New day rising for George and the Rising Sons

Singer, songwriter, musician and actor, George Murphy has experienced the relative highs of pop stardom, and the crashing lows of its aftermath. His debut album, released after winning the 2003 edition of RTÉ talent show You’re a Star, went triple-platinum and sent him on the path to New York in pursuit of pop stardom — but when his then-label Sony soured on the follow-up, the rocky road eventually led back to Dublin, and the financial adversity that comes with getting dropped.

It must all seem like a million years ago now, but Murphy’s keen sense of the Irish balladeering tradition, which led no less an authority on the matter than the late Ronnie Drew to call him ‘a voice beyond his years’, led him to fall in with folk outfit The High Kings, get to work on a session in his own local that would become solo project George Murphy and the Rising Sons, and even grace the stage at the funeral of Pogues frontman Shane McGowan last year.

With the Rising Sons, he’s ready to tackle the bigger stages of the country once more on a national headlining tour, kicking off on Sunday, February 18, with his debut headliner at Cork’s Opera House.

“It’s still a bit of a shock for us all that we’re going into these kinds of rooms. From sitting in, in our local pub and playing to the neighbours, drinking a few pints, singing a few songs, to selling out Vicar Street, and then putting together a tour which includes like the biggest auditoriums in the country — Cork Opera House, Wexford Opera House, Ulster Hall, Millennium Forum... It’s a lot to take in, especially when it’s a band assembled by local friends and neighbours that all have their day jobs and stuff like that as well... to do something like this together is something that we’re extremely proud of. We’ve just finished recording our first studio album, and to be kicking it off in the Cork Opera House... I’ve played there a few times as a special guest to others, but never as a headline act in my own right.

So for me, it feels like it’s been twenty years in the making... I’m buzzing for it now.

That album is due to drop later this month, right as the tour kicks off, and, for Murphy, the balance lay in capturing that relationship, and that immediacy, while also creating something that moved past the idea of belting out the standards, and into beginning the writing of their own songbook.

“Yeah, I suppose when I’ve done solo albums, it would have been a lot more selfish and me making an awful lot of the decisions. But with these lads, we’ve all kind of brought a lot of ideas to the table,.. written a lot of the tracks together and built a lot of the songs. There’s major disagreements, don’t get me wrong, but I welcome that, because it means that everybody’s having a say on the direction of each track and how they’ll go.

“For me, it was definitely important not to go over old ground. And what I mean by that is, it would have been very easy to go into the studio and record an album containing, like, ‘Grace’, ‘Dublin in the Rare Auld Times’, ‘The Town I Loved So Well’. While they’re fantastic songs, and I really enjoy performing them songs, I wanted a record that we could stand over in twenty years’ time as our own record, not to be compared to anybody else, or their version of a certain song. I wanted original material from us.

“There’s a couple of songs on it that aren’t written by ourselves, but they’re written by friends of ours, so they’ll essentially be original songs to the audience when they hear them, and I just feel that that was important, because if we’re going to take our next step forward in this industry, I want us to be able to stand over something that’s completely our own, y’know what I mean?”

Murphy is no stranger to theatre, but this September, he faces a new challenge in one-man show Dockers, premiering at Liberty Hall. Written by playwright Gary Brown, and featuring songs written by singer-songwriter Damien Dempsey, it’s a different beast again than the solo and group situations of music, with differences in stagecraft, and audience engagement.

Acting was always something I wanted to get involved in. When I finished school. I was in a performing arts college doing Theatre Studies, and I always wanted to get involved in the acting end of things but then the music just fell into my lap, and I’ve been going with that pretty much ever since. 

"I have had a few opportunities, when I auditioned for a play that I got into at the Abbey Theatre, and that gave me a really big taste for wanting to do the acting side of things.

“I suppose what’s daunting about the one-man thing is I’ve always treated acting... like, if you were doing a scene, that you would feed off somebody else’s lines, and feed off their energy, so if they shout something at you, then you know how to take how they’ve created the vibe, and then respond in the natural way, but when there’s nobody there to bounce off, and you have to kind of portray all these kinds of stories yourself, it is definitely an intimidating prospect.

“But I’ve sat with Gary, and I’ve sat with Damien Dempsey, who wrote some of the songs, and there’s been a good opportunity for me to put my own kind of stamp on it, as well, and write some of my own material into it, too. It’s a very worthwhile project, I feel, to be involved with such great writers in Gary and Damien, to put my name to that and be a one-man show that was involved with the two of them is great.”

That aforementioned journey ticked over the twenty-year mark last year — with the You’re a Star experience firmly in the rearview mirror for Murphy and others, and an outpouring of support for Bambie Thug propelling the Macroom singer to the Eurovision limelight this year, it seems apropos to ask Murphy what wisdom he’d dispense to young musicians starting their journeys today.

And while the lure of reality telly may have been potent for the teenagers of Ancient Ireland of the 2000s, Murphy agrees that the way forward lies in doing your own thing.

“I think it’s definitely important to surround yourself with people that you find very easy to work with, and are chasing a similar goal to yourself. Like for me it all kickstarted with a reality TV show, but I don’t think there was sustainability in that for people.

“I’d a really good start in the industry by having a number one album straight away, but there was no longevity, no authenticity in something like that.

“You’re far better off learning your craft, and working with like-minded people, coming up with ideas, writing your own material, put your heart and soul into it and stand over it. It’s nicer to play to fifty people who maybe have bought a ticket to come and see you in a small room than it is to play to five hundred people or five thousand people in a huge room when they don’t care.”

• George Murphy and the Rising Sons play Cork Opera House on Sunday, February 18, at 8pm. Tickets €26 on sale from the venue box-office, and corkoperahouse.ie.