Metal Wyrd

If ever there was a guy who needed to write a book about his life, it’s Keith Fay.

Keith, founder and head honcho for Irish folk-metal legends Cruachan, is a born raconteur. The best kind: passionate and witty. Totally engaging. Maybe it’s the Irish blood coursing through his veins. Or perhaps its because in his relatively short life, he’s already traveled to places most of us will only dream of. Whatever it is, Keith Fay brims over with anecdotes, most of which left me laughing and wishing I could sit across from him in a pub somewhere, tossing back an inky Guinness, just listening.

Frankly, I think the same creative energy that birthed Cruachan — thereby helping to start an entire genre of music called folk metal now known and loved throughout the world — fuels Keith’s unique gift for storytelling.

But he needs to write a book. Because his stories are priceless.

For the record, Cruachan was formed in Dublin, Ireland, in 1992. Like most bands these days, they’ve had a few personnel changes over the years. Today, Cruachan is a sextet consisting of Karen Gilligan (vocals, percussion), Keith Fay (electric & acoustic guitar, keyboard, vocals, bodhran, mandolin, percussion), John Clohessy (bass), Colin Purcell (Drums, Percussion), John Ryan Will (Tin Whistle, Violin, Banjo, bouzouki, keyboard)…and – according to Keith just two days ago – the return of Keith’s brother John O’Fathaigh!

Cruachan has released five albums since 1995, the most recent of which is the superb The Morrigan’s Call (2006). According to Keith, they are hard at work on another album to be released in the very near future.

My interview with Keith took place in May, 2008.

Our interview was conducted in three parts over a span of about 90 minutes. The first two “parts” took place over a dodgy Skype connection that kept cutting out on us. Finally, we gave up and just used a landline – and that’s when the interview really got rolling. I edited the interview into one cohesive unit, removing all the interruptions due to the poor Skype connections.

When I finished reading this transcription, I realized that it is the most comprehensive interview with Keith Fay available anywhere. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

KF: Hello?

BM: Hey, is this Keith?

KF: Yeah, can you hear me?

BM: Yes, I can hear you fine.

KF: That’s cool. Hang on a sec as I move into a different room. I was in a bit of a panic there.

BM: Yeah, I was trying to get a hold of you, and it said on MySpace your page is down for maintenance.

KF: Yeah, I was like, oh fuck, all the details to get in touch with you are there. So in a panic, I was just writing in Keith Fay, all my details, stuff like this in case you were going to do a search for me.

BM: [laughs]

KF: But it worked.

BM: Yeah. That’s great.

KF: The wonders of modern technology, you know.

BM: [laughs] Yeah. It’s a wonder that we’re still alive because of it all.

KF: That’s true. [laughs]

BM: Well, I appreciate your time tonight. How you doing over there?

KF: No problem.

BM: How’s the weather?

KF: It’s absolutely beautiful today. It’s 24 degrees Celsius, maybe 70 Fahrenheit.

BM: Yeah, wow.

KF: Really, really nice.

BM: Yeah, we’re getting some of that too. It’s a beautiful day today. Very good. Well, I appreciate your time. How did the gig go with Waylander and Runecaster?

KF: [coughs] I have a bit of a cough, you’ll have to excuse me. Both gigs, we played Belgium last week and Dublin here on Saturday. Both of them were absolutely fantastic. We always enjoy playing Ireland, because it’s just kind of a weird, you know, unexpectedly, there’s not much of a folk metal scene, but their eyes are well and truly opened. Saturday we packed the place out, it was brilliant.

BM: Oh, that’s great. [laughs] That’s great. You say there’s not really a folk-metal scene there. What’s the music scene like, then?

KF: By the way, is this, the interview is started now, Bill, has it?

BM: Oh yeah, yeah. We’re well rolling. [laughs]

KF: Cool. Yeah, I mean, the folk-metal scene here has always been really small, which is strange. There’s a lot of, most people here are in bands, and they’re all, already know people in bands, so they’re always looking at you subjectively, you know, looking down their nose at you.

BM: [laughs]

KF: So folk metal just never took off. Because we grow up with folk music here, I suppose a lot of people, you know, it reminds them of their childhood and their mothers and fathers might be listening to folk music, but they’re not really interested. I don’t really know, but it’s, I think it’s bizarre. I love folk music, and my family loves it. It’s what I grew up with, so I think it’s the most natural thing in the world to mix it in with the other music I love, heavy metal.

BM: Yeah. [laughs] Well, reading the forum, the Cruachan forum, it looks like your fans are just extremely excited to see you, and they all clamor to see you outside of Ireland. Do you have plans to get anywhere else in Europe or the States?

KF: We’d play anywhere, anytime, it’s just a nightmare. The band is an absolute pain in the ass sometimes.

BM: [laughs]

KF: You know, I’ve two children, and I see them at weekends. If we play a show, we try to make it weekends, so that’s complicated for me. That’s just one member. Then the rest of the band [members] have children, mortgages, full-time jobs, you know. If you look at the lives of Eluveitie, who’ve just like, sprung onto the scene, they have no commitments that I am aware of. No commitments. So they can go where they want for as long as they want, and I’m so envious of that situation. It’s something I’ve always wanted, but because of our own circumstances, we are very limited in the amount of time we can get out there. But when we can, we go to Russia nearly every year. We would go anywhere if they’re willing to bring us.

BM: Yeah. You know, Eluveitie, I was talking to Rafi probably the first of May. A few weeks ago they played a gig in the States and we – my wife and I – hung out with them. Actually, Rafi is worried about extended tours too, because he has a full-time job, and he’s worried if he can take any more time off to do any more tours. [Rafi and his brother Seven have since quit Eluveitie to concentrate on making music with folk band Red Shamrock.]

KF: Really, yeah.

BM: Yeah.

KF: I’m not alone then. [laughs]

BM: No, no. [laughs] Well, what is your full-time gig? Is it music, or do you work in a so-called day job?

KF: Yeah, my day job I’m an IT Engineer, so I work with DHL here in Ireland, and you know, it’s a very small IT team looking after 30 different sites around the country. So it’s really hectic.

BM: Wow.

KF: I’m nearly 10 years with the company.

BM: What have you guys been doing since The Morrigan’s Call? What’s been happening with Cruachan these days? Any chance for a new album in the near future?

KF: Very little as far as new material, because I’ve had so much stuff going on in my life, the band really came down to touring, that’s all I could put my time into. I’ve had a lot of personal things, which I’ve told you about before.

BM: Sure.

KF: They’re more or less sorted now, so we can get our heads down and start looking at getting the new album and getting the best album ever. I feel really driven to make this the best we’ve ever done. I’ve almost two years of bits and pieces sitting in my brain, waiting to come out on paper, waiting to come out on the guitar, so I’ve a great feeling that when I do sit down and start writing, it’s going to be something really, really special. But we haven’t been quiet, we’ve still been touring. We always get over to Europe whenever we can, and it’s mainly weekends, festivals, this type of thing. But we keep the interest there. We’re always getting fan mail, we always reply to our fans, we do whatever we can. But yeah, it’s been a quiet enough year and a half, but that’s apparently going to change now in the next month or so.

BM: Oh, that’s great. You seem to average a new album about every couple of years, 2000, 2002, 2004, 2006. So I guess 2008 or 2009 would be right on par for the course. [laughs]

KF: Yeah, yeah. I mean, we’re not the most prolific of bands when it comes to releases, and when they do come out, we’re never happy, we always have trouble with production and record label trouble. It’s a real, real challenge to keep this band going and keep the music coming out.

