Hot to go, from Togher's School of Rock
The guitar has been a constant in Adam Walsh's life. Now, as the frontman of the Cutouts, he's just released 'Scraps' the three-piece's first EP.
Adam Walsh is the lead singer and guitarist of Cutouts, one of Cork’s newest bands, who have just released their debut EP called ‘Scraps’.
Walsh, a native of Togher, started playing guitar when he was thirteen years old and like a lot of teenagers, found a refuge in music which helped him through those difficult formative years.
“I’ve always been introspective,” Walsh says, “people sometimes think I’m depressed, but that’s just who I am.”
“I had no friends growing up. The guitar was my best friend and still is, when I think about it.”
After he first began playing, Walsh attended a music summer camp in Togher. This led him to finding a sparring partner with whom he could develop his own budding talents and foster a musical connection which is still going strong today.
“I started getting guitar lessons from a guy called Mark O’ Brien, and at the camp I was going to they were putting bands together, and without sounding full of myself, they said ‘you’re the best guitar player we have and we want to set up a band’, so they put me with Jamie (Conway).”
“It was a kind of Rock School in Togher” Walsh says laughing.
“After the camp finished, me and Jamie kept in touch and I used to go over to his house to play together. We used to play Bob Dylan’s ‘It takes a lot to laugh, it takes a train to cry’ and decided we’d record it and it’s done with just one mic in a room.’
This wonderful cover version, which the pair have been playing for years, ended up on their debut EP, as well as three other original songs and one dazzling instrumental tune.
While initially, it was just Walsh and Conway playing together, with Walsh on guitar and Conway on bass, after some time they decided to recruit more members and this led to Conway casually moving from bass to drums and allowing Caolan Ledwidge to take his place.
This change of instrument however, came as no surprise to Walsh, who can’t speak highly enough of his band mate Conway.
“The man can do anything! He has a pilot’s licence, he’s studying mechanical engineering and he has a garage album coming out soon.”
While there is a sense of relief for Walsh at finally getting the EP out, the band are keen to kick on from here and are planning on heading into the studio again later this year to record their first album.
“The EP is great because it released me from people saying ‘oh that’s a great hobby’ and it made it feel real for us.”
“My family has always been supportive but I don’t live in reality, I live in a world of poets and artists and they might’ve had trouble understanding that over the years, because to live by songs and poems, I know not everyone is going to get that.”
Walsh moved out of home when he was twenty-one and was enrolled in a guitar making course for a while, but only did this he says “to keep people off of my back”.
“I didn’t even finish the guitar I was making at the time. It was a good course to do, but I kind of went into it with the idea of learning how to maintain the guitar I already had and not much more.”
The trio of Walsh, Conway and Ledwidge have since added a keyboard player in Jamie Hartigan and so Cutouts are now a quartet of musicians busy working on new material.
“The name ‘Cutouts’ is like collage art and goes back to carrying around people and songs with you. You can cut them out and put them in your pocket and we always said we’d never be in a band with “the” before the name!”
With everything now in place, Walsh is intent on focusing on his songwriting, which he says is what he enjoys doing the most.
“They say the best songs are written quickly and I never really believed that before doing the EP, but now I do.”
“I kind of believed what Leonard Cohen said about songwriting, that you start off with an idea and you end up crawling in jocks looking for a word that rhymes with oranges!”
“I always slave over the songs. We write songs together and I take them home to work on.”
This ‘working from home’ had a direct benefit for Walsh, as he was able to enlist the help of an old housemate during the making of ‘Scraps’.
“Erin Halpin did the cover art and sang backing vocals on one of the tracks. I lived with her at the time of the recording, so I was working on a song one day and I asked her to come up to the room to sing on it and she did, which was great because she’s so talented.”
It’s clear that to date, much of Walsh’s focus has been on recording and Cutouts have only played a couple of live gigs around Cork. I asked if there was a reason for this and whether he felt part of any larger scene.
“Well the short answer is no, but there is a great scene in Cork at the moment; Pebbledash and The Cliffords are really good, so are Mossy. There’s so many great bands in Cork actually, you couldn’t count them on two hands.”
“Playing live isn’t the be all and end all for us at the minute.”
“We’d love to do more but it’s difficult, partly because we’re new and partly to do with finding a venue, but things will happen organically.”
Despite Cutouts not playing in front of audiences that much just yet, Walsh still gets along to as many gigs as he can and cites a concert in Dublin last year by a key figure of the New York punk movement, as one which left a lasting impression.
“Patti Smith in Vicar Street, totally blew me away. It was life changing seeing her and the fire she has lit under her at her age. I was holding a piss in for most of the gig because I didn’t want to miss anything and she was going around spitting on the stage and everything.”
“She’s the kind of person who really inspires me, those who are naturally kind and don’t take shit.”
A bit like Walsh himself perhaps?
“I don’t know. People were always telling me to do this and do that, but I just want to write songs and keep enjoying it.”
The Cutouts debut EP ‘Scraps’ is out now and you can keep up with them on their socials.
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