Photos by Jenna Murray, Words by Lulu Rodriguez
Fontaines D.C., post punk band from Dublin played another series of sold out shows in New York City in support of their recent release Romance (Deluxe Edition). Whenever the band comes to NYC they cause quite the stir and lucky for us we got to catch them in the dazzling and likely haunted Hammerstein Ballroom.
That night Fontaines D.C. delivered, as they always do. The band knows their audience, their showmanship and musicianship are top shelf, and the songs leave behind lingering poetry. The band opened with Romance, spinning an incredible storm of anticipation and chaos all night. Highlights of the evening included their performances of Death Kink, Sundowner, and Boys in the Better Land.
I had the pleasure of having a chat with bassist, Deego, before their first night where I got to pick his brain about tour, his writing process, and personal style.
Lulu: How are you doing today? How’s tour going?
Deego: Doing good, yeah. Tour’s been going great. We’ve just done four weeks in the states. Went through the south, through the deep south to the Midwest and to the East Coast now.
Lulu: Do you like being in New York?
Deego: I love being in New York, obviously, like it’s an amazing place.
Lulu: Wait, does your tour end in New York?
Deego: Yeah, for the time being anyway. Then we go to Europe for festival season.
Lulu: Ah yes. You will be touring with Been Stellar a bit for festival season, right?
Deego: Yeah! Do you know them?
Lulu: Yes they are lovely people.
Deego: Oh, cool.
Lulu: Yep! So, you’ve been here a few times in New York. Are there any spots you enjoy going to in the city when you’re able to catch a break between shows?
Deego: We usually just go over to Brooklyn… There’s these hotels over there on like 11th and 12th street? And yeah then just go to like bars around there. Whatever is open.
Lulu: .. Sick. Do you like Karaoke?
Deego: Yeah, I haven’t done karaoke in New York.
Lulu: Oh you gotta do karaoke in New York!
Deego: It’s good here, is it?
Lulu: Yes!
Lulu: You’ve been touring pretty consistently over the past few years. How has that experienced evolved for you over the years? And do you think your relationship to touring has changed as the band has grown especially in audience?
Deego: I suppose it’s the same thing really at the end of the day, isn’t it?
Lulu: I guess so, yeah.
Deego: Haha but no yeah. I think it’s been good. I mean, obviously at first we were full of romance and excitement towards touring, getting to see all these places for the first time, going to go to the US and see it properly, you know, driving in a splitter together and the road and yeah, it was amazing. And going around Europe, and Australia and these things. But then there was a certain point where it was making us very tired. We were double booked and stuff because of like our album being successful or whatever. And we had very little money to start as well, so we were working hard. Aaand then obviously after Covid, I think everyone had a renewed love for touring.
Lulu: Oh, that’s so true. Yeah, I bet.
Deego: You know, ’cause yeah after being like sat on the couch or whatever.. Cooped up for months.
Lulu: You’ve been playing some pretty big venues for a while now it seems– Do you ever miss the smaller, more intimate shows? The kind where the crowd’s a little more right up in your face and more immediate, less removed?
Deego: Yeah, we get to do that sometimes here still. Like we were at, um, where were we? Indianapolis? We played to 900 people.
Lulu: Oh nice. Yeah, 900 is still kind of intimate it seems. Glad you still get pockets of that here and there. Personally, I really enjoy a smaller show. Shifting gears from touring– as I’m sure you get asked about that all the time. You and the rest of the band met in college and bonded over a shared love of poetry, right?
Deego: Yes.
Lulu: Do you still get to write today? Whether it’s poems or prose?
Deego: I write a little bit, yeah. I write a little bit of prose, not so much poetry anymore. Little bit.
Lulu: Nice, have you ever thought about publishing anything or care to share anything you’ve been working on?
Deego: Haha, no. But, yeah, I think we were speaking about doing a poetry book or something like that before in the past. But we’ve been very fixated on music for the last few years. I would probably like to write some short stories to be honest.
Lulu: Oooh, really?
Deego: That’s the kind of thing I do more so these days.
Lulu: I’m curious, whenever you all get a little break from touring and music, is that something you think you’d dive into and explore more of?
Deego: I like to do it on tour as well ’cause it gives me my little own space. And if I can be anywhere and I can just go somewhere and write and then it’s my own little world.
Lulu: Okay, sweet, so do you journal much then when you find some alone time?
Deego: Yeah. I love journaling. Doodling as well. I love to doodle.
Lulu: Nice, amazing. I’m a big journaler too— I have to do it every day or life feels crazy. I guess this is kind of my journal right here although it’s actually a planner, but it works. It’s really nice, I recommend this kind as well.
(It’s a moleskin, by the way, for those who may be curious)
Deego: Looks nice.
Lulu: Yes, and then, with a new planner, I’ll take a photo in a photobooth and paste it here so I remember what I look like every year.
Deego: Oh, lovely.
Lulu: Let’s get back into it… This is a big one. In your first album there’s a song called Chequeless Reckless and you open with the line, “A sellout is someone who becomes a hypocrite in the name of money,” Now that the band is signed to a major label and your sound is reaching more mainstream audiences, do you ever feel tension between your early values and current path? And how do you stay grounded and avoid becoming what your younger self may have feared?