BM: Yeah, I was going to ask you that. One of the things I really like to as musicians when I do all these interviews, like for ProgPower USA, is I name one of their albums and ask what they remember most about making it. Most vivid memory. What it was like in the studio. Favorite songs. Most difficult to record. Stuff like that. So, if I ask you about your first album [Tuatha Na Gael], what do you remember most about recording that?

KF: Geez, it was a long time ago, but I do remember. I play it a lot. It was recorded at night, so we were really tired. I remember on the, I think it was four nights. On the third night, just before we started the mixing, I got a really bad migraine headache, I had to be driven home.

BM: Oh no.

KF: Yeah, I spent some time in bed. What else? I remember the producer saying to me, “I put this effect on the guitar, do you think it’s ok?” So I listened on the headphones, couldn’t hear a thing. And all these years later I can hear this strange effect on the electric guitars, and I wish I had fucking said no to that producer.

BM: [laughs]

KF: But it was the first time in there. And it’s become a major cult album, so even though I hear all the imperfections, I’ve always said I want to re-record all the songs, I can’t really fault it at this stage. It’s nearly, the songs are just getting close to, is it 20 years? No, it couldn’t be 20 years.

BM: ’95.

KF: The songs were written ’93, ’94, so you could say 14, 15 years ago. Wow.

BM: [laughs] Well, so it’s true. In the liner notes, where it says, “Recorded from the 8th to the 12th of February in the dead of night.” That’s actually true?

KF: Yeah, exactly.

BM: Wow.

KF: See, it was cheaper. Because we got such a small amount of money from [label] Nazguls Eyrie, we could record it for three days or four nights. And we needed as much time as we can, so we said, “Fuck it, we’ll go and do it for four nights.”

BM: [laughs] God, that’s a hard way to make an album.

KF: Aah.

BM: But to record it in four days, how much prep did it take before those four days you were in the studio?

KF: Of course we’d done a couple of rehearsals, we knew the songs inside out, but the album was recorded live like fucking Johnny Cash in the old days. The band set up, they mic us up, and away we go.

BM: [laughs]

KF: So we recorded live, and then we put the folk instruments on top and layered what we can. That’s why one of the main reason it’s so raw, you can hear click tracks.

BM: [laughs]

KF: Before “Brian Boru” you can hear us kind of talking, if you put the volume all the way up, you can hear us saying something, like we hit a bum note on the keyboard. You can’t hear it on normal volume. But it’s all part of the fun. [laughs]

BM: [laughs] Yeah, it’s true. Well, your next album, then, came out quite a few years later, actually [2000]. The Middle Kingdom.

KF: Yeah.

BM: What was going on between that time, and what do you remember most about recording The Middle Kingdom?

KF: Well, after Tuatha Na Gael, I can’t remember why, we broke up, because a load of things were happening. My brother left the band for the first of many, many times.

BM: [laughs]

KF: And what else, we started going down to some weird…hmmm, eventually it was just myself and John Clohessy [bass guitarist], were the only original members left, so we just called it a day. The music was gone to crap, so we broke up for about a full year. It’s like, I don’t know, when you have music inside, it’s very hard to just suddenly stop playing music, so within six months of the breakup, I knew I had to get the band back together. And within a year, we were back together with the new lineup. And wrote the songs. Tuatha Na Gael kicked off around the world, you know, it started these ripples that became folk metal as we know it. So a lot of labels were hot to sign us right away without hearing a single note from the new stuff. Maybe they regretted it when they heard how different some of it was. [laughs]

BM: [laughs]

KF: But we started writing songs, we went into the studio, and we were very, very, you know, from the record deal to finishing songs, it was only a couple of weeks. So we were very unprepared. And Karen [Gilligan] was only meant to sing one or two songs, and I was going to sing a lot of melodic vocals. When I went to record them, I realized I was absolutely terrible at singing melodically, so in a panic I said, like, “Karen, please sing a lot more songs. But hey, will you join the band?” She said, “Oh yeah, I’ll join. No problem.”

BM: [laughs]

KF: And that’s it. I mean, The Middle Kingdom, when we recorded it, I remember the feeling we had was, “Wow, nothing like this has ever been done. We’re going to break into so many new territories. We’re going to be huge success.” But that wasn’t the case. The metal scene had moved on with a lot of new, avant garde bands mixing everything from bleeding brass sections to weird punk noises. But it came out, doing ok, and it got our foot well and truly back in the door.

BM: Yeah. [laughs] Yeah. What is your favorite track off of The Middle Kingdom?

KF: Uh, that’s a tough one. I think it’s actually “The Fianna” that’s the instrumental one.

BM: Yeah, oh yeah. Great.

KF: Really happy with that one. A few years ago, we went to see, we were playing in Russia, and some guy dropped us off this DVD, we had no idea what it was. He told us it was his band, we said “We’ll play it, thanks, nice one.” We go home and we watched it. There’s a little note saying, “This is the Russian, official Moscow Irish dance troupe dancing for President Putin.”

BM: [laughs]

KF: And it looked like Riverdance, you know, they’re dancing away, la ta da ta da. And it was our song. They were dancing to a Cruachan song.

BM: Really, god, that’s great. [laughs]

KF: Putin, the leader. You know, I listened to the mellow stuff’s playing, you know, there’s fucking electric guitars set to come in, what are they going to do? And they’re there dancing away to the heavy little riffs and stuff. It’s brilliant.

BM: [laughs]

KF: Absolutely brilliant.

BM: [laughs] Well, the next album, Folk-Lore [2002]. It seems the majority of fans on the Cruachan forum consider it their favorite album. What do you think about Folk-Lore? What was going on at the time? What do you remember about being in the studio?

KF: That was actually the same studio, Tuatha Na Gael, The Middle Kingdom, and Folk-Lore were all at the same studio.

BM: Really? Sun Studios?

KF: Yeah, and I don’t know if you’ve seen the movie from Ireland called Once?

BM: Oh, love that movie, yeah.

KF: Yes, they won an Oscar for that.

BM: Yeah, we actually had tickets to go see them. They [Glen Hansard and Markéta Irglová] were touring here in the States, they played in our state.

KF: Really?

BM: Yeah.

KF: Well, that’s Sun Studios that they’re in in the movie.

BM: Oh really? That’s cool.

KF: Yeah, I only watched Once about a month ago. I was a bit unhappy with the end, and I wanted a nice, happy, sloppy romantic ending which didn’t really come.

BM: Oh yeah.

KF: But I watched the movie and, “Oh, holy shit, there’s Sun.” I was telling the people I was watching, “Oh, I used to be in there, and come out and there’s the control room.” It’s exactly as it was from Tuatha Na Gael right up to today.

BM: Oh, that’s cool. I didn’t know that.

KF: But yeah, all those first three albums were recorded at Sun. I think The Morrigan’s Call is our best album to date, but before Morgan’s I would have said Folk-Lore myself. It was a bit more polished, and some of the songs are really good. It still has the imperfections that Cruachan seems to always have. I always listen back to the stuff and regret certain song structures. You know, we don’t spend enough time on our songs, and maybe we’ll sort that out now. But I still think there’s some crackin’ tunes on it. And obviously one of the main memories of having Shane MacGowan [ex-Pogues singer] in the studio with us. It was just bizarre, a totally abstract, weird time.

BM: [laughs] Well, what does the liner note mean when you thank Shane MacGowan “for all the help, advice, for working pro gratis and for enduring the usual media lies while working with us.” What is that all about?

KF: Oh, I can’t remember, to be honest, I can’t really remember. But the stuff’s in the paper, about, it was something that we, he was taking the time to give us, to get his career back on track, and all this absolute rubbish. You know, he’s a really lovely bloke. Ok, he’s got a problem with alcohol.

BM: Yeah?

