Cork- born, Belfast- based singer- songwriter Nathan O’Regan told David Hennessy about his new EP of covers and why it was a ‘blessing in disguise’ to be signed to a major label as a teenager and then unceremoniously dropped.
Nathan O’Regan, 31, is set to release his debut album next year.
It has been a long time coming.
Cork-born, Belfast-based songwriter Nathan O’Regan’s career in music began at the age of sixteen when he was signed by Universal.
O’Regan began recording an album, only for communication from the label to wane midway through the project before he was unceremoniously dropped.
This, and the desertion of his manager, left Nathan disillusioned for a time but determined to still get his own music out there.
This is what he moved to Belfast for and been working towards for half of his life now.
Before the album lands next year, Nathan is set to release his debut studio EP, Uncovered Vol.1.
Designed to fill the gap between the recording and release of the album, the EP is a collection of covers that pays homage to contemporary Northern Irish songwriting.
For years O’Regan curated the acclaimed monthly live show Songbook in Belfast, providing a platform for emerging talent in the local music scene.
Uncovered Vol. 1 also serves as a farewell to this chapter of his career, featuring covers of tracks by Gareth Dunlop (co- producer on his album), Ciaran Lavery, McVeigh, Fiona O’Kane and Fiona Harte.
Nathan told The Irish World: “It’s been nice to be getting some tunes out in the world and kind of getting ready for the album coming out next year.
“It’s all full steam ahead.
“We recorded the album last year and it wasn’t going to be out until 2025 so me and the label were talking about something that would be interesting to do in the intervening period.
“There was a night that I ran in Belfast for six years called Songbook and every month I would have two guest songwriters from Belfast and a bit further afield too.
“It just meant that I got to hear everybody that was around kind of playing all their new tunes and then when we were trying to think of something to do between now and the album, I just had the thought that it was something that I’ve always wanted to do: An EP of friends’ tunes. Songbook came to an end just in April, it kind of felt like the timing was right to do something like this.
“It was a lot of fun putting it together.
“It was quite tough to pick songs.
“Obviously an EP has generally only four or five tunes.
“I could have probably recorded 20 of these EPs with the songs that are coming out of Northern Ireland.
“There’s just a lot of folks around here writing stuff that I just think is really, really incredible.”
You say it was fun, what was it like to be reworking the material of friends? It’s one thing to do a Bob Dylan cover, you know Bob isn’t too likely to hear it but this was different.
“It was definitely weird.
“Normally whenever you do a cover of somebody else, your publisher or something would reach out to these people’s teams, but it was a fun few evenings ringing my friends and kind of explaining what the plan for the EP was and asking if they would mind me covering their tunes.
“Some of the tunes on the EP had never even been released by themselves as well so that had kind of an extra weird element to it as well, but it was a lot of fun.
“If you release a song by, as you said, Bob Dylan or something, you’re probably never going to hear what Bob Dylan thinks.
“With Bob Dylan, it’s probably safe to assume he’ll hate it but it has the extra level of pressure: I’m friends with these people. I’m going to run into them again so I was trying very hard to make sure that I did it justice.
“It is a weird sort of feeling to kind of know you’re gonna have to look these people in the eye later and if they hate it, it might come up.
“But thankfully, everyone’s been really nice about it. At least to my face,” Nathan laughs.
You say you could have done 20 of these EPs and that’s no surprise with the musical talent that is coming out of Northern Ireland. It does have Vol.1 in the title, is the intention to follow it up?
“I would love to come back to it because when I drew up a list of stuff that I would like to do very, very quickly I had 20, 30, tunes on there.
“There are so many amazing bands here, so many amazing writers.
“Pound for pound, I think Belfast and Derry and all the great music cities up here really, really do punch above their weight.
“I’m not from Belfast but I remember moving here and just being constantly blown away by the talent.
“There’s so much talent here. It’s incredible.”
There must be a buzzing scene with the likes of Dea Matrona, Cherym to name just two fresh bands to emerge recently. Then you have Kneecap who are another thing entirely..
“Yeah, there’s so many great things going on.
“(Belfast) is a brilliant place. It’s really, really, really a brilliant place.
“I don’t live too far from a town called Bangor which, musically, has amazing heritage.
“Just from Bangor or people who started by gigging in Bangor you have Foy Vance, Duke Special, Snow Patrol, like, Two Door Cinema. It’s mad for such a small place.
“Because of that, I’ve noticed here that people have a very positive attitude because I think that they have all known and seen people that they know go on to kind of do big and bold things.
“I think success is an amazing motivator.
“I know Irish people sometimes kind of get tarred with the brush of being jealous or not being happy for people but it’s certainly not the experience I’ve had here anyway and certainly not whenever I go home either.
“I’ve certainly noticed here the attitude is people are always pretty happy for folks and they’re more inspired by other people’s success, rather than being begrudging of it. which is really cool.”
Do you think the vast musical output of the province is some sort of response to the dark times the region has endured to now be uninhibited in its creativity?
“Absolutely, I don’t know if I could speak to that too much myself not being from here.
“But I think anywhere that’s been through what Belfast has been through is bound to probably end up producing the sort of art that it does.
“I don’t know if I’m the best qualified to speak on that but I certainly get the impression that folks from here have an awful lot to say on that but then, at the same time too, people are kind of sick at looking at the past and they want to move forward.
“Not to speak for everybody but I get the impression that people want to be judged less on where they’re from and judged more on what they’re doing.”
You mention that you’re not from Belfast yourself. Where is it in Cork you’re originally from and when did you make the move up north?
“It’s a small town called Inniscarra, that’s where I grew up.
