Gritty, outlaw country from determined Daniel

Daniel Kemish, who takes inspiration from outlaw country singer like Johnny Cash, Willie Nelson and Kris Kristofferson, will play city venue Monroe’s Live on Sunday, April 24. Kemish, who hails from Southampton but lives in Portugal, recently released a video for his song Trouble Girl. How did that riff-driven tune with a distinctly country-American feel come about?

“I released it last year, but when I went to Nashville after that and showed it to the guys in the studio,” Daniel says. “They really liked the song. So we went for a version of it and it actually turned out completely different to the original version I’d written. It felt like the right song to push and release first.”

Anyone with an interest in country music will make it their business to go to Nashville – especially songwriters with ambition. Daniel recorded his debut album – in one day – at the city’s prestigious Ocean Way studio.

“I went out a couple of times before making the album and I met a guy called Chad Fowler,” he says. “We got together with the idea and concept, and I showed him the stuff. He organised a lot of it out there. Part of the reason we could get it all done in a day was he knew a lot of very, very good players.

“We recorded everything in the same room,” he adds. “The idea of this album was to bring back the roots of the songs. The way they used to record, when music had slightly more grit to it, and was slightly more real. Some of these new records you get nowadays, they’re so polished and so perfect, that it kind of takes away from the naturalness of the songs.”

There are thousands of songwriters inspired by that rootsy, country sound – but you’d be hard pressed to name many living in Portugal. What brought Daniel to that part of the world?

“When I was younger, my parents bought a house out here,” he says. “I was living in the UK before this, but I wasn’t really liking it too much. I was playing a lot of cover stuff in the UK, and I got well known for doing it, but when you start trying to do your own stuff, they don’t want to give you the time of day.

“I had to get away from that, go somewhere different that meant I could start afresh, so to speak. I moved out to Portugal, started writing a lot more and trying to hone in on what it was I wanted to do, and where I wanted to go.”

For more, read this week's Connacht Tribune.