Liam McCay Is Only Getting Started

“Liam McCay is a 21-year-old musician from Donegal. He’s a prolific artist recording musical projects under a number of different names – sign crushes motorist, Take Care, Birth Day, Dead Calm, Hold, Make His Ribs Show, miserable teens club, Manta, Death Trap, scm48, Roaming, busty latinas, Giordano & Mc Cay, and Moon Water. Despite emerging as a slowcore artist, McCay has a diverse range and has experimented with rap music and screamo. He receives millions of monthly listeners on Spotify. I had the chance to see him perform rap music as ‘Carson Clay’, where he came on stage with a backpack and a Ballotelli jersey, and ended his set with a twisted rendition of Katy Perry’s “Last Friday Night”. I sat down with him in Ciss Madden’s pub to talk about slowcore, his creative process, and his future plans. Liam McCay, under his Dead Calm moniker, will be supporting Panchiko on their North American tour later this year. Dead Calm has also announced a UK and Ireland headline tour for this September. Dead Calm will play at Whelan’s on Friday, September 25th. This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity. DH: How do you feel about Dublin? LM: Dublin is alright. Dublin has grown on me, definitely. I used to not be the biggest fan of it. DH: How come? LM: I don’t really know, I’m sort of stuck for places when I’m here. Soundhouse is good. We were going to go to Workman’s, and they said it was five euros in, and then we didn’t go in. DH: You’ve played shows there before. Did they not recognise you? LM: It was two bouncers, like, to be fair. Button Factory is good craic, Curveball is nice- that’s where Rick’s (deathtoricky) thing was. That’s where we were playing when the riots were on. I was opening for Crywank, actually. I was in the middle of a cover of ‘Last Friday Night’, and they cut us off, and the guards told us to get out. That was my main memory of Button Factory, and it was good craic. It’s a nice venue, but I don’t like playing on that stage; it’s too big. I feel too exposed. DH: You’re pretty linked up with music in Dublin. At your Carson Clay show, you mentioned a collab with Buckeshot. LM: I’m just waiting for him to mix it. He recorded it, but ya know he mixes it in his own way- that witchhouse shit. DH: You became successful through streaming platforms. What’s your relationship to the internet like? LM: I wouldn’t have any sort of a career if it wasn’t for the internet, like. Because you know no one is paying to go and hear fucking slowcore up in Donegal, really. Maybe in Dublin, maybe in Belfast, but definitely not in Buncrana. I am very grateful for the internet. DH: When you toured with Crywank, did you play with a backing band? LM: Not that time, it was just my guitar. The odd time I would have a backing track. For Dead Calm, I like having a backing track, so then I can just fucking scream into the microphone, like. DH: Did you have to develop your stage persona, or were you always comfortable in front of an audience? LM: It took a while, I’m a lot happier with it now because for sign crushes motorist I don’t really wanna do any more live shows for a while. It’s just fucking boring, like. I’m just up there with a guitar. The other ones are more fun, well, the Carson Clay one is a bit shit. The Dead Calm one is the most fun. DH: How come? LM: There’s kinda screamo in there, and I can crowdsurf and all. It’s just a different type of crowd. So that’s fun. It’s come a ways since I first started, I suppose. DH: Are you interested in that idea of persona? LM: Way more than I used to be. Every time I play a show, I go on as somebody else. If I do one as Dead Calm, I’m like a different person, or like Carson Clay- I’m just a fella for that. I don’t even try to make it a big deal. Just in my head, I’m like this kind of thing right now. There’s this one song I do on the Dead Calm set, where I pull up a stool, and I sit like a singer songwriter and just some fucking I don’t know. I like to fuck around. I have fun. I’m playing pretend out there, it’s good craic. DH: Is Dead Calm your favourite project? LM: I think so. For now, anyway. I wanna get a band together and just do fucking screaming, it would be good craic. DH: What’s the idea behind having so many different projects? LM: I just started with one, called “moon water”. I said I’ll stick to this now, I had a big plan- I said I’ll put out my EP this year, a couple of singles next year, and an album the year after that. And sure, I only just fucking started