Your name:
Conor Dardis.
Where are you
from?
Dublin,
but I live in Preston.
How would you
describe yourselves and your music?
I call my music
Immigrant Suburban Folk. It started as a tongue-in-cheek thing but it's kind of
stuck.
My songs
generally carry a narrative and are framed in the working-class setting of the
Dublin suburb I grew up in; Clondalkin. They are stories that are happening to
people every day and I hope that's what makes them resonate with the listener.
There are lots of songs about the romance of cities and lots about beautiful
wide open spaces, but simple stories set in the suburbs where most of us live are thin on the ground so I made the decision early on to focus on writing
about them.
Who are your
main influences musically?
Shack,
Springsteen and Mazzy Star with some Billy Bragg and Wilco 'Mermaid Avenue'
thrown in there.
What do you hope
to achieve in music?
The dream right
now is to record a great album; one that the listener can get lost in.
What has been
the highlight of your career so far, and why?
The guys over at
Wasted Years Records were the first to review my music and compared it to
Springsteen and Johnny Cash. To paraphrase my best mate Jim's reaction, 'How
could it ever get better?'.
And what’s the
moment you want to forget?
Forgetting
lyrics on stage was not my finest hour.
If you had to
pick just one of your songs to represent your music, what would it be and why?
The Ballad Of
The Butchers Wife.
Where can we
listen to it?
Where can we
find out more about your music?
You can follow
me on Twitter @cjdardis and soundcloud https://soundcloud.com/conordardis
Anything
else you’d like to say about your music that I forgot to ask?
I think the reward for anyone listening
to my music lies in empathy with, or at the very least, understanding of the
characters and the narratives in the lyrics. The melodies and instrumentation
are deliberately simple to aid the delivery of the stories. So if you take the time to listen, listen closely.