KF: You know, what can you do? Apart from that, he’s an absolutely nice guy, have absolutely no problem with him at all. It was shocking to see the way he drinks pints of vodka, you know, it’s not normal to see a human being put that into themselves, but really, really nice bloke.

BM: [laughs]

KF: He’s so…he just lives for music. There was one time, it was half way through the album. He’d do this, that, and the other thing. He wasn’t there pressing buttons and twiddling knobs, so to speak. But this one day, he didn’t show up. We said, “For fuck’s sake, what are we going to do?” So we went up to the hotel he was staying in, and he’d been up all night writing songs and lyrics, pages all over the hotel room. It was almost like something in a movie, it was poetic to see this.

BM: [laughs]

KF: Yeah, I mean, there’s obviously some great memories. [laughs]

BM: [laughs] Well, how about the next one, Pagan came out in 2004. It looks like you’re at a different studio, Sonic Studios.

KF: Yes.

BM: What was that like?

KF: [With] Pagan, we were so happy with the songs, we knew, like we sorted out the problems we’d had with sloppy song structures, we were really fucking happy. We knew this was going to be a fantastic album. But again, the Cruachan curse, there’s always shit going wrong. If it’s not the studio not getting paid, it’s albums with shit production. So we were not happy with the sound engineer. I still listen to it now, the sound is absolute crap. I mean, there’s things like he put the drums through four different channels.

BM: [laughs]

KF: You know, when you’re recording an album, you have each different part of the drum kit on it’s own channel, so you can get it exactly right. This had one mic overhead, and one mic in front. It was absolute crap.

BM: [laughs] During the time, did you say, “Uh, Al [Cowen, producer], ‘scuse me. Shouldn’t you be micing this differently?”

KF: Did, I mean, we’re very naïve ourselves when it comes to studio, all that technical equipment. We know fuck all about it, so we were saying to the sound engineer, “What’s the story, you’ve only got four microphones here?” He said, “Oh, trust me.” “Ok.”

BM: [laughs]

KF: What else can we do? At the end, it turned out fucking diabolical.

BM: [laughs] So of that nightmare that was the recording in the studio, what do you remember most about the songs in it? Do you have a favorite one? Which one was the most difficult to lay down?

KF: Oh, they all had major difficulties, because we weren’t used to working in a crap studio.

BM: [laughs]

KF: The song “Erinsong” should have been one of our epic masterpieces, and that came out crap, really terrible. We had a Uillian piper come in, and that was good for once. The pipes sound good on a lot of songs, but even still, it was all nightmare. We had that guy [Chris Kavanagh] from The Luke Kelly Tribute Band singing on there, “Some Say the Devil Is Dead.” I think that came out brilliant as well. Again, we felt, “We can do a hell of a lot better than this.”

BM: Yeah, that’s actually got some great songs on it. I mean, in spite of the problems you had, “Some Say the Devil Is Dead” is a crackin’ tune.

KF: Yeah, I am happy with that, definitely.

BM: Well, that brings up The Morrigan’s Call, 2006. Different, completely different producer this time.

KF: Yeah.

BM: How did you end up with this Gale of God guy?

KF: When we’d done one of our European tours, we had him as sound engineer, and we just got on really well with him. And we didn’t even know he was producing albums in the off times, because he was so good. He got an amazing sound for us live. His name was actually J-O, pronounced yo. I said, “Yo, Yo, what’s the story? You produce albums?” He said, “Yeah, I do.” And he sent over a couple of trash metal bands he’d done, and they sounded brilliant. So it was like, “Right, we’re going to pay the money. We’re getting him over.” We were signed with Black Lotus at the time, and were getting a lot of money to record, so we said, “We’re not going to make any mistakes on this.” Went back to Sun Studios as well, and yeah, I mean, it did start off well. That’s where Jo came from. [We] were really, really happy with the way he worked.

BM: Well, what was the most difficult track with that? What was the easiest to lay down, and which one gave you the most trouble?

KF: The most trouble was “Diarmuid and Grainne,” definitely.

BM: Really?

KF: Really, really technical. There’s a lot of stuff going on in it, and trying to get, you know, a lot of times I write the vocals without realizing someone else has to sing these. And I go to Karen, you know, she never sang the song before going into the studio, and I’m like, “Ok, this is the way you sing it. [sings]” She’s like, “Fucking hell, where am I supposed to get a breath?”

BM: [laughs]

KF: It just doesn’t work. So yeah, we had a lot of trouble, but we got it to work. I think “Diarmuid and Grainne” is my favorite track on there.

BM: I love that songs. The Morrigan’s Call is a really good album. And it reminds me of something I want to ask you about folk metal lyrics in general. [sirens in the background]

KF: Yeah. Wow, there was a big cop-car chase going on there, is there?

BM: Yeah. [laughs] I don’t know what’s going on. You can hear that, can ya? [laughs] Yeah, I don’t know what’s going on here.

KF: [laughs]

BM: Tell me, is there such a thing as a happy folk-metal song?

KF: [laughs] That’s what I was actually saying before the call dropped. The regret that I have is putting “Shelob” on right at the beginning.

BM: Yeah.

KF: I think we should have put that right at the end, because it caused so much controversy. People going, “What the fuck are these guys doing?”

BM: [laughs]

KF: Yeah, I mean, I don’t know. Folk music is happy. And yeah. [laughs] I don’t know, “Shelob” certainly is a happy folk metal song.

BM: Well, yeah, but the lyrics, when you look at the overall theme of even just The Morrigan’s Call, there’s a lot of death and dying, great hunger, an old woman in the woods. [laughs] It’s a strange -

KF: Well, folk music has loads of happy tunes. You probably know that. We don’t chose to really sing about too many happy things. That’s the theme we’ve always done, is either Celtic history, Celtic mythology, or just you know, recent Irish history, and it’s not the most happiest of times over the last couple years, last couple hundred years. So what can I say? [laughs]

BM: Yeah. [laughs] Well, your, the lyrics and the notes in the CDs really indicate that you must be a student of history and mythology and you must put an awful lot of thought into each song. Is that a correct assumption?

KF: I’m not a student. My brother John [O’ Fathaigh], who helped in the early days with Tuatha Na Gael, he also wrote liner notes, actually I don’t think they were ever printed, now that I think about it. But no, we’ve never been students, it’s just very interesting. It’s like a hobby, it’s nice to read about this stuff. I mean, it’s all out there in books. Someone could just walk off the street, buy a book, and write a song, and copy right out of the book. [laughs]

BM: [laughs]

KF: If you’re passionate about it, yeah, you will. I’m very proud of my lyrics.

BM: They’re great.

KF: A lot of the stuff I put into poetry to tell the entire story, and it’s stuff that’s never been put into poetic form or lyrical form. Well, Michael Collins [Irish revolutionary leader], pretty much his life story. And there’s not many poems out there telling his life story in what, three verses or something?

BM: [laughs]

KF: But no, I’m not educated in regard to Irish history in any way. I just read the books about it and find it very interesting.

BM: Well, you know what appears educated – and you can say that it’s not – but your notes describing each song are often as long as the songs themselves, and very detailed.

KF: Yeah.

BM: Does it take you a while to write those liner notes?

KF: No, I mean probably half the liner notes you see there would probably come from some book or something I remembered from reading.

BM: Yeah. I understand.
BM: Yeah, yeah.

KF: It’s telling it the way it is, whether it’s from a book or from my head, that’s the way it happened. But I find a lot of the more complicated lyrics, you know, I might breeze over a very important point, but for the sake of making a nice lyric, or a nice tune, I can’t go into great detail. Or I can’t add like 10 words at the end of one line, whereas all the other lines have five, for example. So I’ve always said, right, I need to give notes to explain what this guy has done here, and why this is happening, and this, that, and the other. And I find out a lot of Irish ballads, yeah, the ballad starts abruptly. They always do. That’s one of the things that makes a ballad a ballad. It’s the law, or something like that, of ballads, but they start abruptly and just go straight into the story.

