Country singer Johnny Brady told David Hennessy how he’s looking forward to Craic by the Creek, what he learned from Big Tom and when Jimmy Buckley advised him to be himself as a singer.
Johnny Brady, the well known country singer from Randalstown, Co. Antrim, is set to rock Craic By the Creek this weekend.
Known for songs such as Chicken Fried and Hillbilly Rock, Johnny has 2 million streams and close to 260,000 listeners on Spotify.
Johnny is very popular on the Irish country scene, having forged a reputation for his live performances as well as his four albums to date.
He has also been a mentor on TG4’s Glor Tíre.
He says country music is in the Irish DNA but it is especially true for him, being a cousin of country music icon, Big Tom.
Are you looking forward to coming over to Craic by the Creek?
“Yeah, it’s my first time going over there. I’ve heard a lot of stories about Craic by the Creek as being an awesome gig.
“I do hear a lot through the grapevine by working with all the different artists here and they just say it’s such a good gig.
“I’m excited to do a new gig but excited to do a new gig that I know is already well established and doing very well.
“We’re really, really looking forward to it.”
The line up also includes The Tumbling Paddies, All Folk’d Up and The Kilkennys.
Johnny will be preceding Nathan Carter on the stage.
With names like Nathan Carter, Derek Ryan and Lisa McHugh, country music is thriving in Ireland, isn’t it?
“It’s in our DNA.
“It’s developed a lot over the years to a younger audience.
“It is a thing that has just taken off really well with the young ones.”
I know you have other influences but did country always speak to you?
“Yeah, my grandfather was from Castleblayney.
“He would have been an uncle of Big Tom McBride who would be a legend.
“A lot of people have pictures of the sacred heart in their houses.
“We had pictures of Big Tom, he was just a real legend.
“He would have been one of the early artists who would have went to London and played in the Galty.
“Him and my mum are first cousins, and country was always big in our house.
“I grew up listening to old American country and Irish country so it was pretty much in my DNA.
“I only got into more indie and stuff like that as I got into my teenage years and maybe started playing guitar and stuff like that.
“I suppose young ones were going to country back then but not the way they’re going to country now.
“It just wouldn’t have been as cool.
“I kind of wanted to be a bit cooler maybe.
“I was trying to get girls so I got my guitar and I started learning more indie and pop stuff.
“The likes of Nathan and all these younger lads really did change that scene.
“They gave us a chance to make music a little bit more progressive and they brought a bit more of an American style to it.
“I really latched on to that and it just gave me that sort of grounding.”
What was it like to have none other than Big Tom as an older relative?
“I think I was four when my grandfather took me with him.
“They were my favourite days.
“My grandfather liked a little Guinness and took me into the pub with him there most evenings and I would have sat beside him and watched the band.
“There was a place called The Old Log Cabin and Big Tom actually owned that bar, his brother Seamus McBride ran the bar and Big Tom would himself be in on a Monday night, maybe just coming back from tour.
“He was a monster.
“He was huge.
“You couldn’t get any bigger than this guy.
“Everybody knew him.
“He would get up and sing with the local bands in the pub and I’d sit there and watch the band until I couldn’t keep my eyes open no longer.
“I just was mesmerised by all these different bands and I ended up working in the pub myself, I picked up glasses and stuff like that.
“It was probably great learning for me as a young person.
“You wouldn’t see it so much now- maybe for the better that kids are not in pubs at a young age but I wasn’t there drinking, atmosphere was all I was soaking up.
“I remember I got paid in punts in them days so it’s a long time ago, we’re talking the 80s.
“It was kind of cool because even one of the last gigs that I actually had the pleasure to do with Big Tom, it was six months or so maybe before he passed.
“I was there with my own band and he was kind of doing a bit of a spot, maybe five or six songs with the band.
“All the lads in the band were sort of like, ‘This is Big Tom’ and they were so respectful to him.
