Fiddle player Jayne Pomplas has played with revered names like The Chieftains, Frankie Gavin and Liam Ó Maonlaí. She told David Hennessy about her new debut album, This Is How The World Ends.
Dublin-based fiddle player, vocalist and composer Jayne Pomplas has just released her debut album This Is How the World Ends. It follows singles like Ninety Nine, Hit Single and the most recent offering Mother Superior.
Born and raised in New York, Pomplas has long been a sought-after collaborator across Irish traditional, folk and experimental music, performing and recording with artists including The Chieftains, Frankie Gavin, Fin Furey, Francesco Turrisi, Liam Ó Maonlaí, Lunatraktors, Mik Pyro, Jaz Delorean, Bricknasty and Ron Block.
This Is How The World Ends features a wide ensemble of collaborators including John Francis Flynn, Patrick Stefan, Luke Coffey, Graham Heaney, Jamie Bishop, Jaz Delorean, Adrian Crowley, Lunatraktors, Méabh McKenna, Robbie Reilly and RVE.
We chatted Jayne a little while back when she had just released single Ninety Nine.
Where does the new single Ninety Nine come from?
“I wrote bits of that song over COVID.
“As strange of a time as COVID was, I really enjoyed it.
“It was a much needed break from the hustle and bustle of the working musician life and playing all the time and touring and all of it.
“I really felt very inspired in the first few months of COVID so I was always writing.
“I would go for long walks in the park near where I lived and every day just thoughts were pouring out of me so some of the lyrics were written during that time.
“And then this past year, I travelled to Istanbul and I was working on an experimental music project over there.
“Myself and some friends were improvising with the sounds of the cityscape that we had put into synthesisers.
“Being over there, hearing all of the sounds of the city but then also hearing the call to prayer, which happens five times a day, hearing that all throughout the city and hearing how the birds interacted with that was really, really incredible.
“I think that definitely inspired some of the structure of the melodic composition of the song.”
It follows your previous single Hit Single, where did that come from?
“Well first of all, I love the name.
“I just had to call it that.
“I was reminded of the futility of releasing music.
“There is no such thing as a hit single anymore with all of the different streaming platforms.
“There is no one metric for that anymore.
“I’m sure many other people of my generation, or even the generation above me or below me, feel the same way: That idea of a hit is so alive in our minds and then you get the sharp reality that things don’t really happen like that anymore.
“It’s kind of a happy song about that feeling, I suppose.”
Is there a nostalgia in the song?
“Absolutely.
“There was such an energy there.
“There’s such an energy watching videos of artists back in back in the 60s and 70s and I’m sure at the time they were all mourning the last great generation as well, the grass is always greener.”
Both tracks come from your forthcoming album, This is How the World Ends. You have long been making music but this is your first album of your own, does it feel different from other things you have done?
“Well it’s very much a piece of myself and a lot of hard work went into the recording of it and everything else.
“There’s so much that goes into releasing a project, not just the recording and there’s a bit of this strange sense of relief now that it’s all finished and ready to go but also it’s almost bittersweet because the process was so fun.”
As I understand it you turned 27 and decided you had been playing it too safe and it was about time you put your own thing out there, is that right?
“That is correct.
“I turned 27 last year.
“I’ve been playing music my whole life and been a professional musician my whole life and I was like, ‘Why haven’t I done something that’s just my music?’
“And I had a bit of a freak out turning 27 and all.
“I was like, ‘Oh my god, I have to do everything right now all at once. I have to get it all done just in case the 27 club and all that…’
“So I started to dream up the album and actually managed to record it and line it up for release before I turned 28.
“And also I hadn’t really released any of my own songs.
“I’ve written songs for years but I never actually had the balls to release them.”
Why do you think that was? Were you just hesitant?
“I’ve had the great privilege of playing music for so many amazing artists and doing session work and then sharing the stage with so many world class musicians that I think I felt it was a bit daunting.
“I had contributed to so many wonderful projects with wonderful people and I felt like I had to live up to all of that.
“I think I needed some more time to be ready to really be able to put something that I felt proud of out into the world.”