Deego: That’s a really good question… Well, do you know what? I think that, to be honest with you, there is nowhere near as much money in music as people would think. And that, like, even with the major label, with the amount of money that they give you at first it might seem far more substantial. It’s also invested in a lot more things. There’s expectation for it to be invested more in marketing and stuff like that. And music video budgets get higher, production quality gets higher… And it’s increasing the size of the business. It’s increasing the size of the gamble your investors are willing to take on you because of your success, you know? And so even though it might appear upfront that they’ve given us whatever amount of money, and I don’t think that that’s something that could really change us.. Our morals or values or something, because it’s not, it hasn’t impacted us a huge amount. In our personal finances, I would say that we’re all able to afford our rent now, which is nice.
Lulu: Yes, rent is important.
Deego: Yes, Which is great, but also none of us have mortgages. Hopefully someday we can make enough money to forget our values if we really if we wanted to haha.
Lulu: Haha, yeah same here. And thank you for sharing that. I’m curious– Since releasing Deluxe not long after Romance, how does it feel to revisit and expand on that body of work so soon after putting out the original album?
Deego: It was nice. Yeah. I think, you know, we wanted to have a certain set track listing that worked quite well. But we had recorded all those songs together. It was quite difficult for us to not include a couple of those songs. So I was really happy when we got to release them all together.
Lulu: Aw, nice. I know that in Sundowner it’s you and Curley singing most of it. Are there any other tracks on the Deluxe version where it’s you or someone else contributing vocally?
Deego: Yes on Before You, I Just Forget Curley does the spoken words verse.
Lulu: How does it feel to get to perform some of those songs live now? Has that shifted the energy of the set at all?
Deego: I think it feels good. We’ve expanded our sound a bit. Each album we’ve done, we feel like we’re pushing our musicianship a bit more. It’s getting a bit more into real musician territory maybe than when we started. Which is cool. But also I think that we’re at some kind of moment where in America, at least, we’re picking up some fans that we haven’t had before. Like, in our previous albums, a lot of people were on this journey with us and they knew the other music when they arrived. Even when we were touring Skinty Fia, our third record, they would’ve listened to maybe the first or the second bit. But on this one, I do get the impression that they haven’t really listened to the other albums, that they’re just fans of Romance. Which is cool, but it gives some kind of association to the songs ‘cause I feel like the songs are like the reaction we get out of the crowd as well. And that’s what I’ve come to associate them with ’cause they become raucous only when there’s a raucous reaction. And I think that the newer songs I’m playing in the context of a gig where the American fans can either be amazing or like, kind of like, “What is this song? I don’t know it.”
Lulu: Interesting.
Deego: So it’s given me some kind of association of that with the newer songs, which is kind of something I’m trying to digest at the moment, I suppose.
Lulu: Do you feel like American audiences react a bit more or are just different? Like are you saying there are certain songs that hit harder in specific cities or countries?
Deego: Honestly, I think Americans are just raised to be far more confident than Europeans. The Europeans are probably thinking that inside, but they won’t express it. British politeness or whatever.
Lulu: Interesting… Do you appreciate that kind of confidence—like, being able to express or emote how you’re feeling in the moment, even while you’re all up there playing? ….. Does that make sense?
Deego: Yeah, it does make sense. Yeah, I like it when it’s positive. When it’s negative, I still respect it, but I just feel a bit like… Okay, gimme something.
Lulu. Yeah, totally, I get that. And from what I’ve seen, the crowds clearly love you.. You all get a lot of attention for your style. I’m curious how you see the relationship between fashion and music, especially in how the band presents itself these days.
Deego: I think it’s quite important these days for us at least, because we just realized we could express something of the music and how the music feels, the atmosphere of the music before people had listened to it. Which is really cool. You know, you can have an opportunity with a poster or the cover of a magazine or whatever it is to sell the record, sell is such a word, but you know, to get across some of the vividness of the music that we’re trying to. And before we were kind of dressed in a certain way with the Doc Marten shoes and the Fred Perrys or whatever. You knew what it was, but it didn’t intrigue you. You could kind of know what it was to look at. It was gonna be a post punk album. Do you know what I mean?
Lulu: Yes. (I think)
Deego: So we had this thing.. We’ve shaken it up with the music, we wanna shake it up with the image. How do we relay that to people? So we just went for it a bit more, and I think we’re settling into it now as well. Into the style where we kind of all have our own personal styles within that now.
Lulu: Sweet, yeah. I really love your style. Y’all are crushing it. Wrapping up a bit here.. Being on the road can be a lot mentally, I imagine. Do you have any routines that help you stay balanced?
Deego: Yes, I try to meditate a bit each day. That’s a big one. I journal too, like you do, when I can. And just finding quiet moments whenever possible. It’s a loud job, haha, so any change to be still helps.
Lulu: Totally, I was actually up here during your soundcheck earlier and it was wild how much it reverberates.
Deego: Yeah, it’s fun in its way. But yes sometimes you just really crave quiet.
