First Published June 2017
A HURRICANE AT HARVEST TIME
Since first appearing on the country music scene in Ireland in the last few years, Mayo based band Hurricane Highway have been gathering new fans as fast as they’ve been releasing some top quality tunes. And that’s pretty fast! The music, however, is just one of the reasons why the band have come so far in such a short time.
Another, and one that’s equally as important, is the fact that frontman and lead-singer Ed Holland, and band co-founder Kevin Collins, are two of the nicest guys you’ll ever meet. And funny, too. What you see is what you get with both men, and what you’ll also get whenever you’re in their company is some good laughs. They take their music seriously, but they know life is to be enjoyed. So they make it as enjoyable as they can for themselves and those around them.
Ed and I had been trying to make our diaries match up for some time so we could have a chat about all the exciting things that have been happening for Hurricane Highway. Sadly, though, we were finally able to catch up on the morning after the terrible events at the M.E.N. Arena in Manchester a couple of weeks back, when twenty-two innocent men, women, and children were murdered in cold blood by a callous, and cowardly, act of terrorism. And equally sadly, our chat on that morning is now published here only a few days after yet another despicable terror attack in London.
We began by Ed telling me how he’d become aware of unfolding events in Manchester the night of the atrocity at the M.E.N. Arena….
“Well basically I was havin’ a kind of a sleepless night so I logged onto Facebook, and I hadn’t heard anything at that stage cos’ I’d been watchin’ a bit of a film before I went to bed. I hadn’t even switched over to the news. So I logged onto Facebook, saw what was happening, and my first thought was just shock, horror straight away. I mean, at a concert, such a cowardly attack, ya know. I jumped up outta bed and I switched on Sky News, that’s what I did. It was horrific, such a helpless feeling. Needless to say, myself and Kevin (Collins, from Hurricane Highway), and everyone involved with the band send our condolences and our deepest sympathies to all of those affected and to Manchester.”
Moving on to happier matters, and one of the main reasons why we’d scheduled our chat in the first place, the release of Hurricane Highway’s fantastic debut album, ‘Exposed’, in late April. As the days ticked down to the album finally being released, I wondered what was life like for the band as they prepared for their big day?
“Very nervous! [laughs]. And excited, too. Both. So much work went into it, three years of work and seven singles in that time. There was anticipation, nerves, and excitement all at once. And anxiety, too, I’ll be honest [laughs]. All of those emotions were involved. And we weren’t expecting to hit the number one spot with it, we thought if we charted at all it would be great because there’s so much competition out there. So to actually do that, to get to number one, we were delighted. And the way it’s been received so far, and the airplay it’s been getting, it’s actually given life again to all the older singles. It’s been great.”
What had Ed been most worried about around the album’s launch?
“I suppose any artist’s biggest worry is that it wouldn’t realise the potential you feel it should. Especially when you put so much into something, with no stone left unturned, and that’s really the way we kind of tried to deliver each song and our videos, as we were goin’ along. Doin’ it all to the best of our own abilities anyway. So you’d worry that certain people mightn’t like it, that it might get slated. I haven’t really thought about it like this before, it’s a good question.”
So, for fans who may not have managed to get their hands on a copy yet, what can they expect to find on the album? Will all seven singles be there?
“Yeah, all seven singles are on ‘Exposed’, everything we’ve done since the very beginning. There’s eleven tracks in total on there, so a good few new ones as well. We have the current single, ‘Make You Mine’, which is track one on the album, and we’re hoping to release another single from it in September. We’re already workin’ on new stuff cos’ goin’ into next year we’ll be back in the studio again workin’ on the next album. We’ll probably pick a song to be the new single and test the water with it. That system kinda works for us. A lot of other artists maybe record the whole album then pick the best singles out of it, but we kinda do it the other way round [laughs]. But that just seemed to be the way it happened, there wasn’t any plan. We recorded ‘Your Man’ and that took off with all the regional radio stations. Then we were under pressure to get somethin’ else out after that, and so on it went. Yeah, so that’s kind of how it happened.”
The release of Exposed was one huge date in the diary for Hurricane Highway in 2017, and there’s another coming up in August when the band will be among an impressive homegrown contingent who will entertain country music fans at Harvest Fest.
“Yeah, Aiken Promotions rang us on a Friday and asked would we be available to go to a press-conference on a Monday, the official launch of the festival, so we said absolutely! On the Saturday they rang us again just to confirm everything and say they were delighted to have us as part of the line-up. And we were obviously pretty delighted with that, too, of course [laughs]. So we’re up in Enniskillen on the Saturday, the 26th, and Westport then on the Sunday, the 27th. We have some other good shows comin’ up too in the next while. We’re in the Roisin Dubh in Galway on the 4th of August, we’re in Ballymaloe at their festival on the 1st of July, and a few more cool ones like those, too.”
