It's about living rather than making a living for Jerry Fish 

Jerry Fish, one of Ireland’s most distinctive voices and enigmatic performers, has always followed his own path artistically, and he describes his latest album ‘Dreaming Of Daniel’ as ‘a true labour of love’.

The word ‘true’ is an apt choice, Jerry Fish’s best-known solo song is ‘True Friends’ and the best-known song by the writer of all the songs on the record, Daniel Johnston, is ‘True Love Will Find You In The End’.

Daniel Johnston, who passed away in 2019 at the age of 58, was much loved in the American alternative music scene from the 1980s onwards, equally comfortable with music and illustration, his own artwork was famously worn on a t-shirt by Kurt Cobain. He spent time in various psychiatric institutions and lived with extreme bipolar disorder, throughout his career he was labelled by many as an ‘outsider artist’, who considered his work as childlike and naive.

A documentary released about him in 2006, ‘The Devil And Daniel Johnston’, helped his music get to a larger audience, that film is where the first seed of Jerry’s tribute album was planted.

“When I saw ‘The Devil And Daniel Johnston’, one of his songs ‘The Story Of An Artist’ appeared throughout, like a theme tune. The song itself is quite infectious, and then when I saw him play it live in Vicar Street, I said to myself ‘I have to do that song’. And I’ve used it as my opening song at my shows for many years now, the song really feels like my voice and my story.

“He cleverly penned the experience of when you decide to join a band as a kid, and you eventually get successful - which is never overnight, it takes years and years and years. I was in a band for years, we were in a rehearsal room every Sunday, you know, for years! I never had a free Sunday for years because of our commitment to these rehearsals.

“Artists put so much into what we do, and most people think we’re wasting our time, saying ‘it doesn’t feed you’ but it feeds another part of you.”

The power of making music and its importance is something that Jerry doesn’t just prize in his life, but something he tries to help others with too,

“I’ve worked with a lot of bands and especially young bands, it’s almost like you can’t help it, it’s very difficult to be an artist because you don’t get paid well for it. It’s a love thing. So that song by Daniel just became mine, the moral of it is that being an artist is a long game. It’s about living rather than making a living. If you can make a lifestyle that you’re happy with and if you’ve stayed in a job that you love, what else do you want?”

Daniel’s songwriting is something people return to again and again, the entire Jerry Fish household are fans.

“I fell in love with Daniel, but my teenage kids also were mad into Daniel, my son in particular, his songs speak to so many young people. I think Johnston’s honesty is just pure, he has a lack of filter - that filter that we have in this world - but he just was able to just spit it out.”

As a songwriter himself, Jerry recognises that while Johnston’s recordings were lo-fi and unrefined the musicality of the songs stand up to interpretation.

“His songs are so rare, they make me laugh or they make me cry, they really connect with me you know, and it was just an honour to interpret them. I think what was key when we were listening to the songs and looking for arrangements to put to the songs, because they are so simple you can kind of hear what he’s thinking, it was all clear and imagined in his head.

“He was a big fan of The Beatles, and you can clearly hear that in something like ‘Don’t Let The Sun Go Down On Your Grievances’, at the end of the song he’s imagining that there’s a big crowd there singing along but they’re not there! He’s speeding it up on the end, saying ‘Come On Everybody!’ and there’s nobody there but him. You start to hear his thoughts, so I think ‘Dreaming Of Daniel’ was a good title in the end.”

Another one of Daniel’s songs proved quite a test for the trained musicians in the studio, as Jerry explained.

“He has another song called ‘Loner’, when you hear it he’s playing the ukulele. Now on the ‘Dreaming Of Daniel’ album, we feature some of Ireland’s best jazz musicians, some incredible players and nobody could find its key, it was a keyless kind of song. But you can hear that he’s nearly paying homage to the likes of The Cramps, he’s making this rock sound with a ukulele, and he’s talking about being a rock star.

“You can hear a bit of The Velvet Underground in his music, he was quite punky I think, because of the time he was around in the 80s and the 90s, it was quite a punky time in America. So there’s that punk element in it but then there’s always this Beatles thing. In a way, in his head, he was always making albums.

“That’s one of the most amusing stories about him, where he’d give a cassette away and the guy would ask if he had another one and Daniel would go back and rerecord the whole album again from scratch, because he didn’t know how to copy duplicate tapes!”

The fact that Daniel is such a beloved figure means Jerry knows everyone won’t be happy.

“I don’t expect everybody, especially Daniel Johnson fans, to get what we’ve done, because we’ve made the songs more accessible. One of the beautiful things about Daniel is the bit of work the listener has to do to listen to them, the quality of his recordings were often very raw.”

Jerry Fish performs songs from his new ‘Dreaming Of Daniel’ album on Sunday, November 17, in Musiczone in Togher at 4pm, and Coughlans on Douglas Street at 7.30pm. Admission is free but tickets can be booked in advance at www.musiczone.ie