Maykay on Fight like Apes, solo plans and Other Voices
Maykay was the guest on this week's episode of the TPOE podcast, looking back on the Irish music scene of 20 years ago
Picture: Rich Gilligan
To mark season 22 of Other Voices, which begins on RTÉ 2 and RTÉ Player on February 29, Fight like Apes frontwoman Maykay looks back to the Dublin music scene of the mid-00s and how they fitted in, talking FLApes’ rise, a little about the fall, and their reunion at the Olympia Theatre in 2023. They're returning for a final show there on April 6, 2024 - tickets are running low, FYI. Maykay also talks her solo plans and what it's like hanging out with fellow Other Voices hosts Huw Stephens and Annie Mac in Dingle. The six-part season 22 of Other Voices will showcase some of the most thrilling Irish and international artists on the music scene; with exclusive intimate performances by Griff, Kae Tempest, The Murder Capital, Villagers, BC Camplight, Catrin Finch & Aoife Ní Bhriain, CMAT, ØXN, Gurriers, Mick Flannery, Julie Byrne, The Joy, KhakiKid, Niamh Bury, Qbanaa and Lucy McWilliams.
Listen to the full interview (the transcribe is edited with a couple of bits cut out just for clarity):
I've been on a run of interviews lately apparently talking about the music scene in Dublin in Ireland about 20 years ago. I had David Hedderman from the Immediate on last week, I have Kieran and Emily from Driven Snow who used to be in Delorentos and Republic of Loose, that's coming up in a couple of weeks, and now Maykay is back on the podcast as well. What do you think of when you think about 20 years ago? How often are you thinking about those wild times?
Well, I cannot believe this is relevant to me. When someone says 20 years ago, I'm like, 'No, sure I was 10'. But I really truly wasn't. I was 17. So, God, that's crazy. I love Dave Hedderman. I love Kieran and Emily as well. I remember mostly it feels like I lived in that little sliver of a beer garden in Whelan's. The Immediate would have been a huge thing for me and Jamie. We had no money. I don't know what we were doing. But anyway, we spent all our time really in Whelan's watching bands and the Immediate are definitely one of them. Oh, my God, they were so exciting. Because I think we'd seen bands before do the thing where people switch instruments. And it felt like 'there's no need to do that. That guy should just be on the drums the whole time, he's not good at the other thing that he took over.' Whereas the Immediate could really switch things up and show a whole different side of the band. A bit of me would hate to be that age again. I was so unsure of myself. But I do really think seeing those bands - David Kitt and Jape and there was loads of loads of great bands around then - that I'd never even been exposed to before (I mean, I'd been exposed to good music before but not live music like that, in such a small little scene). God that was a mad time - it's all very gooey as well. I couldn't tell you exactly what specifics that happened between ages 17 to 20.
I'm wondering what you're thinking about when you’re going 'oh, God'. Are you thinking of the messy nights at like 3am or something like that? Are you thinking of the highs of the gigs?
It's all goop. It's all just a gooey time in life that was just so exciting. Not that we didn't go to clubs, but we were more into gigs and pints and things. So that suited us very much.
Is that how the band started? Over pints and ideas?
Yeah, well cans. We definitely didn't have money for pints at the time. Yeah. Me and Jamie were in college and just wanted to not be in college anymore, I think. I just found that buzz just so invigorating. You know, like, Where were you when you first heard Jape - 'Floating' live or Kittser playing anything from The Big Romance? I actually have that feeling in my tummy now just thinking about it, about how inspiring it was, and how tangible it felt. I don't know why. I sang a bit but I didn't have anything else going on. So for some reason, they made it feel tangible even though they were cool rock stars on stages, they still made it feel like it was something we could do. And they were sound as well.
I was going to ask, was there a little bit of a rivalry, did it feel like ‘only one of us can make it out of Dublin’?
Not with those boys, no. They would have been way ahead of us. They were already doing the business. They were definitely ahead of us. Whenever we played in Galway we would have played with Giveamanakick. There was a great Cork band, Hooray for Humans. In Belfast we played with La Faro, among many others, but there wasn't a direct rivalry with anybody. They made us better, anybody that we played with - especially when you play in Belfast or Derry. We just got louder. And I don't mean in a very clever musical way, we just turned stuff up because they were just so hefty, chonky. And yeah, same with Giveamanakick, would have turned things up with them too. But I think there was definitely a feeling back then that there was only a few spots, for sure. But I never felt that directly with people, or if they felt that they hid it. But it definitely felt that way. There wasn't as much collaboration going on; now, I mean, it's the thing.