How did you find the experience of putting it all together? You had an array of contributors. What was it like to have musicians guesting on your work as opposed to being the guest?
“It was a fantastic process.
“I started recording in January in Sonic Recording Studios which is in Stoneybatter in Dublin.
“I’ve spent a lot of time around Stoneybatter.
“There’s a fantastic session in Walsh’s pub in Stoneybatter and of course The Cobblestone is just down the road so it feels very much like home and it felt very right to record this project there.
“Actually John Francis was the first guest that I got in.
“I’ve known John a long time so it was just a very pleasant experience.
“It was lashing rain in January in Dublin but we just recorded a couple of sets of tunes and it went seamlessly.
“Then on the same day I had Adrian Crowley come in and put down some electric guitar and later on I had Patrick Stefan, Luke Coffey and Graham Heaney come in and we recorded a few tracks live.
“That was one day.
“Then I had another recording day where I had Méabh McKenna come in and play harp so over those couple of days in Dublin, I got maybe five of the tracks finished which was very good going, I think.
“And then I actually travelled over to the UK.
“A friend of mine Jaz Delorean lives on a houseboat on the Thames River.
“I brought my own recording equipment and recorded on the houseboat.”
You mentioned The Cobblestone there which is of course where you launched the single recently..
“I did.
“I had a single launch for my track Ninety Nine in The Cobblestone.
“I love doing unusual things and I had an idea to highlight all the guests on the track at this show so I had everyone who played on the track do a set of their own music and then do a few things with myself as well so it was like a musical cabaret evening and it was really lovely and really nice and chill and relaxed.
“There was a great collaborative energy to the whole night.”
How did it feel to be playing material from the album, I’m guessing it was one of its first airings?
“It felt really good and when I played the song at the launch I had everybody who played on it up on stage with me as well so it was almost like an orchestra.”
I bet you are looking forward to releasing the album in September..
“I am.
“I’m looking forward to that very much.
“I have a launch in Dublin on 25 September which will be another musical extravaganza evening.
“I’ll have all the album guests doing little sets.
“I have the venue.
“It’s in a place called DV8 on James’s Street in Dublin.
“And there’s a fantastic DJ who’s going to do a set after the launch and it’ll be basically a big party so I’m looking forward to that and I have a few other exciting projects going on this year as well so I’ll be looking at doing an album tour kind of at the start of next year.”
You were born and raised in New York but as you say you grew up playing music and were a real Fleadh baby when you came to Ireland as a child, weren’t you?
“Yeah, a bit of that.
“Also my parents would have been very adventurous.
“They both travelled all around the world together before they had kids so we would travel to Ireland and just travel around for the summer and go camping and exploring and checking out all the amazing music in little towns, especially around County Clare.
“I have such fond memories, and some memories of being upset and eight years old and hungry and tired, but mostly really fond memories of spending the summer travelling around Ireland.
“I think that probably led me to want to move over here when I was old enough.
“I just kind of insisted that I was going to move over here when I was 17 and there was no stopping me.”
Was music a big thing in your family then?
“It was actually not.
“Neither of my parents played music.
“My childhood obsession from the age of three was I really wanted to play the fiddle, specifically Irish fiddle music, and I just wouldn’t stop asking for lessons.
“I think I was lucky to have parents who encouraged that.”
A big inspiration to you was the late great fiddler Seán Keane of The Chieftains so it must have been an experience when you got to play with The Chieftains..
“That was incredible.
“They were doing a tour of the states and my mom actually wrote Paddy Moloney a letter.
“She wrote him a letter and was like, ‘My daughter is obsessed with you guys’.
“I’m not sure if it was 18 and over, 16 and over but there was some age limit at the venues that they were playing and she wrote a letter asking if there might be an exception because I really wanted to go see them.
“And Paddy actually wrote a letter back himself with a couple of backstage passes and was like, ‘Come and meet us’.
“So literally all of my dreams came true all at once.
“I brought my fiddle backstage when I went to meet them and I asked firmly that they would sit down and play some tunes with me, and they did.
“They were so nice and so welcoming.
“They even brought me out onstage for their grand finale that night.
“It was one of those crazy self-actualising moments.