BM: Yeah.

KF: And a lot of people look at a lot of Irish ballads, [and] wouldn’t really know the whole history. And if you want to find out, the information’s there. I just think it’s nice to have it in the booklet, ready to go, to pique your interest. If they’re not interested, they don’t have to look at it. But it’s there.

BM: Yeah. [laughs] Is the theme, let’s say, you mentioned Irish history. Like some of the songs on The Morrigan’s Call such as “The Great Hunger,” “Coffin Ships,” or themes like the great potato famine. Is that type of history, and I don’t know how to phrase this question, is that so much a part of Irish culture that it’s thought about often? Or do you write about it because it needs to be thought about more?

KF: No, I mean, it’s definitely ingrained in everyone’s mind. You know, as a Republic country, we’re barely 50 years old. Before that, we were a province of England, so to speak, you know, so it’s really ingrained in all the people here, what we’ve gone through.

BM: Yeah.

KF: The main thing, we suffered a famine, and that’s a fact, and the reasons behind it are in all the history books. And it’s because the British, the government, we were a province of England up until about 50 years ago. I mean, in 1922, we became a free state, but it wasn’t until the late ‘40s, ’49 we became a Republic. And you know, there was a time where we were, the country didn’t, in the late ‘80s and ‘90s, the country didn’t have much recognition of what had happened, but in the last five years, 1916 has become an official recognized time by the government. Before that we were like, “Oh, do we acknowledge that we fought the Brits while they were fighting against the Germans in 1916? Is this something to be ashamed of?” And then we realized no, no, no, we were an occupied country, occupied by a foreign force. We fought them, and eventually through political means as well, we got our freedom back. And it is something to celebrate. So yeah, you’ll see all over Ireland. There are monuments everywhere.

BM: One of these days I’m going to have to visit there, because I think I have family that probably goes back, my last name is Murphy, so I know there’s gotta be someone there somewhere. But the picture people have of Ireland are a feisty or a passionate kind of people.

KF: Yeah, I definitely agree with that.

BM: Is it true, where does that come from? Why the passion? Why the fiery spirit?

KF: The fighting Irish, as they say.

BM: Yeah, yeah. Why is that?

KF: I don’t know. It could be, again, we were rebelling against the crown when everybody else was just being subdued. It could have come from there.

BM: Yeah.

KF: It could just be an American thing as well, the fighting Irish, you know.

BM: Oh yeah, yeah.

KF: I don’t know, I really don’t know.

BM: [laughs]

KF: I mean, we’re nice people.

BM: [laughs]

KF: [laughs]

BM: Yeah, I don’t doubt that.

KF: I don’t know if you’ve seen, if you watch Family Guy at all, Bill, do you?

BM: Yeah, yeah.

KF: Oh, there’s one classic episode where they went to Ireland 2000 years ago, and it was the most futuristic city with spaceships flying around. And like, Shawn O’Shaunessy comes in like, “Cheers, lads. I’ve just invented alcohol.” And the whole society crumbles and we’re gone.

BM: [laughs] Yeah, yeah, the pictures we get of Ireland are from Hollywood movies like “The Devil’s Own.” Remember that?

KF: Yeah, we are heavy drinkers. And that’s probably where it comes from as well. What can I say? Jeez, we were on tour last week in Belgium, I mean, talk about living up to stereotypes ourselves and Waylander. We drank all the support band’s beer, we drank our beer, and by the time the show’s coming to end, we’d started to affect the bar itself. You know, for the people that were there, we were drinking the bar dry.

BM: [laughs]

KF: At last we said to ourselves, “Fucking hell, this stereotype really is true.” That’s only when we’re on the road. When we’re at home, we’re normal.

BM: [laughs] Normal. Well, you mentioned something earlier, that’s quite a fact, that you can read, whether or not you believe Wikipedia or not, but you and Skyclad are credited as being the fathers of folk metal. Is that a true statement, and if so, does that give you any sort of weight on your shoulders?

KF: It’s hard to believe. And I was a fan of Skyclad before Cruachan really became a band. But the reality is Skyclad was doing…Yeah, I’m very proud of it, and it is probably true. Maybe there were other bands out there, but we were, I haven’t heard of them. You know, Waylander were probably a year after us, so in fairness, they could be credited as well. But it was Skyclad that influenced me. I thought, “Wow, I could try folk metal.”

BM: Your place in music history seems like quite an honor, a responsibility, and something to be proud of.

KF: Yeah, it is. I mean, obviously when I was getting Cruachan together, I thought, “I’m just doing this for myself. It’s music I like to do.” I had no idea a year later, you know, I’m responsible for creating a whole genre of music.

BM: [laughs]

KF: Yeah, except for Skyclad, there really wasn’t any other bands doing it.

BM: The question I have is kind of one that has to do with all the folk metal bands. I’ve never seen a genre get so big so fast.

KF: Yeah.

BM: Does it bother you to see bands like Ensiferum or Turisas or Korpiklaani, or all these other bands spring up out of nowhere and get really huge, when Cruachan is kind of sitting back thinking, “Dudes, we created this kind of genre. How come we’re not up there with you guys?”

KF: Yeah, I mean it is frustrating but I know the answers why, we’re not out there touring week in, week out. You look at Turisas, for example, they’re always on the road.

BM: Yeah.

KF: And that’s what sells CDs, that’s what sells merchandise, when you’re out on tour. We can’t do that. We just simply can’t do that. And it’s absolutely frustrating. I mean, I would love to put all my time and effort into Cruachan and making every album as perfect as can be, and we do, we absolutely do. We’ve just got so many commitments, so many children, we’ve nearly a football team worth of children.

BM: [laughs] Yeah.

KF: Children in the band. These are the reasons we can’t get up to that level, we can’t, you know, and that’s the reasons why we’re not.

BM: Is, the problems you have with the record labels are legendary now, too. Black Lotus, Century Media. Is part of success not just the talent, there has to be some element of luck involved.

KF: Yeah, I definitely agree with that as well. I mean, within a couple weeks of signing with AFM we were offered a huge 2 month tour with Moonsorrow. But we had to refuse it. That’s too short notice, their jobs won’t allow it, blah, blah, blah. Since then we haven’t been offered anything from AFM. I can see their point.

[At that point, our Skype connection died again…this time for good. I called Keith 30 minutes later on a landline…and the interview really took off.]

KF: Bill.

BM: Hey, how are you?

KF: Not too bad. [laughs]

BM: Hey, you’re not all modulated and phased and dropping off.

KF: Fantastic.

BM: [laughs]

KF: That’s brilliant. The wonders of old, plain old telephone, analog long distance. [laughs]

BM: [laughs]

KF: It must be, I’ve got a fucking 2MB line in my laptop. It had to be coming from my side.

BM: Oh, it’s possible. We got it fixed. I appreciate your time, and thanks for enduring the hassles.

KF: No problem.

BM: Well you know what? I think we left off with a couple of thoughts. You and Skyclad being one of them. But it was also kind of the luck of the draw, and all these other bands rising out of the ashes and almost overshadowing Cruachan. And what are your thoughts about that?

