they get to different audiences.
“I think it’s important to not forget them.
“(The Green Fields of France) is so emotive.
“It hit me as a kid and it was the saddest thing I’d ever heard.
“I reached out to the writer, Eric Bogle, and I said, ‘Excuse me, please, sir, could I please? Maybe, perhaps, could I?’
“And he said, ‘Alright, you can’.
“I must send him it. I’m a bit nervous because it’s done on an electric guitar but I will let him hear the version, and then hide.”
I’m sure you would like Finbar to like it also given his part in inspiring you to go for it.
“I’d hope he would like it.
“I would certainly hope and not think, ‘Who was that mad woman that rang me up out of the blue?’”
The Fool by Linda Moylan is out now.
For more information, click here.