Yeah, yeah, it seems like people are all friends and in each other's bands as well.
It makes so much sense. We've seen it now with so many scenes in Ireland that everyone rises when that scene starts to rise. There's no end to the space for bands now. I kind of wish we'd known that back then. But I also can't have done anything about it. We knew what we knew. I even think now, y'know there's loads of people that they're in a few bands, or like, someone says, I'm just going to sit in for a couple of gigs with this band, because their bass player's away or whatever, I'd like to check this with Jamie in case I'm being a dick, but I'm quite sure that that would have been met with some hostility.
If you had gone and done stuff with another band?
Any of us! I don't think that was the thing. We were all these little tightknit gangs. We'd great craic touring with bands and sharing vans and stuff. But I don't think the musical collaborations were as much up for grabs at the time. So I'm a bit jealous about that. And at the same time, it did mean that you were just laser-focused on your own thing and you weren't hedging your bets across a few things. So I don't know if that's a good or a bad thing, but certainly different.
How did the reunion come about last year? Is that what you were calling it, a reunion?
Yeah. Again, I didn't think I was old enough. Actually it made us think about a time: I think we just literally released our second record... and I remember we were in the car one day, and we were listening to a radio station, and there was a tune of ours on a blast from the past segment. I mean, I can't have been more than 21. And it was just our second album. So I really am vintage, a veteran now. Well, one of the things was that me and Jamie were like brother and sister throughout the whole time Fight Like Apes were together. I think things broke down with us a little bit - not in a particularly dramatic way, just - I don't know which came first, really, but things weren't working out the way we thought they were. And things got frayed.
Towards the end of things, the last album?
Yeah. And it was tough. Everyone has their goals and dreams and stuff, and we weren't at the place that we thought we would be at that stage for lots of reasons. So we quit the band. And we also - this wasn't spoken about - but we really went our separate ways. All we knew as adults was Fight like Apes, and we very much had to go off and find our own thing, which was quite sad. We never spoke about it, actually. But it was the best thing for us. We both have our own lives and our own friends and have made careers for ourselves outside of the band. But I really, really missed him. And I would get very nostalgic. There was a couple of times the morning after a night out where I'd look at my Spotify and I'd been listening to Fight like Apes, so I was like, 'This is pathetic'.
What's your go-to Fight like Apes song to listen to?
It depends, 'Battlestations' usually. Highly recommend it. Me and Jamie would be in touch the odd time. But we ended up hanging out and turns out he'd been having quite a similar - I don't know if his was as pathetic as him realising he'd been listening to himself on nights out... And he'd been having the same thoughts and the same nostalgia about it.
Was it unfinished business? Was it that you didn't like the way that it ended?
It transpires that, yes, it was, I don't think we were really aware of that. But I mean, the last three shows we ever did were amazing. We did Whelan's, Connolly's of Leap and Róisín Dubh. They were magic. The big fear is that no one cares. the same for people with most things in life, the big fear is that you didn't have as much of an impact as you thought and those shows gave us a lot of warmth and there was a lot of heart in them and the people there got it and it was great. But you know, our career didn't end in the way that we would have liked. So we had a couple of ideas. We were going to just maybe rerelease an album, but we think that is spoofer stuff, we were like, 'What would our justification be in that?' A remaster? My ears aren't good enough to appreciate remasters. So I didn't expect other people's to be. And it was kind of scary. We were just like, 'let's do it'. One of the great things was we spoke to Niall Morris, who would have been a booker of ours back in the day. He was in LA at the time, and I rang him and just said, like, 'Are we being mental if we booked a big venue?' And he was like, 'Do it, don't look back. I'll fly home for it. I know loads of people that will travel for it, just do it.' And then it sold out within an hour. So that was scary as well. The big fear is that no one will buy tickets and the second biggest fear is that everyone will buy tickets, then you have to do it. I just wanted to make sure the first time we stepped out on stage together in seven years wasn't onto the Olympia. So we booked two shows before it. We did the Garage in London and then the week before that, we played Bello Bar, which was really important. All three gigs were just magic.
What were those practice shows like, was it like you're greasing the wheels or was it instantly, 'Oh we're back baby!'?
We worked our asses off. So that felt good. In the Bello Bar that nice, it certainly wasn't perfect, but it felt like our atmosphere, our environment as well; a little sweaty, low ceiling, bar. Loads of friends there, a lot of whom we met through music and stuff - most of whom I'd say we've met through music. It was amazing, it was such a relief. And London was by no means a practice gig, in our heads it kind of was. But I mean it was a sold-out Garage in London, it was amazing. That was nice, too, because my mum was there. The lads, all their wives were there. I mean, you're afraid of letting a lot of people - or not letting them down, you can't let them down, but just being disappointing. So it was nice for them to come to London and be like, 'No, you've still got it'. That's cool. And the Olympia is just one of my favourite nights of my life, It was just the right decision. We all felt so at home on the stage. We're going to do April 6 in the Olympia. And then I think I'd be surprised if we did anything after that.
