Mundy Interview

(Published in this week's Campus Magazine)Mundy’s duet with Sharon Shannon ‘Galway Girl’ was the most downloaded Irish track of 2007. Remarkably, the song went on to repeat that same achievement in 2008. Songs as big as that sometimes threaten to eclipse the careers of the artists responsible but Offaly man Mundy has returned to show there are even better songs in his arsenal than ‘That Song From The Bulmers Ad’.

Hi Mundy. Congratulations, I hear you’ve a new addition to your family.

Yeah, my daughter was born a couple of weeks ago. She only came home from the hospital yesterday. The whole experience is very new to me.

Your track with Sharon Shannon, ‘Galway Girl’, has been pretty much inescapable the past eighteen months. Are you sick of the song?

No, I’m not sick of it. What was weird about ‘Galway Girl’ was that it was around for a while and nobody really heard it and then suddenly it was everywhere. I think some of the stuff I’ve done for the new album is better than ‘Galway Girl’ though. It’s a little bit fresher.

What can we expect from your new album ‘Strawberry Blood’?

The stuff is quite indie-pop in the vein of the stuff on ’24 Star Hotel’. There’s a great variety of stuff on there. I tried to cut it down from fourteen tracks but I couldn’t choose between them so I left them all in the end.

One of the album’s tracks, ‘The Corn & The Orange Sun’, has an interesting history. Can you tell me about that?

I had the opening lines of this song when I wrote my first album. I finished it a few years later but it didn’t really fit on the last studio album. It was just a matter of finding the right home for the song.

There are a few collaborations on the album, including one with Gemma Hayes. How did this come about?

I know Gemma anyway but Joe Chester, who produced the album, plays in her band, so we got her in last minute to sing on the track. It’s a pity we couldn’t get her on a couple more of the tracks but she’s based in America a lot of the time so that makes things awkward.

Your first album was released on a major label? Do you think you’d go back down that route?

I wouldn’t rule it out. I was dropped by that record company around the time of the millennium but the singer-songwriter thing kinda took off shortly after that so maybe it was a bad call for them. The music industry’s in a funny place now but I think the percentage you get back is probably better if you release it yourself.

Your song 'To You I Bestow' was on the soundtrack for Baz Luhrmann's 'Romeo and Juliet'. How did that come about?

Baz Luhrman had recruited Nellee Hooper, from the band Soul II Soul, to look after the soundtrack and he selected my song. I never met Baz but apparently all decisions go through him so he must have approved of the track. They album sold 11 million copies so it was huge exposure. They actually released a 10th anniversary edition recently but they credited a broadway composer, James R, Mundy, instead of me. I'm still trying to figure out if some of my royalties have gone astray.

Mundy’s ‘Strawberry Blood’ is out 17^th of April. He plays Whelan’s from 23^rd – 25^th of April.

[Image: Myspace]