How did you meet and what’s the story behind your band name?
The Radioactive Grandma came together after myself and Peter started playing a couple of our own songs in a few pubs around Cavan, at the time we were just playing simple acoustic folk style stuff that we had written ourselves, nothing spectacular – we had only been playing together for about 3 months when we met Ben at one of our shows. We got talking and decided to to ask him to join and from there our style developed into a much more ‘rock’ orientated sound.Due to addition of Ben we found that we were able to write full sounding indie/rock songs without the hassle of the usual ‘band instrumentation’ – drums, bass etc. So we kept at it, and we kinda found our sound that way.
The name came from a night of trying to think of a name that would fit, but the more we tried the less important it became to us. So in short we basically picked 2 random words and said “right, there it is. That’ll do the job for now” – we never changed it after that. We found the name kept splitting opinions amongst those who have heard us, some love it and other dont. but in both cases, the name seems to stick in the heads of the people who hear us. And that itself is why we’re still called The Radioactive Grandma.
How would you describe your music?
I guess if we had to describe our music we would say it’s something like: Acoustic driven Indie/pop/rock… but that’s still just a usual mix of common terms that get thrown about for everything really, I guess we could be best described as minimalistic harmonic melodic rock, with a laid back but full-on sound…I guess. Its not an easy question to answer without using those much touted terms. Basically, we rock out as hard as we can with what little instruments we use.
What have you been up to so far and what can we expect over the coming months?
So far we have been extremely busy gigging up and down the country with some amazing bands such as The Jigsaw Murders, K.N.O.T.S, Crow Black Chicken, The Bambir, Henrietta Game, Hal, The Walls (formerly The Stunning), Rams Pocket Radio… just to name a few of the bands .We’ve also been playing at festivals such as Body & Soul, Indiependance festival, Sunflower festival, Volvo Ocean race fest, and many more. We’re currently awaiting our first official (animated) music video for Another Wasted line (available for free from http://theradioactivegrandma.bandcamp.com/). I have to say a HUGE thanks to the team of animators who have been busy working hard on this for us. Claire, Joe, Adam and co – you are all total legends.
The coming months will see us play at Electric Picnic Festival, Bellybang Festival in Clonmel, Ballinamore Fringe Festival, and many more TBC. We have also have a string of gig dates ready to go up for the remainder of the year. Also, we have been picked up by indie label/reviewer Chew Your Own Fat who we will be working closely with for an upcoming double EP release on CYOF records featuring (in addition to us) an incredible band called K.N.O.T.S who you will no doubt hear plenty of in the future. This Double EP is set to be released early next year. In addition to this, we will also be releasing our physical album in mid-late August- which so far (thankfully) has received many great reviews from the likes of GoldenPlec, We Are Noise, Music Review Unsigned, CYOF, and even reviewers from the USA. Which is very nice. Bit crazy, but very nice
If you could duet with anybody who would it be and why?
That’s a really good question, I suppose if im honest, one of mine (and Ben’s) favourite musicians and general all-round GENIUS would be Devin Townsend. We’re both fairly heavily into our metal – strange as it may sound given the music we write, but in answer to your question- in a made-up universe where anything is possible and an unsigned band could duet with anyone, we (me and Ben) would love to duet with him. As for Peter, his influences are way more varied than myself and Ben and he’d probably go for either Neil Finn, or even NWA or Grandmaster Flash. Crazy. However, we’d all agree that Arcade Fire are a solid fave among the 3 of us. So I guess in the interest of simplicity we would go for that. not sure how Arcade Fire would feel about it though…probably not ‘quite’ as excited as we would be.
What’s your desert island disc and why would you take this one album?
Desert island disc… hmm.. again, I suppose that Neon Bible by Arcade Fire would be our collective choice, for the simple reason that it’s just awesome and doesn’t get old. Still, I dont know how many years anyone can listen to one album on a desert island before the temptation to play frizbee with whatever disc-shaped object you can find kicks in.
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