Really? Is that the full stop?
I think so. We don't want to get greedy. As you say, this does feel like we got to end things again. We don't want to fucking fall into the trap of letting it peter out.
Did you talk about making new music in the past year or in the past 18 months?
Yeah, we did. And we were up for it and had the energy for it and everything. But we'd be kind of rehearsing the songs that we wrote when we were like 19 and we're just not that band anymore. We're not those people anymore by a long shot. So me and Jamie will work on some music together, but they won't be as Fight like Apes. And actually, we recorded a cover that we're going to release a couple of weeks before the Olympia show that I'm so proud of and is kind of very relevant to the moment But that's the only new thing we'll have this year. Who knows about the future but as Fight like Apes, I don't think we'll be writing any new music.
Did you feel really confident onstage just from all the other stuff you've done in the interim between the Fight like Apes' reunion and finishing up beforehand, like you've played with Le Galaxie, you've done loads of stuff with Elaine Mai as well. And there's probably other things as well that I can think of Did you feel a new confidence maybe?
I just thought my voice has to have gotten better (laughs). It has to have One of the big things I'm sure anybody who finishes up with a band or lets anything go, it's really sad to think of the songs not being played again. So there was this new energy in doing those songs on stage. I've been doing this full time since Fight like Apes ended, but nothing as high tempo as Fight like Apes stuff. So I felt like I'd been working on all the other stuff a bit, like vocally and lots of other things. But there was just a youthful reserve of energy there somewhere. I think we all felt really confident, though. It's funny, when you practice stuff loads, it actually works.
You probably didn't need to practice when you were younger, though, it's just in you.
Oh my god. Well, we needed I needed to Google lyrics this time. It was bad. It was really bad. About two months before the Olympia last year - and I include myself in this - I was like, 'if this doesn't improve I'm pulling it'. Nobody asked us to do this, we decided to do this so it has to be as good as it could be. Everyone worked really hard. And that works apparently, turns out.
You did a couple of solo gigs last year as well. You did Irish Music Week. I didn't get to see you, I'm so intrigued as to what you're what you're thinking about solo wise.
Yep. I played Irish Music Week with an amazing band who I really couldn't have done the show without. So I made the album with Ian McFarlane and we recorded with Rian Trench in the Meadows... I've never actually done a solo album before and I found it incredibly intense, the idea of releasing it.
Like extra weight on your shoulders?
Totally. I mean, the lead-up to that Ireland Music Week show, I've never felt anxiety like it. I'm still trying to figure that out. And I'm also trying to not think about it because I just want to release the album. I've been sidetracked in the last few months with other work, but I fully intend on releasing the album this year. The big thing being that I need to work on more stuff. And you know the way, I'm not going to really start working on new stuff before I release this because then you kind of lose your vigour for what you have. So yeah, I need to do that.
Is it almost daunting, in a way, just seeing all these young up-and-coming bands, and you're like, Oh my God, how do I almost compete with them in a way just because they want to tour the shit out of it and everything. I'm guessing you're kind of not able, or not wanting to push as much as they can into it, if that makes sense.
Oh yeah, this end of things is a young man's game. I don't feel old in any way. I talk to people like this, who've been doing this at the same pace as me, at the same time as me. I don't want to tour the UK and sleep in a van. But at the same time, my focus really is -and this is something that I would say to other people, and it's been very annoying to have to take my own advice - but you just have to release it. That's what we do. It's the same with what you're doing. I'm not suggesting people should have to release stuff they're not happy with, by the way, but you have to be releasing music, you have to be putting out podcasts, stuff has to move, the wheels have to keep moving. You have to be part of it. And it affects everything. If I'm being introduced, let's say, as Other Voices presenter who's also a very active musician, it kind of gets under your skin a little bit that you're like, 'Well, actually, when's the last time I released music?' And that's not all that a musician is; obviously you can be a performer and all those things, but I do feel like I'm a little bit not part of it at the moment.
Of the music scene?
Yeah, of musiciany circles. And I've released lots of stuff with people. I've done lots of stuff with Elaine MaI and DJ Kormac, I've a Daniel Johnston tribute album coming out this year with Jerry Fish. So I'm very much part of it, to a degree, but I just feel like there's something in not doing the really brave end of things, releasing your own stuff and just seeing how it goes when you float it out to people. That makes me feel a little bit on the outside. And I can fix that pretty easily.
