Paddy was interviewed by Dave, a DJ at Q98FM radio in Fayetteville, NC, USA, on August 28, 1998. This is a transcript of that interview.
Do they do better radio over in Ireland, Pat?
In Ireland? Erm, just like this, Dave, except they drink while they broadcast, you know.
Can you get me a card from somebody over there? That would be cool.
Get you a card? Get you a pint of Guinness.
I need, you know, somebody to talk to over there about
getting a job. Once I get out of Knoxville I'll head over to Ireland, have
me a pint every morning.
Yeah man, they're a little
bit more understanding over there, you know. You can do what you want.
Now, Patrick, you're from Ireland?
Yeah.
And what city there?
Dublin. Dublin city.
Oh, you're from Dublin? Oh, right on. And you've written
a song, a tribute to Diana.
Yeah, it's an album myself
and some great musicians I'm hooked up with right now are working on, and
this is just the first cut off it.
And you have your own tunes as well, besides the tribute
song?
Yeah, this is just the first
song that we've completed off an upcoming album.
Right. Now what's the rest of the album like? This is
a great song, by the way.
Yeah, it's... this song is
real ballady, you know, and it's perfect for what we're trying to say with
it, but the other stuff is a little bit more rock 'n' roll, you know. It's...
we like to think it's got plenty of heart, plenty of passion and got a place
in the market place, you know.
All right. Now, who influences you as an artist?
As an artist? Well, my biggest influence through time has been U2, being a hometown boy, you know, and they're a hometown band.
You know the guys?
I've met them several times.
Really?
Yeah. Know them personally? No. But, I mean, they've been a big influence on me and a lot of the people that work for them have become friends of mine through my incessant following them around the place, you know. But not only U2, there's been a lot of musical influences I've had over the years and I'm really just starting out on this. I'm 29 but I've just started writing in the last few years and been so lucky with some of the great musicians I've met - locally and around the North Carolina area - who've been involved and who are excited about the songs.
Now what brings you to Fayetteville? I mean, it's not like you went to Nashville, which is known as the music harbour, or Atlanta, L.A. New York...
Well, I didn't come here as a musician initially. But if there's one question I'm asked all the time it's "Why do you live in Fayetteville?" But I came here when I was 18. I came here as an exchange student slash soccer player, you know. And I went to the Fayetteville Academy. I came with two other guys, three of us came together and we lived with American families, each of us. I lived with the Jordan family here in town, who quickly gave me a home and encouraged all three of us, helped us to go to school.
Excellent.
This became my home away from home and I've met some of the greatest people in this town.
So, how often do you get back home?
At least once a year. Sometimes... this year I'm going back twice, I've been kind of lucky. So, I was home just recently and I'm going home again at Christmas. My brother and sister live in Wilmington, so we're kind of all here except my mom and dad, you know.
Oh wow! How hard is that for the mom and dad to know that all their kids are across the pond and all living in the same state?
Well, they're amazingly brave about it, but I know, especially my mother, is not... My dad is kind of set in his ways, walks the dog and drinks his Guinness. But my mother feels it, I think, a little bit more than he does, I'm sure. But we stay in touch and amazingly, we're a close family even though we're separated like this.
Now the next time you go and come back - even though I'm moving on you can leave them here at the station in my name and they'll get them to me - Walkers Crisp.
Walkers Crisp? What's that?
Okay, maybe you won't get them for me. Never mind. It's a potato chip there.
Oh yeah, crisps. Yeah. Well, the biggest crisps at home are "Tayto". That's one of the things about coming to America, man. You guys over here. Chips - chips at home are french fries. Chips over here are what we call crisps. And then you got, like, biscuits. What you call biscuits, we call scones. You guys - biscuits are cookies. Everything's just...
Yeah, but you see, biscuit is such a southern phrase. You can't say "Yeah, sop up that gravy with a scone." It just doesn't have the same ring to it. It's like, "Give me a biscuit, I've got some sopping to do."
I'll tell you the craziest thing over here. Iced tea. Never heard of it before I got here, couldn't believe it. To me it's cold hot tea. I don't know how you guys drink it.
Just because we have ice in this country don't start dissing us now.
We got plenty of ice in Ireland, believe me. (From background) I got a Guinness question for him.
A Guinness question?
That's my chosen subject. (Background) Can you confirm this? I heard this once that the Irish soldiers used to drink Guinness, it was issued to them. Is that right?
Oh yeah. Give you extra courage in battle, you know. Helps you think clearer.
That's what you need. You need a tank, ammunition, and like a six-pack of Guinness!
The Irish don't have an army. We're just an excuse to get drunk, you know.
