LIMERICK label Out On A Limb Records has teamed up with Dublin based label Popical Island to release music from Limerick band Windings and Dublin’s Land Lovers. The bands released the 11-track split album on 12” vinyl and download last week and play Dolan’s this weekend.
Windings frontman Steve Ryan took some time out from his work with the Music Generation Project to talk to Limerick Post on Thursday 26.
by Eric FitzGerald eric@limerickpost.ie
It is exactly 12 months since Steve Ryan and his band Windings were at Vicar Street in Dublin waiting expectantly with nine other shortlist nominees to find out if their album “I Am Not The Crow” (Out On A Limb) had won The Meteor Choice Music Prize for album of the year. The prize eventually went to Delorentos but it was the first nomination for the Out on a Limb label and more and more music fans started to sit up and take notice of Windings.
Steve says, “ Last year was particularly busy for us. And it was all to do with the nomination.
“We got a lot of attention out of it and we were playing nearly every weekend. We got to the UK and to do festivals. There was a whole new demographic of people who might have heard of us, but never had a clue what we sounded like, it really opened a lot of doors.”
The idea for the split LP came when Steve was curating the Out on a Limb Festival in Limerick last year. He invited Land Lovers down to play, got chatting to them. They, like Windings, had released an album earlier that year and had some new songs but didn’t want to release a full album again right away.
“They were in the same position as us after ‘I am Not the Crow’.” The idea was simple, both bands would record music for the release. Windings would take one side of the vinyl record and Land Lovers would fill the other side. No A-Sides or B-Sides, fans simply play which side they wanted to hear. A novel idea and financially a smart move as Steve explains
“It is expensive, between recording it, mixing it and mastering it then the whole packaging of it and getting someone to do the artwork. And then you have to print it. For both bands, they are going halves essentially, splitting all costs down the middle, and we are getting an album out. What could possibly go wrong?”
The 11-track split album is available only on 12” vinyl and download. The indie labels are not making CD versions available, a trend that is becoming ever more prevalent with good indie labels.
“For us its a cost thing, you can get 2000 CDs for the price of 500 vinyl records. The market for CDs is not there. If it is a choice of CDs or Records at a gig people always go for vinyl. We would rather sell out of the records than have 1000 CDs left for who knows how long.”
As an example, Windings’ Choice nominated record ‘I am Not the Crow’ from last year is completely sold out, but available for download on Bandcamp or iTunes. You may possibly pick up a vinyl copy at upcoming Record Fairs at The Milk Market as some canny local traders snapped up multiple copies when it was released.
Lead single from the new LP is ‘Neverwood’, a rampant indie rush of crashing guitars coloured with wailing 1950’s B-Movie theremin sounds. The new single needed a video and bass player Gary Carroll the latest member to join the band turns out to, “wiz with video stuff,” Steve says.
“We discussed the video, I used to have a pet guinea pig years ago. I think they are funny so we decided on a band of guinea pigs playing our song, turning into psychedelic guinea pigs at the end. That was the brief and he came back with the video two days later.”
With albums recorded and released with Tooth, Giveamanakick and now Windings Steve Ryan is a veteran Limrock campaigner now lending his vast experience to the next generation in the Music Generation Project. Once our conversation is over he will go back to “shredding with the teenagers” in his electric guitar class happening in Sexton Street CBS. Along with fellow axemen Patrick O’Brien (Windings) and Tony Monahan (Protobaby), Steve is on hand with advice and information for guitar players taking time after school to attend the Music Generation classes. “Some of those lads are pretty good. It is completely by choice. It’s great that they turn up week after week with their amps and guitars and shred.”
Though Music Generation is still only a brand new thing in the city, it has gone from taking baby steps to taking bigger steps according to Steve. “It is ingraining itself in the younger Limerick music scene, which is great because, at that age, if that was there when I was starting off it would have been brilliant to have places to practice with other musicians.”
Steve explains that these Music Generation classes are not there to tell the teenagers what to do. “You can’t tell people what to do, I would have taken that badly at 16 or 17 but any advice they want, we are there to give it to them.”
For updates on Music Generation Projects see their regular column on the left of this article.
Windings and Land Lovers with support from Slow Riot play Dolan’s on Friday March 7.
