Blindboy Boatclub has revealed where his stage name came from.
The Limerick native is one half of music group Rubberbandits along with Mr. Chrome who found fame with RTE’s Republic Of Telly.
“My name is Blindboy because I learned how to play blues music, like the old blues musicians, they were all called Blindboy this and Blindboy that,” he said.
Blues: Blindboy revealed he got his name from past blues musicians | RTE
The artist admitted that he can play the bass, piano and drums but it was the instrument he first learned to play that he enjoys the most, guitar, and told 2FM’s Chris and Ciara he would play guitar for them next time he was on.
“I can play slide guitar almost at a Rory Gallagher standard but I never had an opportunity to put it into a song,” he told the DJs.
“I never show off musically when I’m making the music because I’m about song writing.
“And a good song doesn’t need a big guitar solo unless it’s appropriate and with the stuff that we’re doing you can’t justify eight bars of a guitar in a song, it has to be appropriate.
Talent: The musician can play four instruments | VIPIRELAND.COM
“I started playing guitar when I was about four or five and then I left it and came back to it when I was about 16. Once you have one instrument, I learned guitar at that stage, once you have that you can branch out.
“Playing bass is easy once you learn guitar. Then keyboards, you already know what chords are and you know a bit of music theory.
“I would have started off [playing keyboards] when I was 16 or 17, at the same time I started illegally downloading music production software. I learned it by accident and found I was handy at producing.”
Painting: Blindboy has other creative outlets that help him in creating music | VIPIRELAND.COM
The musician, who went on to explain that another passion of his helps him in creating music – painting.
“My other passion growing up as a child was painting, I was always painting and drawing,” he said.
“If you’re a painter and you’re doing a landscape and you can’t draw trees, you don’t bring in your friend who’s good at trees. What you do is you sketch tree until your really good at it and go back to your painting – that’s how I approach music.
“Nearly every waking moment of my day I’m thinking about music. I just can’t stop and that’s ever since I was four years of age, and I’m talking I would listen to the sound of a snare drum – I was obsessive.
“When Conor McGregor talks about the way that he trains and the way he fights and the way that every moment of his day is an obsession about the movement of the human body – that’s how I am with music.”
Music to be made: Blindboy and Mr. Chrome have up to 12 songs ready to be produced | VIPIRELAND.COM
Blindboy also revealed that he has up to 12 songs ready to be made with Mr. Chrome – but it’s just about the production of the songs that are left.
“We did a week, what we have now is about ten sets of lyrics and I’m going to turn them into songs. Well, we’ve about 12 – all you need to start off a song is a poem,” he explained.
“You make sure it rhymes and rhyming is nothing but a drum beat. You have the poem, it’s funny on paper and then I’ll take that and have different beats with it.
“If you took Dad’s Best Friend, I could have just as easily made that a soul song or made it like a Michael Jackson song, it wouldn’t work. You need it to make it a song with prodigy, it needs to have aggression.
“That’s the difference between song writing and poetry. Poetry is like the script to a film but producing it into music is like what a director does, you can change the tone of the whole thing depending how the music works to with the lyrics.”
Illegal: The artist doesn’t mind people ripping his videos from the internet as long as his work is credited | VIPIRELAND.COM
Blindboy admitted that some comments on their YouTube videos say that they think the background music isn’t theirs.
“People don’t think we actually make our own music. I’m at it long enough that I don’t actually mind, a lot of people don’t full understand music – I’m okay with it,” he said.
The Limerick native also opened about illegally downloading music and said that if it wasn’t for people torrenting their music, they wouldn’t have a career.
“It’s a given. I wouldn’t have a career if it wasn’t for people bootlegging my CDs at the start. As long as it’s credited, then it’s fine.
“There’s little truths about my job that I have to just accept because if i don’t accept them i’ll be a very unhappy man.
“I can’t stop people illegally downloading our stuff or ripping our videos, I just accept it,” he added.
