Talking to...Uiscedwr

Uiscedwr have just released the second album, “Circle” on the Yukka Label. The long awaited sequel to “Everywhere” was disrupted, initially by a change of guitarist and then by Anna Esslemont falling seriously ill.
Fortunately Anna recovered and rejoined Cormac Bryne and Kevin Dempsey in the studio to complete the second album. “Circle” was officially launched at Cambridge and supported with a set on the Friday night. (Other dates will be available)
We managed to catch up with Anna and Kevin, whilst Cormac was busy on stage with Seth Lakeman’s band.
(If we’re looking like we’re a bit biased on the pictures. It’s not because Anna is prettier, it’s because Kevin hid in the red light on a poorly lit stage ?)

#A=Anna #K=Kevin #N=Neil

#N Congratulations on the album and launching it here. It was an album delayed by your illness. How did you discover that you had medical problems that would impact recording the album?

#A Cormac and I were buying a house in West Yorkshire, where we are now. I went to register with my new GP and they asked if there were any problems and I mentioned that I was a bit tired and that I’d had a couple of bruises come up that I didn’t remember getting and I was in hospital that night. It was a bank of blood tests after that. It was reasonably serious. It was good from my point of view because I was feeling unreasonably tired, but it turned out that was because I was running four pints short of what everybody else has.

#N It was also the timing as well. The first album had been received well. There was a sense of anticipation about what was going to happen next. You’ld got the first bits down. How frustrating was it to suddenly have to stop everything?

#A Hugely frustrating. More so because we’d just started working with Kevin earlier in the year. We’d done a few gigs, we’d got our sets together. It was just starting to work. We’d even started recording, it was totally devastating. We’d done about five days of recording, laid down a couple of tracks. It was going brilliantly, we were getting on with planning, then I got sick, which is a bit of a downer.

#N Were you able to write during that period or wouldn’t your doctors let you do anything?

#A I didn’t really write much at all. When I was in hospital, I did have notepads with me. To be honest it was so morose and sad and depressing. I just felt at that point that I wasn’t ready to share this. When I do put this down and I’m sure I will, I don’t want to be feeling sorry for my self. I want to put it down and say ‘this is what happened and now I’m over it.’ I think it’s going to be a while.

#N You also mentioned, before we switched the tapes on, that it also impacted on your plans to turn your label, Yukka, from one that you released your own material on to one that also released other people.

#A When Yukka started it was just for us. With a successful first album we thought it would be nice to take someone we liked and help them out and help them blossom, but that’s totally out of the question now. We had to pull everything back in and concentrate on us and sort all of that out. We haven’t got the money to sort anyone else out.

#N Which sort of brings us back to the second album. Cormac got a grant from the BBC. How much of a boost was that?

#A It was good, because we were already close to the limit of our recording budget with the first, unfinished session. I’d been ill so we weren’t working and money was definitely tight. We also knew that having vanished from the scene for a year we’d have to work harder on the marketing and have to get ourselves back to where we were. It frightening how much money it can cost. You think people are on the covers of magazines because they like them, it’s often because it’s been bought for them I find that quite depressing, but that’s how it is. That’s the music business. It’s a shame and it bothers me.

Continued