“And I remember he had a little whiskey and he finished the whiskey, and I lifted the glass and he said to me, ‘I see you’re still lifting the glasses anyway’.
“He was still a really funny man, just a really cool dude.
“He’d seen it all. Just real gentle guy.
“A superstar and you wouldn’t have ever known it so I learned a lot from him about keeping your feet on the ground.”
You mentioned leaving school and I believe you left early and really struggled with it, didn’t you? You weren’t academic but did you always know it was music?
“I think I did.
“I wasn’t academic at all and I’d find it very difficult.
“I was dyslexic and I found learning very difficult and it very hard to concentrate.
“I just would have wandered a lot.
“I wasn’t an unruly pupil or anything. I never really fell out with any teachers, I never did any things like that.
“I remember when I was in first year, I was 12 years old at the time.
“My maths teacher, I’ll always thank him for this, took out the acoustic one day.
“I suppose the class that I was in, it was a class of a lot of people who were struggling.
“Back in those days, it was tough but he was a great teacher and he kinda understood ‘it’s not just about maths for these kids’.
“He took out the acoustic one day and he started singing a song that he wrote and it was the first time that I realised that it’s not just famous people that write songs, anybody can write a song and then they become famous.
“I learned this that day in school and I will always remember it.
“From that day on, I started writing songs.
“I have recorded songs, released songs and dream to still write the great song.
“I started bands at 15, realised that music was something I enjoyed so much.
“I still feel probably exactly the same now as I did back then.
“I get to do gigs, it’s a really lucky thing.
“I’m 48 years old now and I just love gigging as much as I ever did.”
How did you manage to write songs with your dyslexia?
“I left school and I couldn’t really read and write to be honest.
“I could spell a little bit, I could read very basic.
“I would miss words out because I couldn’t understand and I couldn’t read the words but I would write songs phonetically.
“And people would ask me, ‘What’s this word?’
“And I would realise then that I couldn’t obviously spell the word right but I could read the word myself.
“It was actually mobile phones and things started to come out on email, it’s such a crazy thing.
“People would email me and I would have to get through this email.
“Then you have to start reading people’s texts on phones and that actually was what taught me to read and write more than anything else, which was the craziest concept now when you think of it.
“It just started very slowly but then the words became familiar to me looking at them and it helped me with my songwriting.
“It helped me with my spelling.
“I can actually spell not too bad now, but I still wouldn’t say I was the best speller.
“I still spell things phonetically a little bit but for songwriting, it didn’t matter.
“It didn’t make me feel under pressure.
“I used to feel under pressure at school.
“I looked at the blackboard and it’s, ‘I don’t know what that is, I can’t read it’.
“So that was something in my early 20s that I struggled with, just even until I started to get better at my reading and stuff.
“But it’s something that I don’t mind talking about.
“I haven’t done badly for myself at all and because I was so into my music that I could get lost in music and learn chords and listen by ear and stuff like that.
“And I’ve never been afraid to ask anybody for help or advice.”
You certainly haven’t done badly, you’ve had incredible experiences in music. What leaps out as a highlight for you?
“A lot of shows leap out for me.
“TV shows and things like that are really amazing to get the experience to do but I think of doing things like The Farmers Bash here.
“You’re sitting there with nearly 10,000 people and you’re singing a song to them with your acoustic and they light their phones up.
“And it’s like, ‘This is pretty cool’.
“It’s hard to believe you actually got to that stage.
“Or maybe sitting in Nashville and an in the round session with people that I would just go, ‘Wow, these people are just so amazing’.
“Stand out moments like that are really cool for me.
“But there are other moments where you come to, say, Craic by the Creek and you go on stage and you have the crowd up here and you can feel that you’ve done well, ‘I’ve done a great job here’.
“Those sort of things are so satisfactory to me.
“It’s almost like a drug to me.
“I’ve never taken drugs.
“I’m not even really a big drinker.