Hurricane Highway, for those of you who may not know, are very much a country-rock band with a distinctly American country influence. And to the best of this writer’s knowledge, Hurricane Highway are also the only band of their kind in Ireland. Given that fact, how would Ed describe the journey of trying to establish themselves?
“It’s been a building process, for definite. I’ll have to say that. You’re competing with all the main contenders who are in the charts, and then there’s a certain flavor of country too, so you’re goin’ to be competing with the country stars as well. Ours is more of a cross-over style, though, so there’s a small percentage of the market that we’re lookin’ at in some ways. But look, I suppose it’s about carving out a niche for ourselves in that market, really. And that’s the way it’s been from the start. So we’ve been building it all song by song. So people are getting to like us through the songs, more so than just because we happen to be the only band of our kind or anything like that, ya know. A lot of people have come up to us and said, ‘You’re brave for goin’ down the route you have’, and what they mean by that, I think, is that sometimes you’ll see even some of the big country acts comin’ in from America, the ones that are kind of doin’ what we’re doin’, and it can be hard for them in Ireland, too.”
At this stage, I suggest to Ed that we better bring his Hurricane Highway co-founder Kevin Collins into the conversation, or he won’t be too pleased with either of us!
“[Laughs], I suppose we better! Yeah, it was myself and Kevin that started Hurricane Highway. Kevin’s wife passed away a couple of years ago and he was goin’ through a kind of a hard time. And I was just after breakin’ up from a twelve year relationship around the same time. Now I’d known Kevin alright, but not very well. Anyway, he was playin’ in a bar in Westport and I went in when he was playin’ one night, and he asked me up to sing a song. So up I went, and I sang ‘Sweet Sixteen.’ Now I only found out a couple of months ago that this was actually his wife’s favourite song, which was a bit of a mad coincidence. But we’ve always felt like there was something kinda guiding us along the way, with all of the positive things that have happened. It’s been an amazing journey. So the band helped Kevin in that way, brought him out of that place he was in and gave him a kind of a distraction, I suppose you could call it. We just really bounce well off each other musically. Kevin came to me with ‘Your Man’ and said, ‘Hey, I think we should record this’, and that’s how the whole journey started. We recorded it, and from that Hurricane Highway was born. So out of bad can come good, ya know.”
I wondered if there had been any particular piece of advice that’s ever come Ed’s way, about either life in general or life in the music business, that has really helped to shape him?
“Oh yeah, jeez, that’s a tough one. But yeah, there is, plenty. I suppose one would definitely be to enjoy the journey because you don’t know what the destination is gonna be like! And that really applies to so much in life, including what happened yesterday in Manchester, ya know. Because you just don’t know what’s goin’ to happen, you have to really live in the day, I think. There’s certain things that everybody has to plan in life, but you can’t be livin’ in next August or whatever. It has to be for today, for the moment you’re in right now. We know the work we have to do for Hurricane Highway, and I know the work I have to do for it myself, but it’s still important to enjoy every part of it. And that’s more what we’re tryin’ to do with Hurricane Highway, more so than saying, well we want to reach such a peak, but never knowing if we’ll ever get there, ya know. You have to set standards, and you have to set goals, and try to achieve them all even though there’ll be some you won’t. And in this business it’s very tough because you do get a lot of knock-backs. But that’s the music business, it’s one of the toughest businesses to be in, so you have to be able to take it. I think acceptance is key as well, acceptance of life’s circumstances. Accepting life on life’s terms, I suppose.”
If it was in Ed’s power to change one thing about the country music scene in Ireland, a change that he feels would be for the better and for the greater good, what would it be?
“I’d stop people from jiving!! [laughs]. I’d get them to sit down and then they might go to more concerts! [laughs]. Ah no, I’m only joking there. I know plenty of people who are mad into jiving, they love it. But I think people sitting down to enjoy more country artists, concert style, that mightn’t be such a bad thing either, ya know! [laughs]”
To wrap things up, I decided to really get Ed thinking! So, if a movie was about to be made of Ed’s life, what would it be called? And not only that, but what songs would play over the opening and closing credits?
“That’s a tough one now! I’d have to think about that! I don’t know, ‘Exposed’, maybe, get a bit of promotion out of it for the album, too! [laughs]. I’ll probably be thinkin’ about this later and I’ll come up with a great answer altogether! I’ll ring ya back later! [laughs] And songs? Right, for the opening credits. Well I have to look at this in two different ways if it’s a movie about my life. Are we looking at the happiness, or the sad parts, ya know? I think, Aerosmith’s ‘I Don’t Want To Miss A Thing’, is that too cheesy? [laughs] I don’t know really. But there’s a song or two on the album which are very meaningful to us. ‘More Than I Could Be’ is one, track seven, and ‘If This Is Goodbye’, track number ten. Those two songs explain so much actually, they’d be great for a movie.”
On The Right TRAX 