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
