Mayo singer Finéinn Quinn releases song inspired by ‘grandad figure'

Irish Independent

3 days ago

It certainly jutted out in the press release about a 28-year-old singer from Foxford called Finéinn Quinn, who, after many years doing cover gigs, is trying to make a name for himself as a solo artist.
He doesn't call himself 'Ireland's best kept secret'. That moniker was coined by John Merchant, a diamond, platinum and gold selling engineer and producer who has worked with Michael Jackson, The Bee Gees, Celine Dion, Barry Gibb, Mika, Barbra Streisand and Toni Braxton.
Clearly not a man who hands out plaudits willy-nilly, given the company he's kept in the past.
Finéinn recalls meeting him at a Coldplay gig by total accident.
'He was just wearing a white shirt and jeans, he was carrying a briefcase,' Finéinn recalls.
'So we just started talking and he was like 'You probably don't know who I am, even though I have won Grammys'. I was like 'God no, I don't know you at all'. He was like, 'I'm John Merchant, I've worked with The Bee Gees mainly and a host of other artists as well'.
'So he followed me on Twitter and he gave me his email and he was like 'Sure, any time'. I had plans at that stage to go to America and work, which didn't materialise, but it did later.
'He said 'Any time you're in Nashville come over and I'll give you a free recording session', which I haven't availed of yet.'
Finéinn has released two singles on Spotify 'Breakaway' and 'Superheroes' – and there are more on the way.
He's currently promoting the latter, a song which captures many of his musical influences and revolves around the loss of a big figure in his life.
'His name was John, and he was basically my grandad figure because I didn't know any grandparents. He wasn't related to me at all.'
John passed away in October. Although they were not related, he was still one of the most influential figures in Finéinn's life.
He was one of those people he thought would never die. Indeed, it took writing 'Superheroes', a Coldplay-esque lullaby set to the ticking of John's watch, for Finéinn to fully process his death.
'I kind of felt that there was a lot of emotions surrounding his death that I couldn't clear, that I couldn't process until it came to writing the song,' Finéinn explains.
'It looks at a younger version of myself, where I'm looking in the future. I always had this massive fear of death: 'If someone passes away, what will I do?'
'The start of the song is a younger part of myself looking, 'What if you actually die? What do I do?' As the song continues on it's like 'Oh my God, you're actually gone. What do I do now?'
'The whole part of 'Superheroes' is that he is my superhero. He was my superhero, and he'd basically do anything to put a smile on my face.'
He describes his brand of songwriting as 'kind of a pop, kind of indie, kind of alternative like soft kind of rock'. To recreate that sound, he gigs with a guitar and a not-to-be-sneezed at pedal board that he assembled with his spare change during Covid.
It's far removed from the kind of rhythms as a small boy, when tapped his to jigs and reels after his mother sent him off Irish dancing from the age of four.
He later learned the fiddle on the encouragement of a teacher named John McHugh.
As a teenager, he picked up the bodhrán. He got quite good at it quite quickly, and won an All-Ireland for thumping goatskin about a year later.
But it wasn't until his TY play that he began to sing and play guitar.
'I never sang before that,' Finnéin reveals.
'I had just started the guitar before. Our teacher was like 'You are going to sing a song tonight'. I was like, 'I am not, I've never sang before.' She was like, 'You are going to sing'.'
So he did - a cover of One Direction's cover of Blondie's 'One Way or Another'
'It was a bit cringey, but it got me into singing.'
It was an unlikely introduction to his current craft, particularly in a football-mad school like St Joseph's Foxford where there 'was no real music class'.
From there, he ventured away from the world of traditional Irish music towards artists like REM, Kodaline, Coldplay and Christy Moore.
Then I was like, 'Jesus, there is a world outside of trad',' he says.
'But there is also a world where I can combine some kind of trad into the indie/alternative kind of scene and make it my own kind of sound without sounding too bluesy.
By his own admission, his early songwriting wasn't great.
'Everybody else will tell you,' he chuckles.
'There are some people who can write on the spot, and they are class. [For me] it was like a dirty tap, once you turned on the dirty tap clear water started coming and then I could write it a bit better than I used to do.'
With two singles released, a number of gigs in the pipeline, and a recording session in Nashville lined up, Finéinn Quinn is clearly getting places.
'Ireland's best kept secret' is a considerable label, but one he wears humbly and carries lightly.
'I don't know what to make of that, time will tell.'