Áine Duffy spoke to David Hennessy about her new album, how easy it would be to solve the housing crisis and touring Ireland in pandemic with her converted mobile stage, the Duffbox.
Cork-based singer-songwriter Áine Duffy recently released her latest single, Move Along.
The track, which preceded her new album, Keep Her Lit which is out this week, highlights the glaring money divide contributing to Ireland’s ongoing housing crisis.
Áine, who self-built her own passive home and converted a donkey box into a mobile music stage, is no stranger to challenging the status quo.
With Move Along, she channels her frustration and creativity into a track that is her thought provoking response to all about the housing crisis that annoys her.
During the pandemic, Áine made waves by converting an old donkey box into a camper and mobile stage, affectionately dubbed the Duffbox.
The Duffbox became a beacon of hope and joy during tough times, earning Áine widespread media coverage as she toured Direct Provision centres and DEIS schools across the country.
Now, Áine is creating the Duffbox 2.0, a project aimed at providing artist accommodation on tour and offering a pop-up outreach stage in every county in Ireland. This initiative directly tackles the housing and cost-of-living crises, showcasing Áine’s commitment to using her platform for social good.
Move Along comes with a funny video that shows a miniature wooden house being put up for sale. Although it is funny,the housing crisis is a serious issue..
“This is the thing. It’s a serious issue. I see people living it.
“I know that there’s an easy way of fixing it.
“And when you’re an artist, you want to write things you’re experiencing, that people are experiencing where you are.
“I often write things and put a hint of sarcasm, a bit of humour.
“I quite enjoy that.
“It feels good for me too because, especially in Ireland, it can often be that hint the humour will save an argument.
“And you can’t help but be a bit sarcastic over it especially when you’re sitting in your own house that you built yourself.
“You know it can be done for less.
“You know if you had help how fast it can be done.
“It’s just hard to watch.
“I’ve been playing music for years and all kinds of people are suffering with it.
“Because I’m playing gigs in all these different corners, you’re seeing all the empty houses and it just drives you mad.
“It drives you absolutely mad.
“You hear people saying Ireland’s full and it’s not.
“Ireland used to have 6 million or something before the famine, we’ve plenty of room. You could drive for half an hour in any direction and get a bit of peace and quiet.
“There’s a field within half an hour drive of Tallaght, I’m sure of it.”
And there are still ghost estates and unfinished houses in a country that says it has no houses..
“There’s ghost estates, there’s apartments over Dunnes stores that are empty- 22 of them there in Macroom alone- that have been empty since 2007, it’s just crazy.
“It gets too much so you want to do something about it and I thought this would help.
“People say, ‘Where am I going to go?’
“You can’t just tell people, ‘Your rent is up. You’re out. We want to paint the walls, do it up, so see you later’.
“I drive a van so I also help people move houses there about 10 times a year.
“Anyone who drives a van, I’d say, are seeing the housing crisis. If they’re nice people, that is.”
You did those shows for people in direct provision centres, there you also see people with no home and what that does..
“I met the loveliest people.
“It was an amazing experience for me as much as anyone else.
“People in Ireland, there’s not one of us that don’t have one of their own family somewhere else, let alone if they had to leave it when they were in huge trouble.
“There’s a big money divide. We just need a small bit of empathy because it’s not going to cost us much.
“I just feel that it’s got to stop now.
“It’s going on too long and we’re a small country with empty houses, and we’re known for building cities all over the world.”
You’re quite the builder yourself, you built your own house as you say but also your Duffbox, your mobile stage that you took around Ireland…
“It was a donkey box that I bought off Donedeal.
“I brought it to the DEIS schools. I brought it to direct provisions.
“As the boundary (I could travel with restrictions) started getting bigger, I started bringing it where I could and then it was getting traction.
“It made people smile because the back would pull down into a stage.
“It excited people because there was a bit of freedom, but there was also beautiful surroundings.
“There was people appreciating things, appreciating Ireland. And then the craic and people were drawing in together, people of all ages.
“My shows are pretty dancey to be fair, so it was nice to see the different generations dancing together.
“And because I play electric guitar too, it was nice. There was little kids going, ‘That’s a girl playing the guitar’. They hadn’t seen live music. That was their first gig, a lot of the kids.
“It just really took off.
“I was on Ireland AM and when I was coming down through the toll tunnel I could see the toll person looking out.
“They’re like, ‘Is that the Duffbox? Are you the singer?’
“I still had to pay.
“There are slight changes in Ireland.
“There was no plumassing my way through the toll bridge.”
And now you are building another one, your Duffbox 2.0 which is something big enough to include accommodation also which is handy in a country with a housing crisis..
“I also have this radio show called Blas now, and it has all Irish artists on it.
“They have all the different accents from around the country. They’re amazing musicians.
“I started realising there’s so many and they’re unreal.
