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A Waste Of Time with ItsTheReal

#284: Dermot Kennedy

A Waste Of Time with ItsTheReal

ItsTheReal

Music

4.8817 Ratings

🗓️ 9 December 2019

⏱️ 73 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

This week on A Waste of Time with ItsTheReal, we welcome singer/songwriter Dermot Kennedy to the Upper West Side! Dermot, who hails from a small town outside a small town outside Dublin, Ireland, talks growing up with intermittent internet, an acoustic guitar, no pop culture references, and the most successful musicians he was aware of being his cousin's cover band. We get into his undisciplined busking career in the streets of Dublin, making just enough money to work for a week in a proper studio, his parents being super supportive of his dreams at 18 years old, the realities of producers taking ideas and credit, how he never wanted to be a local celebrity, and how an Ed Sheeran cover gave him viral success. Dermot recalls his first big break thanks to a video app that brought him down to a Florida convention center, how he didn't want to blow up off of other peoples' music, doubling down on his own compositions, putting everything he had into EPs that didn't go anywhere, how a change of mind led him to release his songs as singles, and walking into a venue in London to a large crowd that found him organically through Spotify. We discuss independent success, how labels and publishers came knocking on his door, feeling like he'd already been through the ringer and what ultimately sold him on Island in the UK and Interscope in the US, and how he's taken the States by storm with clever live rearrangements of his own songs as well as Joey Bada$$ and Kanye covers. All that, plus playing Tiny Desk, recording in Brooklyn and LA, the keys to performing the streets of Dublin, teaching himself piano, the status of his Spotify account these days, some major live gigs he hints at playing in 2020, and so much more!

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Transcript

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0:00.0

Hey, Jeff. Hey, Eric. How are you? I'm pretty good. How are you? Doing well, thank you. Jeff,

0:04.2

we're on the precipice of the fourth annual attempt to kill ourselves the 12 days of podcasts.

0:12.7

I mean, it is the dumbest decision that we have ever undertaken. We keep doing it every single year.

0:19.8

Who suggested this in the first place?

0:21.8

Me. Yeah. Yeah. Thanks.

0:24.0

It was my idea. I felt like... What is the point?

0:27.1

I felt like a lot of people were traveling over the holidays and we should super serve our audience.

0:33.2

You, good Samaritan.

0:35.5

A lot of people don't have podcasts listen to on planes. A lot of people don't have podcasts listen to on planes.

0:40.9

A lot of people don't have...

0:42.3

Entertainment while they're home, maybe?

0:43.9

Yeah, I mean, you know, your family can be annoying.

0:46.4

Maybe you want to tune out for an hour and a half.

0:48.6

How about the people who are working during the holidays

0:50.5

who need something to get their minds off of the fact that they're working over the holidays. Yeah, that's us. Yeah. So, um, by the way, shout out to Trab Dave, who, speaking of the

1:01.3

holidays, was like, hey, are you guys getting Chinese food on Thanksgiving night? And the answer is

1:07.5

no. The answer is no. That's, that's a Christmas thing. This is an American holiday.

1:12.9

So in any event, the whole point of the 12 days of podcast is that we put 12 podcasts together

1:18.8

leading up to Christmas, 12 podcasts in 12 days.

1:22.2

People get it.

1:23.0

You know, it's in the name.

1:24.2

We don't have to explain this.

...

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