A fantastic songwriter that instantly caught my attention, I sat down with musician KEELEY to chat about the best advice she’d give to her younger self and what’s in store for the rest of the year.
What made you decide that music is the right path for you?
From the moment music first seized my soul as a sonically spellbound 14 year-old, there was going to be no other path I would pursue in life. And so it has proved. Music is the greatest thing in the world. It consumes my every waking hour, in a way that is unusual, possibly unique. I live on my own in a rented cottage in the country, with no pets, no television, no car, almost no possessions other than books and records and no love life (and no desire for one either). I spend all my time devouring, and being devoured by, music. Songwriting, rehearsing, recording, listening to music, reading books on bands and the music business, doing online promo, doing interviews, arranging live dates, responding to fans and interacting with my manager and my producer. The only things I do outside of my own music is recording my radio show (“KEELEY’s Blissed-Out Bangers”), going to gigs and buying records. So it wasn’t the case that I decided music was the right path for me, I didn’t make a conscious decision. Rather, it chose me. Music lured me into it’s loving lair and all these years later I’m still there.
What’s your writing process like? Do you write the music or lyrics first?
I just make sure I’m present to be able to catch the songs when they fall out of the sky. That’s the best description for my songwriting process. It’s an extraordinary and mystical experience every time it happens. I’ve written roughly 1,000 songs but not once have I ever sat down and tried to write a song. Rather, when I hear the music in my mind’s ear, I find the notes on the guitar and transcribe it, or I pick up my guitar with no idea that a song is about to fall out of the sky, and a complete song just appears, it flows out, always in one sitting and almost always in completed form. 3 or 4 minutes after there being no song I’ll be stood there suddenly with a complete song – intro, verses, chorus, middle-eight, riffs, solo, outro, vocal melodies, lyrics – and I won’t really have done anything other than just having been present to receive it as it arrived as if by magic. It’s the most spiritual experience I’ve had in life and so far it’s happened to me roughly a thousand times. One year, a total of 118 new songs flowed out of me, but then I went through 3 years at one stage where I didn’t write a single song. Because I never, ever chase it. I don’t have to. The songs either fall out of the sky, or they don’t. I trust that process completely. And yet I’ve written more songs by not trying to write songs than anyone I’ve ever heard of has by trying to write songs. The songs write themselves, and they choose certain people as the conduit through which they emerge into the world. All you have to do is make yourself available, and be present often enough for the pure pathway of songs to entrust you with their gilded gifts.
What’s the best advice you’d give to your younger self?
I love this question because I know exactly what advice to give my younger self…
One, buy as many records as possible and go to as many gigs as possible. You will never, ever regret buying more records and going to more gigs. I regret not doing a lot more of both in my younger years, even though I’ve gone to a total of 316 gigs in my life so far, not including the gigs I myself have played.
Two, leave school aged 16 and leave home aged 16. I ran away from home at 18 and never looked back but had I done so two years earlier I could have and would have saved myself from going through what remain to this day the two worst, most miserable and most hellishly unbearable years of my life.
Three, avoid ever getting into relationships and any so-called “love life”. Instead, spend every waking minute doing then what you do now – namely, pursuing the sonic cause with the requisite fierce focus and total all-out immersion. Also, for every hour you avoid a “love life” will mean you can spend an extra hour listening to music on headphones, which is the best thing to do outside of playing music.
Four, don’t waste time contacting record labels and trying to obtain management, and ignore the press completely. All that stuff is just chasing one’s tail, and recipes for frustration. Instead, put all your energy and time into making your art as good as it can possibly be. Then work to make it even better. Relentlessly rehearse and record. Sharpen your chops as a musician as if your life depends on it, because it does. You won’t find a record deal or a manager, they will find you, when you’re good enough and when you’re truly ready and rounded. You might think you’re more than ready already, but thinking it is one thing, knowing it is another. And life knows best, so trust the process no matter how long it takes.
What’s in store for you for the rest of the year?
I’ve got to spend the next two weeks doing more promo for my album and producing two new music videos. Then I’m going to America for the first time! For a three-week radio promo tour. Which I’m so excited about, it promises to be an extraordinary adventure. Then I go back to the Republic of Ireland to do a week of filming before I travel to Northern Ireland to do some in-store gigs at record shops that are stocking the album. Then I’m off to Spain for a week before returning to Ireland and travelling on to England and Scotland for my band’s first tour of the UK which I’m extremely excited about. That will take me up to the last week of September which is as far as I’ve got planned for now!
Tell Mogg Blog viewers about your latest release! What’s the inspiration behind that?
What I do is unique, in that I’m seemingly the only music artist in the world who writes and performs songs that are exclusively about one subject and even more unusually, that subject is a murder victim. Her name is Inga Maria Hauser, she was an artist, musician and student from Munich, Germany who was tragically murdered aged only 18 in Northern Ireland in 1988. I first came across Inga’s case in 2016 and immediately became obsessed with the details of it, and was fascinated by her and in particular the backpacking trip she was on that would culminate in her brutal murder. From that moment I resolved to devote the rest of my life to trying to make a positive contribution towards her case and her cause, from writing what would become an enormous blog that’s the definitive online account of the case (The Keeley Chronicles), to helping to lead a public campaign on behalf of justice for Inga in Northern Ireland, to helping to arrange the first public memorial for Inga in Ballypatrick Forest to commemorate the 30th anniversary of her murder in 2018, to creating a lasting musical monument to her memory with the writing, recording and release of a vast batch of songs inspired by her and her story, of which last year’s debut mini-album Drawn to the Flame and the new debut full-length album Floating Above Everything Else are just the first two instalments of this singular sonic odyssey and visionary mission.
It is written.
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