“I went to school in Ballincollig, finished my leaving cert.
“I was signed to Universal when I was 16 and then carried on finishing school.
“We started recording an album when I was about 18 and then it just kind of took forever for Universal to sort of get their finger out and kind of get things moving.
“We only ever really did about half an album.
“Around that time, they wanted me to start rehearsing with a band for any potential touring or anything that would have come up.
“The guy who played guitar on the record was a guy called Tim Vanderkuil and he would have been an MD for a lot of folks.
“He is a great guitar player.
“He’s been playing for Adele for a lot of years now.
“He put me in touch with some musicians here in in Belfast so I came up and down a few times to rehearse with them.
“Then I got dropped by the label when I was about 20.
“I moved up a couple of months after.
“One of the co-producers of the album that I’ve just made, Michael Keeney, I met him all those years ago and after I got dropped he said, ‘What are you going to do? What do you want to do?’
“And I was like, ‘Well, I still want to make an album’.
“And he was like, ‘Well, move up here. We’ll make an album. We’ll do it’.
“That was 10, 11 years ago.
“From there I kind of just started playing in bars and just trying to make ends meet, concentrating on finding my feet here and finding my people.
“Then I started releasing things myself kind of few and far between but kind of slowly but surely got to the point where I am now, to actually make a record.
“But it’s been a long time coming.”
It must have been devastating to be dropped like that..
“Yeah, it all felt quite unfair to be honest.
“It was funny because getting signed was sort of weird anyway.
“I was in a band in school and we had entered this competition on 2FM and then we got to the final of it and we won.
“It was actually one of the judges on it that ended up bringing me to meet a fellow who became my manager for a time, he was the one who got me the deal with Universal.
“It was sort of weird because we were fourth year in school and everybody was sort of just figuring out what they wanted to do and what they wanted to be.
“I loved music but I hadn’t really ever given it a great deal of thought if it was something that I really, really, really wanted to do.
“Then things started happening for me.
“I had never tried for years to be an independent artist or anything like that so I had no frame of reference for how lucky I was.
“It was my first proper insight into the music business at an extremely high level and I had no idea what I was doing at all really.
“I think, to be honest, I was probably insufferable in school.
“I’m sure everybody just thought I was a muppet because I didn’t know what I was doing really.
“I look back at a lot of that and am just a bit embarrassed.
“I didn’t know how lucky I was but also, I don’t know if I took it as seriously as I should have done.
“To be honest as well, I look back at the music I was making at the time.
“Sonically, it was incredible.
“I was working with amazing people but what was I writing about? I was only a child.
“I didn’t know what I was writing about or anything.
“I got to write with some amazing people.
“We recorded six tunes and I was pretty happy with it.
“I’m glad, in a way, that a lot of it didn’t get out in the world.
“Getting dropped- It was just all very like sudden.
“I can’t even remember the guy’s name. I had a meeting with some guy. He had listened to everything that I had done, mustn’t have been very impressed by it and that was the end of it.
“Then not long after that, I obviously moved up to Belfast but I still had that manager for a while.
“He was managing the Rolling Stones at the time so I kind of felt, ‘Well, I still have a really good manager so it’s surely not the end of the world’.
“And he was very positive.
“He was like, ‘Don’t worry. You just need to go back and write some more songs. This is just a bump in the road’.
“He was very encouraging.
“Then out of nowhere he just stopped answering the phone to me entirely which was pretty devastating because this was a guy that I would have spoken to every day for four years.
“That was probably harder than actually getting dropped because I knew that getting dropped was something that happens.
“I had been told by enough people not to read too much into that part of it.
“He was a massive part of my life at that time and for him to just completely give up on me…
“I’m sure he probably had his reasons. Maybe I was being really annoying,” Nathan laughs now.
“But it was sad. It was sad because I didn’t know what to do and all my friends had gone to college. They had all started their educational journeys and figuring out what they wanted to do and who they wanted to be.
“I had sort of skipped college so I was sort of left a bit stranded. All my friends were two years ahead of me. It was difficult.
“I had to find a love for music again because it was quite a whirlwind thing that all happened so fast that I hadn’t really ever had a chance to really examine if it was something that I desperately wanted to do.
“In a way I think it was a blessing because the time between the dropping by Universal and getting signed more recently by Zenith Cafe, it gave me perspective that I didn’t have before.
“Obviously I had the chance to live an awful lot of life and have a lot of good things happen, and some bad things as well.
“I think I had an awful lot more to say but also I got that experience of releasing music on my own and realising how hard it was.
“I hadn’t really figured out what I was saying.
“Whereas now, the record that we’ve just made does feel incredibly personal to me.
“I became a dad two and a bit years ago now and we’ve bought a house.
“I feel like a big boy now, you know?
“I hate when people say everything happens for a reason because I don’t know if that’s necessarily true but I’m definitely glad this happened.
“I don’t know if it was meant to happen but it’s happened and I’m happy with it.
“I do counselling every week which has been brilliant, but it feels really weird to have effectively been making my debut album for half my life.
“That’s been my point of focus for over half my life now and in the years between Universal and getting signed to Zenith, it felt like it was this unattainable thing but now it’s here and it’s happening and it feels great.
“I am really glad that this will be the first album of mine because it does feel intensely personal in a way that I know that that record that I would have made at Universal wouldn’t have.
“Now that I am signed to a label that are as generous and hard working as Zenith are, I now feel like I really do appreciate how lucky I am to be in the position that I’m in and probably far more capable to actually make something of it now.
“It was tough at the time but I think it was good that it happened, for sure.”
The single Permanent is out now.
Uncovered, Vol.1 is out now.
For more information, click here.