KF: Yeah, I do find it frustrating, definitely. And I’ve always wanted to be, obviously sell a lot of CDs, get a lot of recognition playing the type of concerts that I see them playing. And yeah, absolutely it’s frustrating to see, but I can see why that is the case as well. And it is our fault, it’s completely our fault because of the circumstances and the situations that Cruachan have, mainly the families, the jobs, the mortgages, all this kind of stuff. Most of those bands that are out there touring can go out and do three months at a stretch. And every band that’s doing that type of touring are going to attract many, many fans. We’ve only done one gig here in Dublin on Saturday night. We got twice as many people as we expected, and I’d say about 20% of the people there never heard of us, and left amazed, talking about us, buying merchandise. And that’s just one gig, how many years later. If we were doing what these other bands are doing, every day like for months, we would be up there with them, definitely. But circumstances don’t allow it, so there’s very little we can do.

BM: What does that do for your Cruachan game plan, then? Does it make you want to try harder and do more? Or does it frustrate you too much to think you could never reach that level?

KF: We’ve always tried hard, and we’ve always wanted to better ourselves as well. I mean, I’ve got over 15, 18 years now, nearly, doing this, so we’re probably at our peak. We’ll probably never get any more, but having said that, we’re getting more offers to play festivals than we ever have before. We’re getting more offers to do tours than we ever have. So it’d be fair to say that we could become that little bit bigger. We’re getting some really good recognition in the likes of UK MetalHammer, these types of things are recognizing what we’ve done, and the achievements that we’ve done. So we’ll always try harder, we’ll always try to outdo ourselves. As I said about the new album, when we start work on it, we’re going to make sure it’s groundbreaking. We have to, the bar’s been set so high by these other bands, you know.

BM: [laughs]

KF: It’s not just stick a tin whistle on top of some metal anymore, no one accepts shoddy music these days, because these bands are so good. So it’s good as well, it’s competition, at the end of the day as well.

BM: Well, what do you think you’d have to do then? What would you consider groundbreaking for a Cruachan album? What would it have to sound like or include? Would it be lyrically or musically, strange instruments brought in, or what? [laughs]

KF: Yeah, it’s a good question. I mean, we’ve always had our own unique sound, no matter what these other folk metal bands do. Some of them do Irish traditional music, but you know, they’re not Irish. So there’s always that kind of unbelievableness about them, for want of a better word.

BM: Yeah.

KF: We’re from Ireland, you know.

BM: [laughs]

KF: It’s like listening to doom metal, listening to bands from northern England playing doom metal, and rain, and it’s believable. It’s the same comparison. We’re from Ireland, we’re steeped in Celtic heritage and culture. It is real. I mean, there’s a Brazilian band, Tuatha De Dannan. It’s a great band, I mean, I know them really well. But they’re Brazilian, and they’re singing about all these Irish myths and legends.

BM: [laughs]

KF: It’s brilliant, it’s a great homage, and it just goes to show you how deep the Irish culture goes around the world. But at the end of the day, one thing goes for us, I’m not trying to take away from any of these bands, I’m trying to say one thing going for Cruachan is we’re genuinely Irish, we’re steeped in the culture, we’re steeped in the heritage. Where we were doing the interview in my mothers house in Tallaght, I was at the foothills of the Dublin mountains looking up to where rebels were taken up and shot. And the land is called Tallaght, which is an English abbreviation of the word Taimleacht, which means plague graves. And the longer name is Taimleacht Muintir Partholon, which means plague graves of the people of Ireland, or of the people of Tartalan. You know, they came to Ireland long before the Celts came to Ireland, they died of a plague. And that was where my ass was sitting at the time of that interview. That’s where I was, Tallaght. You know, certainly with all that on board and the determination, yeah, I want to do something groundbreaking. What it is, I don’t know. Fucking techno dance beats or something?

BM: [laughs]

KF: No, that’s a joke. [laughs] Never in a million years. No, it will be the music. It will be just the music, but over the years we’ve gotten the more harder, kind of black type of vibe back in. We’re going to have a bit more of that in the next album. And incorporate Karen into that as well, like have her sing melodically over some more extreme parts. I have some brilliant ideas, but we’ll see what happens. I haven’t said, I have no idea if AFM are going to want to keep us on the record label, because of our inability to tour.

BM: Yeah.

KF: They want bands constantly on the road. The one tour we refused with Moonsorrow, and we haven’t got one single offer of a tour since then. So, not necessarily bad, but I would not be surprised if we approached them and said, “We’re ready for our second album.” And they said, “No, not interested.” And we’re searching for another label again. Possibility. That might not happen. Who knows.

BM: What does it take, cost-wise? I know Heathen Crusade here in the States was interested in you guys?

KF: Yeah.

BM: What does it take to bring you over here? Would it be paying for, obviously, plane fare, visas, the whole works?

KF: Yeah, I mean when we play, playing Russia is much more expensive than playing the States, and we play there every year. It’s very economically viable for the promoters that bring us there, they make a nice bit of money out of us, and all we’d expect when we do any tour or festival, depends on the festival as well, we expect our flights to be paid. We don’t expect to have to spend any of our own money to go and do tours. A lot of smaller bands pay for the privilege of touring, and that’s fair enough. We’ve gotten to a stage where it’s great to be in Cruachan and do what we’re doing, but we don’t earn enough in our day jobs to have to pay and go and play a gig. Luckily, that’s not the case. Promoters are more than happy to bring us over and pay a nice fee. Every show we do, we get a very nice fee on top of all the expenses. So it’s great. There’s always that little bit of extra income coming in. Now, I’d never say we’re doing it for the money in a million years, but it’s very nice at the end of a very successful show to have a bit of cash in the back pocket and spend it on a few drinks. So it would be the same going to the States. We would expect flights, visas, accommodation, and you know, we’re not rock stars, we’re not prima donnas, we’re very reasonable, ‘scuse me. [coughs] Still have a bloody cough the last week. The festival in Belgium, we were sleeping on blow-up mattresses in a friend of the organizer’s house. So you know, you adapt and you survive.

BM: You’d mentioned something earlier, that I was going to ask you anyway, and you kind of said it. Celtic metal bands in the States or anywhere else in the world…is that real Celtic metal, or is that some kind of pseudo-Celtic metal? Can it only be Celtic metal if it comes from your region?

KF: And the funny thing is, according to Wikipedia, you’re asking the most authoritative person in the world on the subject, because I created Celtic metal.

BM: [laughs]

KF: But I don’t know, genres, it’s all heavy metal at the end of the day, isn’t it? There’s too many genres. I mean, we’re pagan metal, Celtic metal, folk metal, I don’t know. I mean, look at your second name, Bill Murphy. You know, there’s obviously Irish roots back there. You don’t get that being born in a tribe in South America.

BM: [laughs]

KF: But a lot of people, a lot of fans when we were in Belgium, I don’t know what it is about Ireland, just a lot of people seem to have some sort of affiliation with the place. I think it’s amazing. I tour all over the world, and no matter where I end up, I find an Irish pub to go in and have a drink.

BM: Well, there’s something about, it’s the whole culture. It’s the bagpipes, it’s the tin whistles, it the drinking songs. Everybody wants to be Irish for some reason. [laughs]

KF: [laughs] It’s mad. But no, I mean, Celtic metal, you could describe it musically as Irish, you know, traditional Irish folk tunes mixed with heavy metal. That’s Celtic metal. And if that’s what you’re playing, you can call it folk metal, Celtic metal, pagan metal. It’s too hard to say do you have to be from Ireland to play Celtic metal.

BM: Yeah.

KF: And that’s not what I was getting at previously when I was saying about Cruachan, we’re Irish, so only we can play it. I’m not saying only we can play this kind of music, I’m saying it gives us much more credibility and believability over a lot of our—

BM: Sure.

KF: But they do what they can, and they play some very convincing Irish music even though they’re as Brazilian as, I don’t know.

BM: Rio De Janeiro. [laughs]

KF: Exactly. [laughs] Thank you.

