Happy-go-lucky singer / song writer Wallis Bird took time out to speak with meg.ie. She’s quite the busy lady with appearances in Oxegen and T in the Park as well as gigs in Whelans in Dublin and Cyprus Avenue in Cork. As for a gig in Meath, we may have to wait a while.

I love her attitude, she stays out of the business end of things as much as she can and does what she does best, write songs and sing them. She’s cute, quirky and a self proclaimed tree hugger, not to mention a voice that sounds like Janis Joplin. I asked her about how she felt being compared to the musical legend that is Joplin, she is what many young female singers aspire to sound like and would do anything to be compared to. Wallis had never heard of Janis Joplin until a while ago, both a blessing to her unique sound but a sin in the music world. “When people started telling her she sounded like Joplin and Wallis decided to find out more and now she’s listening.

“I’m only getting into her stuff now, my friends are getting me into her. I was watching The Festival Express and she was just so alive and she didn’t give a shit. She sang with her heart and she was professional and she was wild and she had a background to go with what she was singing about. So it’s really nice to be compared to her, even well before I knew what she was like”.

She lists Paul Simon and Tom Waits among her influences, so where does the inspiration stop and Wallis Bird begin? “I think I am my music. My music kind of leads me actually, it sometimes tells me what I’m feeling before I even realise it, it’s like a seer for me. I enjoy productions, I enjoy people trying different things and Tom Waits for me is great, the way he can make a tin bucket sound just so musical is a very beautiful thing. He can take things that you would consider everyday pieces of junk and he makes music. It’s so right on that he is able to derive music from something so static as a radiator. I recorded my first album before I listened to Tom Waits and I realised that I was using radiators and tool boxes and lots of crap for sound and so I related to him a lot that way. Paul Simon is the King of Melody. I learn new music everyday, I just try to engross myself in music all day every day”.

I asked her about her unique style of guitar playing, she plays a right handed guitar but turns it upside down. She had an accident when she was 18 months old and five of her fingers on her left hand were severed by a lawnmower. And four of them were sewn back on. Her injuries forced her to learn to play on a right-handed and she stuck with it. “It was kind of out of necessity, if you’re at a lot of house parties like I am or doing a lot of jams at people’s houses there are very few left handed guitars around, so that was one of the reasons I stuck with learning it that way”.

Her energy really prevails when she plays the guitar. Watching her playing a gigs or television appearances Wallis gives so much to her songs and almost commands the energy and happy vibes in return from her audience. In an industry blooming with new talent, Wallis Bird stuck out for Columbia Records and recently signed a record deal for distribution in Europe. She was also voted Hope for 2009 in the Meteor Awards, so things are really starting to progress for her. “I was playing covers gigs for 3 years down in Wexford and Waterford, kind of all over the place, anywhere that would have me. Then I moved up to Dublin to study and just dived right into the scene” and it certainly paid off for her, as she is releasing the follow up to her debut album Spoons at the end of July. Her new album entitled New Boots is out in Ireland on July 24th with the first single To My Bones hitting the airwaves on June 26th. “I wanted to write a song about the joy of life. I saw that everybody was getting caught up in materialism and worrying about their money and what kind of car they have and all those stupid things that really don’t matter because at the end of the day if you’re not happy then what have you got to show for your life. I wanted to write a song that would bring people together, that they could scream it together, you know and feel a bit silly about screaming something like ‘life I love you to my bones’, so the build up towards the end where I’m kind of whispering ‘oh life I love you to my bones’ and I sing it so often that people start to just sing along with it and it gets people singing along. It’s the happiest song I’ve ever written about the great times I have in my life really”.

She is self-proclaimed thinker and wonders about people getting lost in things that don’t matter. “I don’t like to be sad too often, I don’t like to bog myself down with negative thoughts, because I’ve kind of trained myself in a way that negative thoughts do not help your soul whatsoever. So I’m always trying to find the positive side. Sure I got plenty of angry and emotional songs but I tend not to dam myself so much with a song that is heartbreaking”.

Have a listen to Wallis Bird and you’ll hear the message of passion and happiness coming through. “I don’t like people who take their music too seriously, I like people to have fun and sing what they mean and say what they want to say. The songs that I write are emotional, I want people to open themselves up a little bit and not be scared of saying how they feel or not be scared of their emotions and that would be the message that I’m putting through in my music”.

Wallis’ single is out June 26th and her album New Boots is out in record stores on July 24th. You can catch her on Sunday at Oxegen. www.wallisbird.com

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