The Boat Club 19/11/12

Image compliments of GC Photographics

The Boat Club have just seen the launch of their brand new single, Devils Joint, in the City. With the
single being made available on line and locally the group are hoping to follow it up with an EP before
New Years.

Eoin Carlin, guitarist, shares some insight about The Boat Club starting off with how they found
themselves forming a band.

"It started, Rozza met us when we were doing the sofa sessions with John Ross up in the playhouse. Myself and Spud the bassist were up doing a couple of acoustic songs and Rozza was up doing a couple of his songs and he contacted us afterwards and asked us if we wanted to get a practise or a jam with him and that’s how it started pretty much. He just came in with his songs and we added guitar parts and bass parts to them. Me and Spud ran it originally and then Phil, we hadn’t had a drummer for like a month, we were just going round gigging without a drummer. Our first gig was at the boat festival ironically enough but we had no drummer for that."

"Phil was a friend of mine just and he drums so I asked him to come drum with us and that’s kinda of
how the full band got together. Then we were just working on songs and a couple of tunes with a
couple of covers, building up our set and then just playing locally.”

Even though Eoin had been involved in music previously like the other members of the band, he still
found himself getting a bit of stage fright when they headed for their first local gig.

“Our first gig I was nervous, really nervous, before being in a band like this I would have played bass
in a band and I didn’t really know how to use amplifiers or effects or anything like that so it probably
was really bad but we’re getting there now.”

Eoin explains that even though the majority of material has been written by Rozza they are very
much so a tight group and they all contribute differently. “As far as we’ve got now, all the originals
have been previously written by Rozza and we’ve come in and put ourselves to them. We’re looking
for more material now and I write songs myself too and we were talking about trying a couple of
them out, just try and create something from scratch as a full band and see how that sounds. Rozza
would have the experience, he’s been about and he knows all the contacts, he’s a better guitarist
than me. Philip as well, he’s an all-rounder, he plays drums, he plays bass, he plays guitar, he’s better
at guitar than me and he’s on the drums and he’s great like. Then Spud, he’s an amazing bassist, he’s
all about his theory, he would know everything about theory. Then me, I just got kind of got lucky, I
think it was the good looks got me into the band.”

Even with each member having their own input it would seem the dynamic of the band is changing a
little. “At the start everything was kind of rushed and bare and we just did what we had to but now
we have time to think about each song. Sometimes Rozza wouldn’t play guitar and it would give me
and Spud more room to do a wee bit more and use different tones and effects and change the songs
round to spruce them up a bit so it’s cool. We’re kinda going through the songs again and doing
them up, making them sounds kind of more fun, we think they’re more fun to play.”

Eoin explains that being part of a group sometimes means you end up waiting around to get a bit
of hard work done at practise time. “I’ll land up at the Link, at six and then I’ll ring Phil and he’ll tell
me he’d done with his dinner and he’ll be up in ten minutes. Then we’ll hold out for Rozza and see
where he is and then Spud will be about twenty minutes. Half a hour later we’ll finally get set up

with all our amps and microphones and go through the set. We’ve been trying to put a couple of
covers in as well to lengthen out the set so there will be a lot of work getting done. I love playing
covers, it’s fun, I prefer playing originals but if you get a good cover that the crowd knows it’s good
craic. I’d play three chords all days if that’s what people would listen to.”

The anticipated EP is to have 3 to 4 originals but as of yet the band haven’t decided on the finer
details. “We don’t know whether to record it independently with our instruments or go into a
studio but we’ll see how it goes. Just taking it slow and the minute and get the money built up for it.
Then the artwork, we had Egan Monds do the artwork for the single and it was really, really good.
Recording time is very dear especially for something that mind not sell. You have to be willing to
put the money in. Like we have a couple of paid gigs coming up and stuff but by the time you get
a nights drinking over you, you have no money left. We’re going to have to get the money out of
somewhere and then start it up.

Eoin has shared his dream of playing for Glasgowbury in the future, but as for the gigs coming up
soon you can see them supporting 2minutes2midnight in Masons on Thursday or head along to the
Winter Festival on Boxing day where they will be supporting Furlo at the Drummond hotel, after that
we can hope to be hearing news of an EP launch in the New Year, it’ll be a great way to start City of
Culture 2013 for local music.