BM: [laughs] Well, is it possible to define folk metal, then? As a genre, it’s exploding. Everybody, every country’s got their folk metal bands, and it all sounds different.

KF: If you really wanted to, you could define it. Say, you know, folk instruments and traditional bits. But pick out the first two Iron Maiden albums, and listen to how many folk tunes are on there. A lot of Iron Maiden stuff sounds like traditional Irish music. There’s no fiddles, there’s no whistles, and it’s as heavy metal as a spandex, fucking cod piece.

BM: [laughs]

KF: You know, a lot of heavy metal sounds folky. And you go back to the earlier stuff like Black Sabbath, I can hear folk music in it. [coughs] Sorry, I’m sputtering here. This is a nightmare.

BM: [laughs] Isn’t it ironic, now that we have a good connection, now you’re failing. [laughs]

KF: [laughs] Yeah. It’s amazing. I’d just shaken the cough last week, and then I did a concert here in Dublin. Fuck, it totally destroyed me.

BM: Well you know what, I don’t want to make things worse for you. We could try it a different day.

KF: Oh no, no, no. No, no. I’ve been coughing for the last couple of days. It’s not going to make it worse, if you can stand the sputters down the phone line.

BM: Oh sure. You know, I’d read interviews where you said bands like Horslips were important to the sound of Cruachan. And when I listen to that band, I hear a lot of Jethro Tull, circa Songs from the Wood.

KF: Oh yeah, definitely. Yeah, Horslips, they were another, definitely an influence. And just one of my favorite bands, still one of my favorite bands. I haven’t listened to them in a bit, but that’s how it happens with music, you come in and out, you dip in and out of things.

BM: Yeah.

KF: I haven’t listened to them in a few years, but they’re definitely one of my favorite bands, and always have been. And again, very, very groundbreaking in their day. They were playing rock probably as heavy as what was out there. With a lot of help from the Rolling Stones here in Ireland, they recorded with the Rolling Stones. And again, pure Irish traditional music mixed in with the rock of the day. And it was just very heavy. Yeah, they are a very big influence on me.

BM: You know what I haven’t read much in interviews with you, is how did you get your start? When did you first realize that you wanted to be a musician and could actually play and write and sing?

KF: It was when I got into metal, I suppose, at the age of 16, 15. Actually, it was 14, what am I saying. My first metal band was a kind of grind core, Jeez, I’d been through all the early heavy metal stuff and got into grind core for some reason. We started up a grind core band and I was doing vocals into an old fucking stereo, with Jay O’Neill on drums and Steven Anderson, two of the original Cruachan members. And we’re just blasting out, you know, two-note riffs and we just had the drums and the amplifier. And we’d record the practice, but I’d be kind of sitting beside the tape recorder, so you wouldn’t hear anything else, except, “Raaugh, raugh, raugh.” They wouldn’t hear anything. But then we played the tape back and there’s a perfect vocal track over the two guys.

BM: Really?

KF: So that’s where it started. We were called P.U.S., it stood for Pure Utter Shite.

BM: [laughs]

KF: After that, my sister’s boyfriend, Martin, was in a death, trash metal band in 1991 called Crypt, C-R-Y-P-T. They needed a vocalist, and they could hear what I was doing. And PUS, I started doing this scream sort of vocal, no one I knew was doing screams in those days. This was before the black metal ever took off. I was doing screams because I liked what I heard from early Napalm Death, early Carcass, and early Creator. They were the screams I heard. “Oh fuck, that’s brilliant.” This is long before black metal really, really took off. Ok, Venom were doing it, Battery as well, but I wasn’t really listening to them at the time. And I started doing the screams exclusively in Crypt. Screaming my head off, the band members were a little bit older than me, fantastic musicians. And there’s a demo out there somewhere which I’m trying to get my hands, trying to get a hold of, but John Clohessy played bass in that band. And then I kinda started messing about on guitar at that time as well. I used to play with my thumb. You know, I thought I could just up and down the fret board with my thumb, stringing Napalm Death riffs together. Eventually started picking up power chords and getting into other stuff. I was about 15 or 14 still. And big into Lord of the Rings. And I decided to get the band Minas Tirith together as sort of a tribute to Lord of the Rings, a concept band. A we’d done a couple of rehearsals, a couple of songs, and then I just started getting back into folk music, which I’d always liked. Started to listen to it a bit more, and then literally heard Skyclad, Wayward Sons of Mother Earth. “The Widdershins Jig,” that real English folk music, I was like, “Holy shit, this is what I need to be doing.” And yeah, the rest is history. [laughs]

BM: [laughs] Yeah. What is it about folk music? What kind of person—I don’t even know how to ask this question. To what kind of person does folk music appeal? I mean, do you have to be a sort of romantic? Do you have to be filled with wanderlust, sadness, melancholy. What is it?

KF: I don’t know, it’s hard. I mean, listen to some of our stuff, Finntroll, Korpiklaani. It’s funny, you know, someone with a sense of humor as well, you could throw in there.

BM: Yeah, yeah.

KF: But is there a certain type of guy that only likes folk metal? I don’t think so. I look at the people that come to our gigs, and I see, sometimes, like the Dublin gig, I see cross-sections of society. I’m going, “What the fuck is going on here?” When we play Europe, it’s usually a metal crowd, but you know, you get your fucking Nazi skinheads coming who think, “Yeah, you’re singing about European paganism, this is for me.” Then you get your liberal left wing who love the trees, and say, “Oh, sing about nature. This is for me.”

BM: [laughs]

KF: So that’s as broad a selection of people as you can get.

BM: Yeah, that’s true. You’re right. [laughs] As you said, Minus Tirith, the Lord of the Rings. Did you grow up liking fantasy, sci-fi books?

KF: Oh definitely, yeah, definitely. And I mean, Lord of the Rings has been, even as an adult. I know they say Lord of the Rings should be your favorite book when you’re a kid but definitely should not be your favorite book when you’re an adult, it’s still one of my favorite books. I absolutely love it.

BM: Yeah.

KF: I’ve read it nearly 13 times. I think the movies are brilliant, even with all the fucking liberties that were taken, I think they’re fantastic. I’ve always loved fantasy stuff as well. And I’ve always read the fictionalized versions of Irish history, with the extra bits of romance thrown in, this kind of thing. Yeah, I’ve read a lot of fantasy and sci-fi, and I love it. I’m a huge Star Wars fan as well, and Transformers fan. I’ve huge collections of all these action figures and everything, you know.

BM: Did you ever play Dungeons and Dragons growing up?

KF: Oh yeah, we did.

BM: [laughs]

KF: Around the time of Crypt, the members of Crypt, we played. It was actually Middle-earth Role Playing (MERP).

BM: Oh yeah.

KF: We’d laugh at Dungeons and Dragons, you know, “Oh, that’s basic, with their one-to-10.”

BM: [laughs]

KF: It’s just, we’re playing with a 100-sided dice. Yeah, we were big into the fantasy role playing.

BM: [laughs]

KF: To be honest, I look back at some of the memories, and I think, you know, I’d like to start it up again as an adult, get back into it. Jeez, I have some great memories of those days.

BM: You know, I thought of that myself, and it just doesn’t seem like it’s possible now. I’ve mentioned to my wife, “Why don’t we get some people together and play these games?” She’s like, “Are you nuts?” [laughs]

KF: I was on a site recently, and I found the rulebook from Middle-earth Role Playing, and I was like, “Holy shit.” Downloaded it, all the fucking nostalgia just came flying back. I know my younger brother would definitely be interested, but again, it’s time. I’m an adult now and I’ve got so much going on in my life to fit in a whole night to do it. But I’m determined. I’m definitely determined to slot that in and get that back.