“I’m a rock and roller at times but probably not in my lifestyle.
“I am happy to be out walking my dogs in the forest.
“I love going onstage feeling that connection with the people is just an amazing feeling.
“It’s the best feeling in the world, I think.”
You have collaborated with a few people we’ve interviewed here such as Claudia Buckley and Caitriona O’Sullivan…
“It’s always good to collaborate.
“I just love music and I love people that can sing and play and I always feel so comfortable.
“You don’t have to be the best guitar player, the best singer in the room, you just have to go in and keep an open mind and enjoy the work.
“Claudia was great because she’s a young girl, very much at the start of her whole career.
“I met her when she was quite young actually, because I know her dad well Jimmy and I’ve done a few trips out in Spain.
“In fact when I started out Jimmy took me out on
a concert tour with him.
“I was kind of worried about my voice being a bit more edgy and not being country and Jimmy said to me not to change what I had.
“I was really trying to make my voice as clean as possible and trying to fit in and he said to me, ‘Don’t try and fit in, just be yourself because you don’t need to fit in. You have your thing, Johnny’.
“It was cool for him to say that to me because he didn’t have to, but he’s always been nice to me and so have the likes of Nathan and Derek, Lisa. I’ve worked with all of them.
“I just feel quite lucky that after the story that I just told you, coming through school as a young lad and really struggling there, I seem to not struggle so much as an older lad who has stayed in music his whole life and loves what he has done.
“Music has given me everything that I’ve ever had.
“I just love being a part of it.”
You have also mentored on Glór Tíre..
“Yeah, being a mentor is quite an easy job for me.
“I mean a lot of the talent that I work with have been pretty great to begin with.
“One in particular I can think of is a wee girl called Chantelle Padden.
“We were down doing a gig near Belmullet.
“She was only eighteen at the time and it was her and another little fella.
“That wee lass started singing and I remember going to myself, ‘This kid is such a great singer’.
“I said, ‘Lads, are you listening to this? There’s a wee girl singing out there, she’s amazing’.
“I said to her, ‘I’m going to be doing Glór Tíre, would you fancy doing it?’
“And she did do it.
“And the Glór Tíre people themselves are actually really cool people.
“They’re doing something that nobody else is doing for country music here in this country so I applaud them all.
“It’s a great experience for me and it seems to be a great experience for them (singers being mentored) and if they want any advice, I’m willing to tell them what my journey was but I’d always say, ‘Look, follow your heart yourself and it’ll be the right thing’.
“The best advice I got was ‘enjoy it, try and enjoy it as much as you can’ because you can always look back and you always will look back and go, ‘You know what? That was great’.
“So try and enjoy it while you’re actually there each moment because you could be ten years down the road going, ‘My God, wasn’t it so good what we were doing then and we didn’t even realise?’
“So that’s all I’ll say to them, just enjoy it.”
Is there new music coming? “Yeah, actually I’ve got nearly a whole album recorded.
“It’s all original music and it’s not overly country.
“There’s some country songs on there but it’s a mix of everything so we’re going to start bringing out songs in the next few weeks.
“I’m trying to work a bit more with the original stuff this year as well because I’d like to do a tour.
“That can be a bit of a scary thing for me because people are used to me doing Chicken Fried and different songs like that.
“I’m lucky I’ve got a great family around me here.
“I’ve got Freya and Shay, my 15 year old daughter, my 12 year old son, my wife Toni so we’re all good, and Theo and Jovi running around out in the back yard, the two dogs.
“I’m very lucky to have people around me.
“I just live the dream every day.
“I’m so excited to come to Craic by the Creek
“I hope we’re going to come over there and blow the doors off the place.
“We’re coming for the one night and we’re coming to party.”
Johnny Brady plays Craic by the Creek this weekend.
Craic by the Creek runs 19- 21 July.
For more information, click here.
For more information about Johnny Brady, click here.