It's 8.15 now, and we're having a good time here. But, on a little sombre note, I suppose, the "Diana" song.
Yeah.
It's been one year.
It's been a year just this Monday and I'd like to say a little bit about the song real quick. I'm an Irishman obviously, and everybody knows, it's been well documented, the Irish and the English have not exactly seen eye to eye through time. A lot of times there's been good reason for that, and other times there's been no reason at all, like some of the stuff that's been happening lately. But this lady, Princess Diana, kind of, she was above all that.
She was the world's Princess regardless of...
Yeah, there was something about her. I meet a lot of people at my gigs over here - I play at The Radisson every Friday night and I play in Wilmington every Saturday, and various other places - but people often come up and they're just wannabe Irish people and they say "We hate the English." And I've got a lot of great English friends, you know. And they say "Why would you write a song about a British Royal?" But she was more than that, you know. The Irish people took her to heart particularly, I think, because when the Royal family and their efforts to try and discredit her when she was breaking up with Prince Charles - she stood strong. And told them, basically, "Take a hike", and people at home respected that.
Anybody that tells the Royal family to take a hike, the Irish people are mad about.
But then as a woman - she was a mother, she was strong, she was unhappy and she dealt with a lot of stuff. And so the women of the world really could relate to the stuff she was going through. Charles seemed like an uncaring kind of man, and she had an uphill battle and she won, you know.
She's a working person's Royal as well.
Yeah. She seemed to care.
I mean, I'm not into the Royal family. I don't even know all of them. <
Neither do I.
Don't care. I just know they've got large ears and bad teeth. But with Princess Di, if she was in the news, I would pay attention.
She was special. And I have to admit, before she died, I'm one of the people that really became aware of her more so through her death. And the song is really a reaction to a reaction. In other words it's my reaction to everybody else's reaction to her death. I couldn't believe it. I was in Dublin. I was actually coming home from a U2 concert, believe it or not. Four o'clock in the morning, a little bit tipsy, having a good time. I got in and my mother was up watching TV. Watching the news, it had just happened. And she was upset. I thought something terrible had happened. She said "Princess Diana's been in an accident in Paris and she's got a broken arm and a broken leg and they don't know what's wrong." So I went to bed. I said "Don't worry about it, it'll be okay." I get up the next morning, she's dead. And the effect it had. I was coming back into America a few days later, you know, and the people on the plane... So I immediately start writing about it, which is pretty much what I do, and it was one of those situations artistically where the music and the words came very, very quickly.
Okay, well we'll play "Diana" for you right now and then we'll come back and talk a little more in a bit. And this is "Diana" - it's on Q98
Today's best music - Q98. This is "Diana" by Patrick Gibney. He's a local artist, even though he's from Ireland. He's been here since he was 19 or 18.
Getting that country accent down, you know.
Say "biscuit".
Biscuit.
No, it's a scone, see.
It's a cookie, man.
Anyway, that's his song, "Diana", a tribute to Princess Diana. It's been a year since her passing. It's gonna be available not this coming Monday, but a week from Monday.
I'm waiting for a consignment of discs to come from the disc company, and I've talked with Donna Johnson at "Paradise Records" who was nice enough to allow me to put them on sale there. Also, and something that's very important. I'm in the middle of talking with the "Diana Princess of Wales Memorial Trust Fund" in London and getting ready to hopefully enter a commercial endorsement contract, where they'll endorse it and I will in turn donate a portion of the proceeds. Whether that works out, or not, I'm going to donate a portion of the proceeds anyway to charity because the song is in honour of Princess Diana and I think it would just be the right thing to do to make sure that part of the proceeds are also in honour of her.
Well, it's a great song. You can pick it up a week from Monday at "Paradise Records".
Probably a week from Monday. People should probably call "Paradise" and double check but as soon as I get them in the mail... They're gonna look beautiful, the artwork is great. These people have done a great job for me, and I'm gonna have them right up to "Paradise", and probably, hopefully if I can work it out with Malcolm McFayden, I'll have them in Malcolm's place, "McFayden Music" on MacPherson Church Road too.
All right, fantastic. Well, thanks for being here on the show. Anything else?
Thank you Dave. No, I just want to thank you very much for letting me come on here.
And if you'd like to check him out he plays at The Radisson on Friday nights.
Play the Radisson with Bill Ayerbe, who plays violin in this song. We play together and we're just kind of getting it together now as a duo, but we play on Fridays down there.
All right. Cool. I appreciate you being on the show. Good luck to you and thanks for the song. That's fantastic.
Thank you. Thanks a lot.