BM: [laughs]

KF: You know? If I can get some sad, geek individuals like myself to join in.

BM: [laughs] Yeah, I know. I was talking to Elvenking’s guitarist, Aydan.

KF: Yeah.

BM: And I was asking him about fans of their band, they’re sometimes, and I said, “I don’t mean to use this term, but ‘nerds.’” [laughs] And he and laughed. He laughed his ass off. He said, “Yeah, that’s exactly what they are. They’re nerds.”

KF: I tell ya, Bill, I’m the biggest nerd you’ll ever meet.

BM: [laughs]

KF: I collect Star Wars toys, I collect Transformers toys. I collect games consoles. I’ve over fucking, I’ve close to one and a half thousand different console computer games, you know.

BM: Yeah.

KF: I’m a sad, hording, collecting, fucking geek.

BM: [laughs]

KF: But, you know, whatever keeps you happy. That’s my motto.

BM: You know what that indicates, though, is an imagination. I mean, creative imagination. I’m that way too. I’ve got more books and things than I can possibly read. I hung onto all my D&D stuff until just recently.

KF: Oh really?

BM: Yeah, so I know what you mean.

KF: Yeah.

BM: But, the record label woes, Century Media, Black Lotus, and all that kind of stuff. When you look back on your history, in Cruachan, what lessons have you learned? Have you learned to do something, or not do something? What have you gained after all this time?

KF: We had some really nightmarish experiences with studio payments and record labels.

BM: Oh yeah.

KF: At the end of Pagan, for example, Karmageddon Media weren’t happy with the end project. And that’s what they were saying, in reality, they were in the middle of bankruptcy. They said, “No, we’re not paying this.” I said, “Ok, hang on a minute. The studio is booked under my name, Keith Fay, so I’m in debt to the studio.” So I went through fucking a few months of solicitors, courts, being threatened with courts, this, that, and the other, until eventually they agreed to pay bit by bit every month. Doesn’t sound so bad, but if you’re going through that and if you could hear the whole story, it was a nightmare.

BM: Oh yeah.

KF: Exact same fucking thing happened with The Morrigan’s Call. Black Lotus fucking closed the doors, couldn’t pay it. So it was the exact same thing. Different studio, Sun Studios, where we love to record, and we know, the owner of the studio’s a good friend of Karen’s, and he’s fucking on the phone, “I need the money today. I need the money. I need the money.” “Sorry, there’s no record label, the label’s gone bankrupt.” “I need the fucking money, you’ll be brought to court. Need the money. Need the money.” Like fucking Fat Tony on the Simpsons, “Where’s the money?”

BM: [laughs]

KF: “Why aren’t you getting the money now?” So eventually, what was it that fucking happened? The guy said, “Can you not all get bank loans?” Cruachan, individually get bank loans to pay the studio. It was just, “Would you fuck off.” Then, AFM, I think we were very close to signing with Nuclear Blast. But when AFM came along, it was just, “Brilliant, where do we sign?” So within a week of signing, they paid the studio costs. But you know, that was the last two albums, and that was two very stressful periods in my life. You can imagine my friends and family are saying, “What the fuck is going on, Keith? I don’t like you being threatened with court. This is supposed to be something you’re enjoying. You’re not making a living out of the band. This is something you’re enjoying, why the fuck you being threatened with court?”

BM: Well, what you’re describing is15 years or more of extremely difficult, slogging times, in which you were threatened with court action, labels gone bankrupt, less than stellar sounding albums (at least, in your opinion)…and yet you’re still here. You’re still doing it. How is that possible? [laughs] Why haven’t you just pitched it all?

KF: Well, it’s a total cliché, but it’s for the music. I absolutely love the music. I love playing live. If I had it my way, things were different, we would be that band out there playing for three months. We would be the band going all over the world. You know, that’s my dream. That’s always been my dream. Reality turned out a little bit different, and it’s a shame, but it’s purely and solely for the music, and I love it up on stage, and you see a few people, nowadays you don’t know who the fuck they are, and they’re singing every single word of a song that you wrote two years ago, you know, I’ve written that song two years previously in my kitchen, over a cup of tea some night. And here I am struggling over the words. Two years into the future, I’m looking at some complete stranger passionately singing my lyrics. You know, you can’t pay for that stuff. That’s just amazing.

BM: Is that a dream come true? Do you feel like you’ve arrived? Are you a success now? Or is there still more out there for you to accomplish?

KF: We’re definitely successful, and you know, we sell a lot of CDs, we’ve got a lot of fans. We get an amazing amount of fan mail. We’re successful in that sense. Ok, financially, we haven’t made a single penny out of CD sales. That’s because HammerHeart were a corrupt share of assholes. And we still, we could bring them to court and go looking for money, but you know, I can do without the stress in my life, I’ve got too much going on. But our length of time on HammerHeart, we have not received one single penny in royalties. And AFM, they’re a professional label. We haven’t received any royalties yet, but I’m sure we will in the future. But shit, what was I saying? I completely forgot the question, Bill.

BM: Are you a success, have you arrived?

KF: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. So you’re saying financially are we successful? No, not at all. From fans and music getting out there, yeah, we are definitely very successful. One of the most successful metal bands to ever come from Ireland.

BM: What does it take for a band to make it these days? Do you need a great manager? Do you need a great label? Do you need distribution? What does it take? What would it take for Cruachan?

KF: Again, you know, it’s hard to say. Success is something that’s subjective anyway. But if you mean like having CDs on store shelves in the US and having fans, it would be a combination of everything. Like we’ve gone through periods of having a manager and having no manager. 90% of the time we’ve had no manager, I do all the management. It’s, a lot of it’s to do with luck and a lot of it’s to do with the music you do. You know, I have friends that often say, friends that don’t like metal, say, “What the fuck is this music? Geez, why are you wasting your time?”

BM: [laughs]

KF: “If you got rid of the folk music and played decent metal or decent music that everyone likes, then you’d be a success.” I’m like, “Hang on a minute. If we get rid of the folk music, play music that everyone likes, suddenly we’re competing with over two million bands in the world. What we do right now is absolutely unique. There’s no competition.” So you know, this is what we do. It comes down to the type of music you play. If you’re going to be another trash metal band, with no hook and nothing different, you’re not going to get anywhere. I think nowadays it really, really comes down to uniqueness and something different. And that’s what a lot, especially folk metal, every folk metal band has. Listen to Korpiklaani, Fintroll, Turisas, Eluveitie, Waylander, they’re all completely different, yet they’re playing folk tunes with heavy metal backing. And as well to be successful, you need a good record label. Not necessarily a big record label, as we’re finding out. You know, AFM are huge, to the point where they can overlook some of the smaller bands. You know, they’ve put a lot of money into Whitesnake, but who the fuck is Cruachan on their roster? You know, when we go to a smaller label and suddenly Cruachan is the biggest band on the label and we get really well looked after. So it’s about picking the right label as well.

BM: Well, wow. Yeah, that’s all too common, unfortunately. I’ve talked to so many bands where it always comes down to the record label, either going bankrupt or not paying. That’s unfortunate.

KF: Yeah.

BM: Do you have a favorite road story, anything that happened out there that was the scariest or most fun or most memorable?

KF: We’ve so many road stories, Bill. It’s shocking.

BM: [laughs]

KF: We tour Russia every year, and what can I say. The last time we were over there, I’ll give you one. I love this one. This one I tell people, like “What’s it like on tour?” “Well, listen to this.”