“They were all such lovely people and still are but that was really formative the experience of getting to meet them.”
Of course you have played with an impressive array of names, what is it like to play with such names?
“ think a lot of the time, especially in the context of traditional music, it’s more so about the music itself being kept alive.
“In moments like that what would be going through my head wouldn’t be, ‘Oh look, I’m playing music with this incredibly famous, amazing musician’ but I would be so immersed in the music that it would only be afterwards you really think, ‘I was playing with this person’.
“You could almost call Irish music an entity because it’s very much alive and it’s this humbling force that brings people together and it’s amazing to be a part of that.”
You say there wasn’t necessarily a lot of music in your family but were the Irish roots strong?
“Some of my mother’s family are from Monaghan, Castleblayney and then the other side of her family are from Inishowen in Donegal.
“I know that her grandmother who was from Inishowen played the fiddle but I never met her and I think because my mother didn’t grow up playing music, that didn’t really come up.
“It was only years later talking to my grandfather he was like, ‘You know your great grandmother Patricia used to play fiddle in the kitchen every day’.
“It was just never something that was talked about.
“And there’s Irish on my dad’s family as well.
“His mother was one of seven Irish Catholic immigrants from Philadelphia, all girls.
“I don’t really know too much about where my dad’s side of the family who were Irish were from.
“In time I might like look into it further.”
Tell us about where the album’s title This is How the World Ends comes from..
“This is how the world ends is a lyric in one of my songs and it’s also similar to a line from a T. S. Eliot poem.
“I really love that poem and at the time it was a commentary.
“It was post World War II, nobody knew what was going on in the world and it was this crazy tumultuous time.
“It was his commentary on society and it even resonates to this day as a work of literature or poetry.
“Every day when you fall asleep, it’s as if the world ends but then you wake up again and it’s the circle of life and I think that’s another aspect of the album title as well.”
The album marries the traditional with the more contemporary which is very much your style, isn’t it?
“Yeah, I feel like if somebody sat me down and forced me to pick a genre, I wouldn’t be able to.
“The first track on the album is almost jazzy, kind of vaudeville, New Orleans/ Americana feeling and then the second track is Hit Single which is kind of folky, rootsy, almost a little bit country.
“And then right after that there’s a slow air into a tune that I composed and so that very Irish traditional style.
“The album tells a story in a way, maybe not linearly but it’s little pieces of my life up until that time and no two tracks are the same and each one is very different stylistically but I endeavoured to make them fit together in a cohesive way.
“I have a single coming out on 21 August called Mother Superior and it’s a very dark track, kind of like neo folk.
“I worked with a band who are based in Waterford now.
“They’re called Lunatraktors.
“They’re originally both from Essex and pioneers of the art folk scene.
“They’re an incredible band and I went down to them in Waterford to record this track with them.
“It’s dark but not necessarily creepy.
“It’s a vibe.
“It’s a whole vibe and it’s kind of a conversation with your inner monologue.
“And I’m going to release a single after the album comes out, actually around Halloween.
“That will be Whiskey Sours. The title track for the album is in that song.
“It’s a song about limerence whether that’s romantic limerence or any limerence in general.
“It’s kind of waking up from a bit of a delusion or something or a coming to of anything.
“That’s one of the songs I recorded with Jaz Delorean on the houseboat.
“It’s kind of melancholy, art folk. A little bit sad but not too sad.”
The Irish World spoke to Jayne Pomplas on the very day that Glen Hansard died. What is your reaction to the sad news that has just been reported?
“Oh, it’s absolutely heartbreaking.
“I got a text from a friend this morning and it’s absolutely shocking.
“Glen was such a pioneer of music and especially Irish music, folk music and he was such an inspiration to myself and so many people that I know.
“It’s just absolutely devastating.”
Did you meet him?
“I met him once in passing, I never got to sit down and have a long conversation with him but I saw him play many times.
“He was just an absolute treasure.”
Has putting your debut album together opened the floodgates in a way? Are you collecting material for album two already?
“I am.
“I have 11 songs that I have lyrics for.
“I think as soon as this album is released, I’ll probably go straight back into working on those which is very exciting.”
This is How the World Ends is out now.
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