Yeah, well, that sounds like you'll get to experience it at some point this year anyway. That's exciting. You don't look too excited!
I know. And the thing is, I really liked the music. If I didn't think the tunes were good, this just wouldn't be on the table at all. Maybe I'm afraid of being part of it as well as not being part of it. So yeah, there's only one way of figuring that stuff out.
It's just great to see some of the people who we mentioned who have released albums again, I mean, David Kitt who released his eighth album last year, Idiot Check. I think it's one of the best albums he's ever made. So it's not like people forget how to do it, you know, they just need the right lease of creativity or something.
That's so true. That's so true. And I do think obviously, yeah, there's skills that people need to stay on top of but you do. Those things are still happening. I just bumped into Una Mullally on the way to meet ya and she said, 'Where's this album?' I was like, SHUTUP!' I have to stop telling people to shut up when they very kindly try and encourage me... I think it's a habit too as well. With Fight like Apes, I was releasing an album every two years and then with Le Galaxie it was one out pretty quickly after that, and then when I was working with other people - Elaine Mai is just such a grafter... and incredibly dedicated to a bit of excellence and a bit of brilliance and doesn't quit until she gets to the thing that she wants. And same with Kormac, it's just absolutely amazing the work that he's done; he's a proper composer who's working on enormous works and stuff and that's been amazing to be part of as well. And they all like my album.
Great, I can't wait to hear it. Do you get a different kind of satisfaction from doing the Other Voices stuff? How long have you been doing it?
I think this will be my eighth year. It's mad and an absolutely completely different type of gig. When they first asked me did I want to present the show, I honestly just didn't know what that meant. I'd never presented something or interviewed somebody or anything. And I'd say there was some sketchy moments when I first started. This sounds really stupid but you don't realise that you're there to let the other person talk because you'd just be kind of chatting away and talking over someone and laughing and stuff and then you kind of have to realise that it's a very different thing when you're there to give other people a platform to show themselves or their art or whatever it is. It's been an incredible - it's a pinch-me job.
Just knowing every December you're going to into Dingle for however long you need to go down for it!
On its own! On its own it’s amazing.
This season was Aoife Woodlock's last season with Other Voices. She's one of the people that books the bands. That just sounds like it's so small compared to what they do; they curate this incredible show. So that made December in Dingle particularly special Aoife and Colm Mac Con Iomaire would be very close - Aoife manages Colm - and Aoife wanted Kae Tempest for the show for forever. So Kae and Colm together was just a joke, a dream come true. And then the Joy... a five-piece South African vocal group. Damien Dempsey describes music and how the fact that we're made of a lot of water and how the sounds of music and the performance of it and the vibrations can actually change the composition of your body. I talked to Wallis Bird about this recently too. Listening to the Joy, I was like, Oh, I kind of get it, I felt a bit different after it. And weirdly, same with Gurriers, actually, in St James's Church. They couldn't be more different to the Joy but I think I wasn't expecting them to be - I've seen them before, but in smaller venues. They were absolutely amazing.
(The Joy and Gurriers at Other Voices. Pictures: Rich Gilligan)
And final question. You, Huw Stevens, Annie Mac - what a great trio of hosts. What are you up to around Other Voices? Are you all hanging out? Are you getting pints together, saying all this stuff you can't see on TV?
Of course there's a bit of that alright. I promise you I'm not just saying - and Annie and Huw would agree - we're not scripted at all. We're not restricted in any way. So we don't really have a huge amount of say off the mic that we can't say on it. There's no bands on the show that we don't think are brilliant.... we're dying to introduce the band and leg it in to watch them. But other than that, Annie and Huw, they're just deadly,
They still love music as well. Like when I was down the last time, a couple of years ago, I remember seeing Huw in front of me in the middle of the day watching Junior Brother.
Huw would not rest if there's gigs on. You and him would get on like a house on fire at a festival together. We'll absolutely have to make that happen. If he has a half an hour free, he's going through a schedule and he'll like the name of a band or he'll say he's heard something about them and he'll be at everything. He's just a massive music fan. Annie's the same and Annie's so recognisable that you might think she'd be a little bit discreet around; she loves meeting people, she's such a buzzer. She played Geaney's Yard the last night of Other Voices and it was unbelievable. It really was. She's just such a vibe. She's such a huge success and in the very realest way and the most well-earned way. And I do like going for little hot whiskeys with them and little pints with them throughout the weekend. Yeah it's great.