“They were saying, ‘The cost of living really affects us as well because your food is more expensive, your accommodation. You’re trying to book a tour, you’re basically in trouble’.
“Bord Gáis were even looking for people to put up their artists- You could be in Crumlin with Kraftwerk in your front room, ‘Ah Jesus. Would you get your legs off the table, Kraftwerk? Elvis Costello, you’re making a lot of noise’.
“I spoke to a lot of people.
“The problems for the musicians was they wanted to play gigs. They wanted to play more than just release an album and play three gigs, one in Dublin, one in Cork and one in Galway or Limerick, if you’re lucky.
“You want to do more than that.
“You also want to support the small venues.
“You want to get there and you want to be able to afford to get there.
“So I figured if I made the Duffbox 2.0, I can put accommodation in there. They can stay the night. I could put a kitchen in there so that they could cook and then I can make the choice of a pop down stage at the back so if they are going down through West Cork, they can go to the wonderful venues that we have and play their gigs and then if they wanted to do an outreach one, they’d have the opportunity to maybe go to Beara.
“The public are complaining because it’s expensive for them. They want to go and see someone.
“It’s a lot of money and even the bigger artists, like Beyonce or Adele, are skipping Ireland because Ireland’s too expensive.
“Then there’s people going to Adele in Hamburg and it’s costing them a fortune when there are amazing artists here in Ireland.
“The bigger picture is to keep music, good Irish music going.
“We all have stuff to say.
“We can make it a community rather than the 90s, making it a competition. It’s not, we love each other’s music, we love playing together.”
There has been talk for a long time of how much Irish music doesn’t make it onto Irish radio.
“There’s a lot of it (Irish music) and it’s unreal.
“It’s mind blowing.
“I’m getting messages afterwards (the radio show) going, ‘What? They’re all in Ireland? Holy crap’.
“It’s just got to get out there.
“I think some radio DJs are afraid to play new. They’re kind of afraid that people won’t tune in but there’s a lot of people turning off when there’s a cheesy song on so it works both ways.
“Everywhere is supporting local in the world.
“You hear ‘support local’: Buy your local food, go to your local supermarket, grow your own food, but there’s such a tiny percentage of Irish artists on the radio in the middle of the day, it’s just not like other countries.
“The money’s going to stay right in Ireland, Lady Gaga doesn’t need another handbag. I’m sure she’s grand.
“I’m sure she would agree with me right now if she was here next to me.
“There are amazing tunes that people could be driving down the road listening to in the middle of the day that are much more influential to your kids.
“I googled the lyrics to the top songs in Ireland when I put out my last one because of what it was called (T*ts Up).
“But when I looked up what was the actual lyrics that all the kids were singing, that they were playing every day it was like, ‘I’ll take her from the back so she don’t get attached’, there was bad stuff and then they weren’t playing someone going, ‘he’s got the geansai and the jean shorts’, you know?”
Áine found inventive ways around the problems of being a female touring on her own with her Duffbox.
“I’m an electric guitar player so I had my amps there and of course, the fellas were coming up and trying to touch all the stuff, and I was afraid to say anything, and you’re not safe either.
“You can’t do it in a whingy way, because people will say you’re whinging but you’re not.
“That’s why I put a sticker on my PA system.
“It said, ‘Don’t touch my knob without consent’.
“That went viral.
“Everyone got such a laugh off that so that’s kind of why I put the humour into things.”
You have had that since that start, haven’t you? People in the industry treating you a certain way for being female..
“Yeah, ‘don’t play the guitar because we can’t see your body’, ‘look up because you have a double chin when you’re playing the guitar.
“I was chatting to a friend of mine who’s a really well known cartoonist and I said to him, ‘Imagine if someone was standing behind you while you were doing the cartoon saying, ‘Be a bit sexier there, put on a bikini there’.’
“It just shouldn’t be that way.
“I realised the more people tried to be sexy, it almost always wasn’t
“What’s sexy is someone in their own character and comfortable in your own skin.”
Something else that people don’t realise about you is that you were born with a cleft lip and palate. Was that a big struggle?
“It wasn’t. I usen’t even tell anyone because I was afraid at the time I might sound like an X Factor contestant when I stated out.
“But at the same time, it would be nice for people with a cleft lip and palate to know I had one.
“My mother was always singing to me and talking to me and trying to make me talk because they said I mightn’t be able to, so they were pushing me to talk, pushing me to talk, and I did, and started singing and the whole shebang.
“I was afraid to tell people that at the start because you’d be afraid they’d try and push that rather than pushing your tune.
“It was about my tunes.
“My set is fast, it’s fun. It’s not really what you’re expecting when they hear Áine Duffy.
“I know that they’re expecting a folk singer songwriter, and it’s not what they get. But I like my name. I’m keeping my name.”
Move Along is out now.
Keep Her Lit is out now.
For more information, click here.
