Waterford singer-songwriter Mark Duggan has spent years developing a style where intimate storytelling and classic folk-rock traditions meet increasingly expansive arrangements. Now, with the release of his debut full-length album 'Hold That Ghost Down', those ideas are coming together in his most substantial statement yet.
Centred around memory, isolation and the difficult process of moving forward, the album explores what happens when loneliness becomes comfortable enough to keep us stuck. Acoustic foundations meet electronic textures and full-band arrangements, allowing Duggan to retain the directness of his songwriting while considerably expanding the world around it.
So with the new album out now, we sat down with him to find out more about his origins and what has been inspiring him most over the years.
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What was the first instrument you fell in love with?
Definitely the guitar! So many of my family are able to play it so there were lots of them lying around in different rooms of different houses growing up. It was almost like a sort of magical weapon that was brought out at special occasions. Everyone would sit around in the kitchen or sitting room and be serenaded by the guitar playing family members. It seemed to have a communal power and from there on any photo of someone with a guitar strapped to them just seemed to have this aura about it. I’m left handed so once I saw someone like Paul McCartney with one I knew it was something I had to have. It was something to reach for and be like. I guess I thought it was going to change something about me and make me more like whoever it was I wanted to be. It did that a little bit I suppose.
What kind of music did you love when you were younger?
The music I fell in love with first was what my dad played around the house growing up. I have strong memories of him walking round the house singing to himself, the chorus of Strawberry Fields Forever is one that I can specifically remember as he went from one room to another. When I really wanted to sit down and fully engage in listening to music, he put songs from his CD collection that he thought I’d like on an mp3 player. It was things like The Beatles, Bruce Springsteen and a few other artist’s biggest hits or most well known songs. I was only nine at the time so I fixated on The Beatles and Bruce Springsteen, going fully through every album before really moving onto anything else. That is probably why they are the artists I go back to the most. They are so ingrained in my musical journey that they inform every direction I would go from there. It’s probably no surprise that I wanted to listen to anything with a guitar on it since that was the holy grail item I needed to own. After deep diving into The Beatles and Bruce I started really getting into the likes of U2, Bob Dylan and R.E.M. because my dad was able to give me any song from any part of their career that I wanted to listen to. I probably spent a few years going through his collection before starting to find things for myself that he wouldn’t have been as into but that mix was always important in the type of music I find myself attracted to.
What was the first album you remember owning?
I’m not completely certain exactly what it would have been. I was given a few greatest hits albums on CD and I remember a Paul McCartney live CD that came with a newspaper or music magazine that my Dad bought. It’s possible that the first thing I went and bought with my own money was The Rutles Archaeology which I still have in a press with a few other surviving CDs from around then. The first vinyl records I ever got were a bootleg copy of Pink Floyd’s Animals that was pressed on pink vinyl and a first pressing of Bob Dylan’s Blood on the Tracks.
What is the one song you wished you could have written yourself?
I think I’d have to go with Bruce Springsteen’s Thunder Road because it is as perfect as music can be for the four or five minutes it lasts. It has such a brilliant structure and works in so many different arrangements. You want to be able to write a song that can stand that type of test and work no matter how you present it. The build up from that opening piano and harmonica to the final sax solo is just magical. There's so many lines in the song that I'd be delighted to have written. It seems to me to be the perfect encapsulation of everything great that a song can be. If you ever see shots of the crowd during live performances it has an affect on them that I would love one of my own songs to be able to replicate. It’s the kind of song that becomes a lifetime companion and means a lot of different things to you over the course of that lifetime. I am always happy when it comes on and will stay and listen until the end. It is perfect.
Do you have any habits or rituals you go through when trying to write new music?
I suppose the first thing I do is gather as many ideas as I can. I like to sit with my guitar and a notebook or recorder and just see where my instincts take me. I find that I have two stages of writing with the first being the inspiration stage and then the rest being editing and then editing again and again until there’s a finished song. I try to collect as many musical and lyrical ideas as I can before sitting down to concentrate on writing a song. It’s the best way I have of avoiding sitting in front of a blank page of nothing for hours on end. There isn’t a consistent order of music or lyrics first, it just depends on which strikes me first but if they come at the same time then that’s just a big bonus. One thing I always try to do is get a version of the song that I can make a voice memo recording of to listen back to. This helps with the rewriting stage because you can really get a sense of what does and doesn’t work within the song. It tells you where a song needs to go and lets your subconscious keep working on as you go about your day. A recording on an acoustic guitar doesn’t lie to you, If the song is bad you’ll know and if it has potential to be something good or even great it will give you enough to make you want to keep working on it until it gets there.
Who are your favourite artists you have found yourself listening to at the moment?
I got to go see Madison Cunningham at Vicar St earlier this year where she played most of her new album Ace. The show was beyond belief and I’ve had the album playing throughout the year since. Irish artist CMAT is also someone that I adore and she seems to be getting better with every new album. Her recent one, EURO-COUNTRY, has a song called When A Good Man Cries that I have had stuck in somewhere in the back of my head the last year or so. She is one of Ireland’s best songwriters at the moment and probably will be so for years and years. It’s still fairly recent but I have been listening to the new Phoebe Bridger’s album and really enjoying going back to that for repeat listens. A lot of the pillars of my taste like The Beatles and Bruce Springsteen are always being listened to but I got to see The Cure this summer and it was a reminder of just how brilliant they are. I’ve been rediscovering their albums and listening to old favourites and finding songs I maybe didn’t notice the first time round that have really resonated with me. A similar thing happened after seeing Elvis Costello this summer too.
If you could open a show for anyone in the world, who would it be?
Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band. No doubt. No other options. If I could also somehow be asked to get up and join him for Darkness on the Edge of Town that would be lovely thanks!
What do you find is the most rewarding part about being a musician?
If you find yourself in a place where your music can help you make connections with other people, that is the height of rewarding in my mind. I remember a gig in Galway where I played Different in the Dark for one of the first times live. It appeared pretty early in the set but a few minutes after finishing a friend of a friend ran up to me and quoted the full ‘dream is just some wishful thinking’ line right back to me and talked to me about how much he loved it and the song for a few minutes. It was only a short conversation, but the fact that he remembered the words of a song that he had only heard for the first time at the start of the gig and wanted to tell me about how it affected him has stayed with me. I was walking on air for the rest of the night and I still think back on it whenever I need a bit of a confidence boost or a reason to keep going. Things like that are what I always hope for with my music. I am trying to communicate with people and to get that response was a confirmation that I was doing something right.
And what is the most frustrating part?
There’s a lot of people trying to get something out of you or take advantage of your desire to be heard. It can be hard sometimes to have all these messages from people who say they just heard your song, love it, and want to help you get it out there all for a very reasonable sum of money that they’d really like you to send them. That gap between how much you care about your music and how much the cogs that turn the industry do can be demoralising. It makes finding people that you feel genuinely want to help you out all the more important. Finding out who is who is the hardest part.
And what is the best piece of advice you have received as a musician?
Do it. Make mistakes. Do it again a little better. Make some more mistakes. Do it again a little better. Repeat again and again and again and again……. Otherwise you stay still and you don’t get anywhere. And if you’re not getting anywhere you’re not really doing anything.
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Mark Duggan's new album 'Hold That Ghost Down' is out now. Check it out in the player below.