BM: [laughs]

KF: We were on the night train between Moscow and St. Petersburg. It’s a fantastic train, it’s literally a straight line. The story went whatever Czar wrote a line on a map and said, “I want a train line from St. Petersburg to Moscow.” But when he drew the line, his thumb jutted out onto the page and he slightly traced over this bump. There’s a curvature over a few hundred miles in the train track. But that’s beside the point. Anyway, we’re coming from St. Petersburg to Moscow on the night train. And we were a bit loud. So the security guard came over every now and then and said something in Russian. “Yeah, yeah, whatever.” Eventually, the carriage stopped. We didn’t think anything of it. So the door opens up and two Russian police with AK-47s, like full-blown fucking assault rifles, come through the door at Cruachan. “For fuck’s sake, what now?” So, something in Russian, our tour manager gets up, goes out the door, explains what’s going on to them. Little did we know he’s explaining that a top man in the Russian mafia brought Cruachan over on tour, and he’d be very upset if there are any troubles. So, the police are, “Oh, no problem. It’s good, it’s good.”

BM: [laughs]

KF: So that was that. The police were now under Cruachan’s control. [laughs]

BM: [laughs]

KF: While all that was happening, Russian bandits stole the engine from the train.

BM: [laughs]

KF: The actual car. Where the fuck are they going, it’s on tracks? But, “Choo choo!” They were gone.

BM: [laughs]

KF: So 20 carriages left without an engine. In the middle of nowhere.

BM: [laughs] Oh man.

KF: So all this, the information’s filtering down to us, and we’re going, “That can’t be right. Where are they going to go with the engine from a train?” So we got off the carriage, we went out for a piss, it was in the middle of nowhere. You know, we’d been drinking for the whole journey, we needed to go to the toilet. And armies of old Russian women descended upon us, selling us dried fish. [laughs]

BM: Dried fish?

KF: Yeah, how the fuck did they know, like, we’re going to get off and piss here, and that the engine … Yeah, we’ll buy your disgusting dried fish. Took it onto the train. You know, the tour manager said, “Oh, we always do this. The women sell us the dried fish. We love it.” So, I don’t like fish anyway. So that was the main thing that happened that night. Then, later on, an engine was returned. We were still there about an hour, and somewhere, another engine came and took us on our merry way. We were fine.

BM: [laughs]

KF: Later on that night, myself and my brother, John, were in, you know, going up and down the train a little bit quieter than we had. And we met an old Russian army, retired army guy. We’re like, “Oh, hello.” He’d seen an Irish flag, “Oh, hello.” Our tour manager was translating for us. And my brother and I are big into army stuff, we love everything having to do with fucking army, and military. So we were talking away. And I had a bottle of scotch. One of the band supporters gave us a bottle of scotch, and he was toasting Ireland and toasting Russia. He gave John his white camouflage sniper’s gear. He gave me a knife. We kept toasting and toasting, and then I have no memory until waking up in my bunk in the carriage absolutely in agony from the drink. And my brother was telling me at one stage I was on my knees on the rail crawling back to my bed. I’ve no memory of it. It was just a total blackout.

BM: [laughs] Oh man.

KF: From that squalor on the train, we’ve got our gig in Moscow. It was an acoustic gig we’d done in Moscow. We had three gigs in Moscow, and that night we were taken to, you know, some nights you stay in a five-star hotel, sometimes we stay in the place we stayed that night, which was a communist commune. So we’re driving up to it, and we’re told, “Ok, this is a communist commune. You can’t speak English here.” We’re like, “What? You fucking bring an English-speaking band to a fucking place you can’t speak English?” And then my brother looks, he’s wearing United States army, desert storm combats. He’s going, “I’m fucking wearing an American combat, what the fuck are they going to think of me?” So that was it. I mean there’s no big story. We went in and we slept, and we picked up at 8:00 the next morning. But that’s one of so many bizarre tales from Russia. Every time we go, we just come back with the most outrageous stories you can imagine.

BM: Did you ever like worry for your lives? Or did you just believe everything would work out okay?

KF: No, it’s weird, there’s a lot of time the year before. You know, the tour manager always makes sure we’re back. Ok, back in the hotel, he’s off the hook. He’s got us back to the hotel, we’re fine. But we arranged to meet up with the guy from the support band. So the tour manager was gone half an hour later, we’re in reception in the hotel, giggling like, “Hoo, we’re escaping.” But then, we’re brought out onto a fucking 10-lane motorway, and the guy in the support band, he’s from Moscow, starts hailing down any car, and that’s what they do in Russia. Any car will just stop like a taxi and just bring you where you want to go.

BM: Really?

KF: I’m like, “Is this fucking normal?” “Yeah, it’s ok. It’s ok.”

BM: [laughs]

KF: So we’re all piled into this little fucking car, going to the pub. This mad guy in the front, he looked crazy, he says, “Yes, I’ll bring you there for whatever rubles.” But no, there’s never, oh, there was. We were doing a press conference in the Moscow Hard Rock Café. We weren’t fearing for our lives, but apparently there was cock up with our Russian record label who distributes our stuff in Russia to license stuff, and the promoter. So we’re doing a press conference, the Hard Rock Café thought we were doing an unplugged set, and there was a crowd there. But we were playing a proper concert in Moscow that night, so we were like, “Look, we didn’t know anything about it. It was a cock-up between the label and the tour manager.” And the manager of the Hard Rock Café in Moscow was saying, “I cannot fucking accept this. Tomorrow I will ring my bosses in Florida, and Cruachan will never be allowed into Hard Rock Café.”

BM: Oh man.

KF: I was like, “Eh, ok.” [laughs] I mean, a few weeks ago I was in the Hard Rock Café in Dublin going, “I’m not meant to be here.” You know, laughing with the girl. It was funny.

BM: [laughs]

KF: But no, we’ve never been in fear of our lives.

BM: Wow. Do you ever think about writing a book about all these stories and what it’s like on the road?

KF: We talk about it every time. You know, every time we go away, all we do on the road is talk about the stories we’ve experienced, the crazy characters that we’ve met. Yeah, it always comes up. We need to write this down, because we’re going to forget it.

BM: Yeah, you really should. It sounds fascinating. I’d read it. [laughs]

KF: [laughs]

BM: Well, the last thing I’ll ask you is about the Internet, YouTube, MySpace, things like that. Do you mind at all like when fans take video clips of your shows and post them on YouTube? Is that a good thing or a bad thing?

KF: No, not at all. It’s a great thing. I love it. I always come back from a concert and you know, good friends back in Ireland will always be waiting for the YouTube video to come up to see how we got on if we’re gone for more than a week. I think it’s brilliant.

BM: Cool.

KF: The gig in Dublin on Saturday, you know, by Sunday afternoon there was videos up on YouTube. I think they’re fantastic.

BM: Well, it’s definitely a pleasure to chat with you.

KF: Yeah, it was great talking to you too, Bill.

BM: We’ll have to keep in touch. And let me know when you’re write that book. [laughs]

KF: [laughs] I sure will. Bill, it’s been an absolute pleasure. We’ll definitely keep in touch.

BM: Thanks, Keith. Take care.

KF: If we’re ever in the States, we’ll meet up for a drink, I reckon, yeah?

BM: Yeah. Definitely, or we can get over there.

KF: Where are you from?

BM: I live in Michigan in the States. My wife and I are talking about doing an Ireland trip sometime either late this year or next.

KF: Oh, you definitely should.

BM: We’ll stop by and you can show us where you go drinking. [laughs]

KF: Oh yeah, Geez, we’ll show you a really great time.

BM: [laughs] Alright, Keith. You have a really good evening.

KF: You too, Bill. It was nice talking to you. Bye bye.

BM: Thank you.

And so ends one of my all-time favorite interviews.

Special thanks to Keith Fay for his time, patience, photographs, and great sense of humor.

Tags: Interviews //