On first hearing DECLAN Deaf Fret was struck by the depth of the songs that came so purely from the heart – but clearly with the head in close attendance. A more authentic songwriter would be hard to imagine. He was born in 1960 into a dysfunctional, working-class family in Walkinstown, Dublin. He has lived in London since the early 1980’s. His life – and now his music – is rooted in survival, unaccountable good fortune, and reinvention. As a young man in Dublin, he busked near the Ha’penny Bridge with his then girlfriend, Christine Tobin; ‘mostly Bob Dylan songs’, he recalls. ‘Of course, Christine went on to become a highly acclaimed singer and songwriter.’ DECLAN had zero confidence back then and says he was driven away from singing and guitar in his early twenties. He would not return to it for almost forty years…

Soon after picking up the guitar again, he sent his recording of Moonshiner to renowned Bob Dylan scholar Michael Gray, who replied that the performance stood comparison with Dylan’s.

DECLAN’s playing is raw, stripped-back and instinctive, with music serving primarily as a vehicle for the lyrics. But within those limitations lies the force of the songs: shaped by lived experience, not performance polish. His songs draw heavily upon his upbringing in Walkinstown, Dublin: isolation abounds, along with alcoholism, The Catholic Church, the Christian Brothers, mental health, dysfunctional family life; while all along the line the possibility of love is heavily involved too.

Introducing his very first releases – ‘After the Funerals’, ‘Handsome Bottle of the Black Stuff’ and ‘Sheets in the Wind’.

Recorded in a variety of sessions but mastered by Deaf Fret – raw and direct, the passion that caught the ear of Deaf Fret clearly comes through.

After the Funerals

This simple, semi-humorous, lament, founded on what does not happen (for some), even at the funerals of close family members, is musically constricted and relentlessly repetitive… DECLAN considers this as befitting (perhaps luckily) of the general strain.

He says, ‘This is a quickly escalating tune, broadening in scope to that which perhaps has never happened, and in the widest contexts too…ending in focusing on a once-loved machine, which is perhaps the only ghostly presence of any substance’

Handsome Bottle of the Black Stuff

DECLAN’s lyric and performance suggest the hovering of some ghastly inevitability, right from the outset… 

A pub ‘regular’ and an  ‘old joker’ seem to dominate the stage exclusively; although perhaps another more truly dominant figure is set in stone quite early too…

Sheets in the Wind 

This song opens with a son, rather conversationally, presenting a non-encounter with an ailing father as a deathbed scene… 

A finality-expressing chorus will be delivered three times, ‘although not necessarily from the same place each time…’, adds DECLAN.  

‘The vocals (amongst other things, no doubt…) are forthright, occasionally sarcastic, and bitter,’ he continues. ‘The guitar, using a simple chord progression, is consistently choppy, and has a distinct ‘grind’ feel to it, at least it has to me’.    

The song closes with what DECLAN describes as ‘a very strong gust of ‘wind’ indeed, along with some ‘still white sheets’, just before the ‘final’ chorus.