A Chat with Raging Sons (26.09.21)
Influenced by U2, Muse and Nothing But Thieves, Raging Sons is an Irish band with a lot of attitude. Bring together their natural talent for music, Fintan Tynan (vocals), Colum Kelly (guitars), Damien Ruddy (bass) and Adam Reeves (drums) share a unique sound with their listeners. We speak with guitarist Colum Kelly about their single ‘Square One’, favourite meals and future plans.
OSR: How did Raging Sons come about?
Kelly: As cousins, Fint (vocals) and Damo (bass) have been playing music together their whole lives. They founded Raging Sons with me, Colum (guitar), who they met on the music scene in Limerick. A little while later we met Adam (drums) whilst touring with a previous band he was in at the time. Eventually, Adam joined and we became a four – Raging Sons.
OSR: What inspires you to create music?
Kelly: Our love for music. Music to us is everything, both as avid music fans and musicians. It adds colour to our lives. It gives us a shared sense of purpose and belonging.
OSR: What is your creative process?
Kelly: Fint writes the base melody and lyrics for each of our songs. Usually what happens then is he’ll bring an acoustic version of a song to the band where, as a collective, we will work on things like arrangement, tempo, hooks, countermelodies, harmonies, etc. It’s not a rigid process and can vary from song to song. Sometimes it can happen quite spontaneously and naturally, other times it can be a little more methodical and calculated.
OSR: What is the backstory to ‘Square One’?
Kelly: During a rehearsal the night before our last studio session for our debut album 20:20 (out October 22nd), Fint spontaneously played an acoustic version of the song to the band after which there was a unanimous agreement to record it in the preceding days.
OSR: Did you face any challenges when recording and producing ‘Square One’?
Kelly: We recorded the majority of our album across the entire year of 2020. It was a challenge for us to use our time rehearsing and recording as economically as possible between lockdowns, having to contend with what felt like fragile, ever-changing social distancing measures.
OSR: What do you hope people take from this single?
Kelly: Whatever they want. We don’t hope for anyone to feel anything other than what they are naturally going to feel if and when they listen to ‘Square One’.
OSR: You also recorded a music video for ‘Square One’. What was this experience like?
Kelly: Great. We recorded with Crude Media who were amazing to work with. The video is narrative-based and comments on the destructive nature of chasing “viral moments”. This increasingly dark part of humanity is something we feel strongly about and so we took the opportunity to highlight it through our art.
VIEWER DISCRETION IS STRONGLY ADVISED
OSR: If you spend the weekend with any living celebrity, who would it be and why?
Kelly: A Mayo man born and bred, Damo would love to meet Sam Maguire. ?
OSR: What is your favourite meal?
Kelly: Spaghetti bolognese.
OSR: Do you have any future plans for Raging Sons?
Kelly: Our future plans are to continue to enjoy what we’re doing: being friends, hanging out, writing, rehearsing and recording. We have internal goals as a band and lots of plans in the works, including more new material, but mostly our plan is to continue to have fun with what we’re doing because, well, if there’s anything we’ve learned this past 18 months is that life is short.
Thanks to Colum Kelly for speaking with us. For more from Raging Sons check out their Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Spotify.
