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Local Guides
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THE MAHONES
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by
Bill Adams
Nov.22-28,2007 |
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In speaking with Mahones singer Fintan “Finny” McConnell, it’s
impossible not to envision what J.M. Barrie must have had in mind
when he sat down to write Peter Pan. It has been seventeen years
since the band formed in Kingston on St. Patrick’s Day, and the
band has weathered successes and losses in that time, but the
recurring theme that comes up when talking to McConnell is
“fun”; even now, seventeen years on, if it doesn’t seem like a fun
idea, The Mahones simply do not do it. According to the singer, if
it isn’t fun, there isn’t any point and that’s the way it is every day
for The Mahones. “It was a long night last night so I was a little
tired this morning,” rasps McConnell contentedly. “We didn’t get
to bed until about seven this morning. Rough weekend. We had
Scruffy from The Dropkick Murphys playing with us on the
weekend after his gigs in Montreal and Toronto so it was a big
party.”
“We’ve been taking a bit of time off although we did shows in
Montral, Ottawa and Toronto this weekend, and then a couple
more around Niagara and Hamilton,” continues the singer. “We’re
playing my daughter’s school this coming Friday too — they’re
having a gingerbread fair and they asked us to do a couple of
songs. I think we’ll do a couple of other things like that too —
maybe a couple of benefit shows and a couple of other little
things before we go in to record.”
The idea that The Mahones would be so quick to get back
into the studio after the release of last year’s Take No Prisoners is
actually fairly shocking. Released last year, Take No Prisoners was
seven years in the making — doubling the amount of time
between releases that the band had enjoyed previously — and
rather exorbitant by anyone’s standard including McConnell’s.
That said, while they may have taken a sabbatical for a while, the
opening seconds of the title track on The Mahones’ grand return
totally decimated the common wisdoms that, well, with age
comes wisdom and that age tends to mellow people. Clearly still
pickled, The Mahones continue to hock gobs in the face of the
meek on tunes including “Out Of Control” and “Nancy Whiskey”
and create a dynamic foil for guests like Damhnait Doyle — who
comes off sounding like the aural equivalent to the rose in the
compost on “A Little Bit Of Love” — that at no point dominate the
sound so much as simply add more colour to it. The record does
sag right in the middle as the band bloats up on “Night Train To
Paris”, but quickly makes up for it with the positively spry
“Whiskey In The Jar” and “The Weight Of The World”. It wouldn’t
be a Mahones record without a few drunken wrong turns, but
happily the band brings it all back to centre by offering more
enthusiasm than they have in years and even chucking in some
great songs for good measure.
Even with that said however, McConnell has difficulty
excusing the gap between releases and says that, in addition to a
new release that they plan to begin work on in February and will
find them in and out of the studio in a week this time, the band
intends to put out a compilation bringing together the finest of
bands Irish punk roots in about that same time frame. “Every
single time we go into the studio, it’s been a different formula
from the last,” explains McConnell, laughing. “It keeps things
interesting. Our first record was done in a week, so I’d like to do
that again — it was kind of fun. You have to be very prepared to
do that of course, but it’s fun to go in there and just lay it down
and then mix it in another week and have it done. We don’t want
to drag it out over a couple of years [laughing].
“The Irish compilation should be out around February — it’ll
be a collection of all the Irish punk songs that we’ve done over
the last decade,” continues the singer. “There won’t be any of the
dabblings that we’ve done; no jazz, no country — strictly the Irish
punk for the younger kids that hadn’t really heard us before so
they can see what we’re about. Irish punk is starting to pick up
again with the Dropkick Murphys and Flogging Molly and bands
like that so we’re getting a lot of younger fans out. We just want
to bring them up to speed with our body of work.”
According to McConnell, the stream of new releases will keep
on flowing through the new year too as plans for The Mahones’
first two DVDs — one a documentary on the band and the other a
collection of all their DVDs — are beginning to take shape and the
content for them is being pulled together. “We’ve got this
documentary on the band that was done not long ago and we’ll
get our videos together and collect it all,” says McConnell. “We’ve
never done a DVD before so we’re excited to get on that. We’ve
got boxes and boxes of tapes from throughout our career and
we’re going to get the rest of the documentary together with
interviews with the members of the band and friends of the band,
footage of different stuff and on a separate collection we’re going
to put together all our videos.”
All of this, of course, is meant to capitalize on the new
interest in Celtic punk bands like The Mahones, Flogging Molly
and Dropkick Murphys. The proverbial stage has been set in
McConnell’s eyes and, there’s little doubt that The Mahones
shouldn’t make sure that they throw their hat in the ring; the
band has already conquered festivals the world over and now’s
the time to make sure that fans have something to take home
with them. “We played the biggest festival in France this summer,
we headlined the Irish festival in Paris on St. Patrick’s Day and
other big ones in Australia, Germany, Holland, US — festivals are
our main thing right now and we really love doing them; they
really help you get through the year,” says McConnell brightly.
“We want to get all the information in now while it’s hot. There’s
always been a bunch of waves and trends of what people are
listening to you know? The Murphys and Flogging Molly have
really brought the focus back to Celtic punk, and we want to make
sure that we’re in there too.”
Join The Mahones this Friday night at Mick’s Irish Ale House
for a night of 100 per cent fun. V [BILL ADAMS]
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