Marie O’Hara and Mariel McCormack are Botched Fairytale. The Irish duo are about to release their debut album which they’re distributing free to, well anyone who asks for it basically (see their MySpace page). Their depraved collection of songs takes everything from epic piss-ups to Cork holiday camps. Meg spoke to them about the origins of the band, the painstaking process of recording and of course where they holidayed as kids…
How do you guys know each-other, how did Botched Fairytale come about?
Marie: From school, smoking in the toilets. I’m not sure exactly, we started writing a song and it was crap for ages but we kept changing it til it was alright. I think we both realised that it’s really hard to write a proper song. I’d never thought about it properly before, I’d always got the impression that you’re supposed to wake up in the middle of the night and be inspired or something and write a song in twenty minutes… I’m sure people do get inspired or whatever but I don’t think it’s viable to expect it to happen 11 or 12 times a year and then like 3 or 4 false alarms to cover the b-sides if you’re gonna put out singles… We just realised that that didn’t have to be the case, that the kind of songs we liked to listen to were really thought out and probably took ages to get right…anyway we got it into our heads that we could do a good album if we worked really hard and the whole thing got out of control and suddenly we were in Mayo reliving the “just play the fking note” scene from Fr Ted for a year and trying to record an album.
Mariel: At the start I can remember us being pretty bored…and there was nothing new out there for us, we didnt relate to any new music coming out…we wanted to make the kind of music that we listen to ourselves. So we started and it all got completely out of hand… Botched Fairytale was originally a song, it was the title of the first song we did together, that song was scrapped and as we wrote more and more the title Botched Fairytale kinda hung around, so about a year into the saga we decided to call the album Botched Fairytale, it was all heading that way, all the songs were Botched Fairytales, any one of them could have been called Botched Fairytale, the concept was there already and the name fit.
Starting out on this project what kind of musical experience did you guys have?
Mariel: We had a limited amount of musical experience, we had a limited amount of just about everything, equipment seemed to be our biggest limitation and we were constantly struggling with that.
The recording process was quite drawn out, were you juggling college or work while you were doing it? How steep a learning curve was there, producing your own record?
Marie: When we started, I remember googling something like “thing to connect mic to computer”… so I’d say it was very steep, now the technical side of things is just a very long and very very boring uphill struggle. It’s not the production that holds things up though, we don’t care too much about that side of things. The whole idea behind the album is to do something that sounds original, not nececcerally a concept album but a proper together one that’s not just like a pile of songs we happened to write lately. It was stupidly hard to come up with a sound, especially cause we’d no idea what we wanted. Maybe we’re just a bit thick… but I dont think so.
Mariel: Yeah the music was complicated…For the first year, at least anyway, we we’re trying out all sorts of things to get the sound we wanted. The problem was we didn’t know what that sound was and over that first year I’d say we produced the makings of an album, a very poor album that would never be released. For a very long time the music was bland and uncomfortable, it wasn’t strong enough, it sounded like a toy, we wanted more all the time, louder, bigger, it was never enough. I think it was mostly to do with the fact that the music was completely wrong for the lyrics, i think it was constantly trying to catch up with the lyrics I dunno if it has caught up yet, I dont think so.. it’s still very flat.
Marie: Things just take us a long time cause we’re really fussy about what we want, I think we spend most of our time ruling stuff out which is annoying ’cause months go by when it feels like we’re not achieving anything …it’s the same with the words, like Chasers is a really simple song but it took about 50 pages of drafts to make it simple. I dunno if it’s supposed to be like this, probably not but it’s been going on for so long that it would be a bit mental to start compromising now.
Mariel: Yeah it all takes so much time, Some days you could be siting there all day and nothing gets done, some songs are on their way out after a month of work and somehow we manage to save them. I think it’s taking longer to do songs now, its not getting any easier anyway….Then there’s mixing, we dont really get a kick out of that, it’s a job we have to do to get the music out there. It’s gotten easier though, we have learned not to get too caught up in all that. The song’s either good or not, no amount of manipulation is going to solve anything, as they say you can’t polish shite.
Can we expect to see you playing the album live?
Mariel: Not at the moment, maybe in the future, with a band it would be great, a filthy piss up, everyone falling down drunk and having fun, that would be a savage gig. I’d love to gig but for that you need more than two people to create the sound or you have to opt for the accoustic route which doesn’t work for us.
You’re giving the album away free once it’s completed, is this part of a meticulously thought out marketing strategy or are you just keen for it to be heard?
Marie: Of course we’re keen to be heard but I think it’s common sense to give it away. We want anyone who’s interested to have a copy. Yeah we could sell however many copies but on such a small scale it would be mostly to people who we know and are just buying the thing to be supportive cause they’re lovely people. We could cover the cost of the cds that way.
But the price of cds is a bit silly anyway when you think about it. It’s just this random “the most we can get away with” price made up by record companies based on selling 100s of 1000s of something and having to pay people wages. Like if we were on min wage it would’ve cost like 80 grand to make the album…I’d even round that up to 100 for overtime and emotional trauma incurred. I dunno exactly but we’d have to sell an awful lot of copies or else very expensive cds to really actually break even. I’m not giving out about not making money or anything, I’m just trying to say that charging for the thing would feel like kids playing shop… and when you put so much effort into something, making a few hundred yo yo to go drinking in pubs for a couple of weeks is fantastic but not really relevant.
Mariel: Also because we don’t gig there is no other way for people get our album. It’s really nice for us too because people email us requesting one and they say hello and that’s always nice. We don’t want to be asking people for money, at the monemt it’s just not about that.. if you do a gig maybe you could break even on petrol costs or something straightforward like that…
Have to ask the obvious ‘influences’ question I’m afraid…what are ye into, any major musical influences?
Marie: I don’t like this question ’cause we’re probably influenced by loads of stuff. Definetly Nick Cave though, on top of all the obvious reasons I’m really into the way he goes to his “office” everyday to work and stays there trying to write stuff even when he wants to leave.
Also I wouldn’t say we’re influenced by Springsteen’s music but I love the way his albums are so local, especially the old stuff. Like the Asbury Park one and Nebraska as well, it’s just so American… you know you’re poor when your parents have to buy secondhand cars, I love that. Its the same with old Tom Waits stuff when he used to hang out notetaking in smokey places. I think what I mean is we’re influenced by the way Americans have all these things that they use in songs in a really normal way, attention to detail like. All the songs I really like are set somewhere, even with Irish music I think anything that really sticks is set somewhere… like Astral Weeks, everyone loves that album and I really think it’s ’cause even though it’s so dreamy and all over the place it’s still really grounded.
Mariel: We’re both influenced by very different people and so we have to make compromises all the time.. this is good though, we don’t allow each other to become completely self indulgent, if either one of us doent like something it’s gone… there is a strictly no bullshit work ethic. Like I could sit there blabbin’ on in a song about something that only I get and Marie would come along and say that’s absolutely terrible, or vice versa…. I think it’s very easy to become self indulgent to make “cool” music that makes you look good, I did that for a long time because I was scared, before you know it your making the kind of music that you would never listen to yourself. You have to be able to make a tit of yourself because thats what happens on a daily basis in real life.
Did you ever actually go to Trabolgan as kids? (See album track hello from Trabolgan)
Mariel: No
Marie: Yes
www.myspace.com/botchedfairytale
By: Kev Donnellan
