Alyanya

interview by Robert Kearns

Alyanya is a young, upcoming artist who seems to have her own take on how to begin a music career. Rather that making her way around the usual venues of the country when she started out, she had her first gig proper supporting the great John Spillane and not too long later, she found herself supporting Luka Bloom at various gigs around Ireland, Europe and America. However, she seems much more enthusiastic about talking about, playing, creating and listening to great music than she is about discussing her globetrotting experiences as I discovered when we met up recently to chat about past adventures, future plans and everything in between. Here's how it happened.

Robert Kearns: Hi there Alyanya. How are you getting on?

Alyanya: I'm good.

- So first things first, you were just on a tour with Luka Bloom towards the end of last year and now you're about to head off on another. Is that right?

Alyanya: Well I'll be doing a few shows around the country with him but I won't be going on another tour with him for a while I think. I did a tour with him last year in America and I've supported him around Ireland twice now and Holland and Belgium as well. He's given me an amazing amount of support.

- So how did that connection come about originally?

Alyanya: He saw me play in the first gig I ever played when I was supporting John Spillane in the Cobblestone.

- Nice place to start.

Alyanya: Yeah, it was an amazing place and Luka came along and saw it and then he offered me the tour around Ireland and then after that, around Europe and then America.

- Are you planning on touring on your own any time soon?

Alyanya: At the moment, I've just recorded a demo album which I want to re-record more professionally and then, after that, I'll be looking at getting a bit of a band together and when I have that, maybe. It's just more about the album right now. I'll be playing a few gigs around the place, you know singer-songwriter stuff and I played the Ruby Sessions recently and things like that but I'm really just concentrating on recording at the moment.

- And when will you be aiming to have the album out? Start of next year maybe?

Alyanya: Well, the end of this year I'd love but we'll see what happens.

- When you think about releasing it, would you be more likely to follow the recent trend in the singer-songwriter scene of doing it independently or would you be looking to get signed?

Alyanya: Well until yesterday, I was thinking that I'd need to get a record deal because I thought it'd just be far too much work and I didn't know if I'd really be able to do it but the more I think about it, the more I realise that it really is feasible and it would be a great thing to do. It's the only way to go, I think, at the moment. If you can do it, then why not.

- There's so many Irish artists who write really great albums, release them and gig all over the country to great acclaim and then start the next album and just rest on their reputation here. Then there are other artists like Damien Rice who have brought their music to the masses and gone all over the world. How far do you want to take your music?

Alyanya: I want my music to reach its full potential, I want to reach my own full potential and I want to go as far as possible. I don't just want to stay in Ireland. In fact, as far as audiences go, I feel like I get a better response abroad than I do in Ireland, although it's getting better over here. Still, I don't just want to play here. I want to go global. Some artists connect better with the Irish people because their sound is very Irish and they might be singing about Irish topics and their whole vibe is Irish and people outside Ireland might not connect with that. I don't think my sound is particularly Irish. I think it's more universal.

- When you talk about putting together a band, what kind of elements would you like to have?

Alyanya: Well I've been thinking of maybe just getting a double bass and some brush drums so it'll just be laid back and jazzy. Not even too jazzy actually. I just don't want it to become like a band sound. I want it to stay just being about the songs, the voice and the guitar and just some nice little decoration behind it.

- Something I've noticed about you is that whenever I hear about you, I always seem to hear the name Suzanne Vega as well. Would she be a big influence on you?

Alyanya: No, not really. Actually, I only know a handful of her songs. I love some of her songs like that one, "Tom's Diner", which is just a great song but I wouldn't call her an influence.

- So who would you consider to be the bigger influences on your music?

Alyanya: Bob Marley would probably be my number one favourite songwriter. As well as him, there's Bill Withers and singers like Erika Badu, Nina Simone and Fiona Apple. I love raw sounds, sounds that come from the heart. Then there's Finlay Quaye. I was just listening to his album this morning and he's just amazing. That's the kind of music I love. I love Radiohead too but everyone says Radiohead, don't they? Anyway, they're bloody amazing. But.influences, I don't know. I listen to a lot of different music and I just try and write from me.

- So you'd say that your music comes much more from the heart than from the world around you then?

Alyanya: Yeah definitely! I try to get it all from my heart. It's not even something that I do, the music just seems to always come from there.

- Talking about the music, I was listening to some of your stuff the other day and it struck me that you'd never usually hear an Irish singer-songwriter singing a line like, "One day soon, it'll all be better." There's a very positive outlook in your work. Is that something you've always aimed for?

Alyanya: Definitely, because there's so many songwriters that you go and see them play and you just want to cry. It can be so depressing. It's good, but I think that a lot of people, when they're writing songs, they do it when they're going through a really tough time and it helps them out of it but I write mostly when I'm happy. When I'm upset or sad, I don't write. Sometimes I don't even want to see the guitar. So I'm usually writing in a positive mood. Sometimes I write to ease my mind because I can get caught up in stuff, like thinking that the world's in a mess or that my life's in a mess and I need to reassure myself that it's going to get better and remind myself that the world's not that bad.

- So let's just go way back to the start. How long have you been playing?

Alyanya: Well, I started playing piano when I was six. My dad taught me. Then, when I was twelve, my mum sent me for piano lessons. I'd always been playing by ear, my dad taught me all these old songs and I loved it and I used to sing with him, holding my ears trying to get the harmony right. Everybody in the family played an instrument so I had a very musical background. So, I went to piano lessons and then gave them up after about four months because it started becoming too much like homework. It was like, go home and do your lessons and it made me want to stop playing and my mum saw so I got out of that and soon went back to playing again. Then when I was about eighteen, I picked up the guitar and I've been playing it ever since.

- There's a big step between picking up the guitar and actually starting to write your own songs. Then there's an even bigger step between writing and actually getting out there and performing. When did you actually start writing and when was it that you felt like you needed to get out there and bring these songs to the people?

Alyanya: Well the writing of the songs just really happened straight away. Actually, the first song I ever really played on the guitar was one of my own. I had just started learning how to play it and I just wrote a song. Then somebody taught me "No Woman No Cry" and then I wrote another song called "Here I Am" which is a song that I still play today. So the songs just really came. I never really even played anyone else's stuff, I just write songs. As for the performing, I was in art college and I wanted to be a painter and I only ever played my songs to my friends and family. I never really had a notion of getting out there and singing but then my sister was getting married in Barcelona and I wrote a song for her, that I performed at the wedding and, at the ceremony, there was a guy in the congregation who eventually became my manager and he brought me down to record my first demo and that ended up in the hands of Luka Bloom who came down to see me play the John Spillane show and from there, it all just happened. So it was really just something that happened to me, not something I decided to do.

- What do you think of the current Irish singer-songwriter scene?

Alyanya: I think it's great. The level is so high that it's pushing people to write better and better songs and to be better and there's a lot of healthy competition. I think it's very male dominated though so I'm kinda glad that I'm a girl in that sense because there's not very many girls doing it. There's a few but compared to the amount of guys, it's totally out of balance . I think it's all great though. There's lots of fantastic people out there. You can go and see amazing live music every night of the week and most of it is homegrown which is fantastic.

- So would you prefer playing a really great gig or writing a song that you really love?

Alyanya: I love every single aspect of it but the best thing for me is writing a new song. When you've just finished writing a good song, that's my favourite feeling in the world. It's just like pure satisfaction. When you do a gig, even if it's a really good gig, you sometimes feel like you messed up here and there and you're not sure how good it was but when you write a good song, it's just a great feeling.

- Alyanya, thanks for talking to Dublinsingersongwriter.com.

Alyanya: Thanks