it- why am I limiting myself, ya know. About a month after I put out the first EP, I got bored, and I said fuck this and made a side project and put it out, and it turned out a lot better than the other one I did. DH: Was that ‘miserable teens club’? LM: That was ‘Hold’. It took me less time, but it was better than the other one. I don’t know, I spend more time on shit now, but at the time, I kinda needed to just get it out of my system quickly. So, I was just like, I can just do a side thing, and put it out, and I kept doing it- so that’s how it happened. DH: You’ve previously said you think ‘Alive’ is your most ambitious record. Do you still think that? LM: I’d say it is. I’d honestly want to re-record it. But then I’d have to do all three of them, I think. Honestly, someday. DH: Like a Car Seat Headrest type thing? LM: Yeah, exactly like Twin Fantasy. If I can’t think of anything new, I’ll re-record the trilogy. Right now, it’s still definitely my most ambitious. I don’t know, I just had a lot of ideas for it, and I wanted to make this big thing, but I also made it in like a month, so I really didn’t give myself too much time. It was fun. DH: Can we talk about your recording process? LM: It’s always changing. I usually just sit up in the bedroom at home. Come up with a chord progression, get down a few lead lines, come up with some lyrics, and that will be the song. But now I’ve been trying to do it all over the place, I’m just trying to get better and different as an artist, I’m always trying to change. DH: What’s your writing process like? LM: Well, that’s the thing, it’s all different. Like now, sometimes I’ll write the lyrics first. Usually, I make the beat first. It really just depends. I feel like I’ve been spending a lot more time on each song than I used to. DH: Even for the Carson Clay stuff? LM: Well, that’s a bit different. For that, I make like half a beat, then I rap, and make the rest of the beat around it. DH: Do you read a lot of poetry? LM: Honestly, I should, but it doesn’t really…Sometimes I just read it, and I’m like “ah, get a grip”, like I’d rather hear it in a song than read poetry. There are a few lyrics that I just can’t stop thinking about. What’s that one Lucki song, Rip- “I’m in a super car on drugs, now that I got His faith”. That fucking line has been going around my head for the past three months. That line. I’m gonna write it on my wall. Because there’s this one big album that’s kind of taken me a while to make, but I want it to be the first Liam McCay album. It won’t even really be me; it will just be like a character. Fucking Bhristo made the beat for that song. I hit him up and said, “This is fucking crazy.” He’s this angel of a man. He’s kinda like 2hollis, but he’s taller. Beautiful blond hair, kind of quiet. He’s nice. He came when I played a screamo show with my friend Jordan’s band, Widowdusk. He came, and he was really enjoying it. It was really sweet of him. DH: Do you want to do music full-time in your future, or is this just a sort of chapter in your life? Would you transition into something else? LM: My whole plan was: get the degree in computer science, have a 9-5, keep music as the hobby because I like having music as a hobby and not a job. It was a bit different. But I mean, I fucking love making music. I think I wanna make… just everything. I wanna make films. I wanna make a comedy TV show- did you ever watch Workaholics? Before I came over here, I was trying to write a screenplay. I don’t know if it will ever get made. But I wanna make films, so I want to practice writing. DH: How do you feel about the term “slowcore” in general? Do you like being lumped in with that genre? LM: Well, for that kind of music I made, it was slowcore. I also make stuff that isn’t slowcore. That’s what I was going for. I don’t care. People are fucking snobs about it. Like old men that listened to it in the nineties talking about “real slowcore” and “fake internet shit”. I don’t know, I call it slowcore. It’s an umbrella term, I suppose. Like people call it shoegaze, obviously it’s not shoegaze, but I don’t care. Whatever. DH: Speaking of shoegaze, are you influenced by MBV? LM: Yeah. I was talking to someone in A&R or something, and I was like I love Kevin Shields, and they were like, “let me set you up with his wife”, who is his assistant. And I was chatting to him for an hour. I just wanted to talk to him, and he was like “so do you have any questions?”, and I was like “nah, I just wanna know what the craic is”. I was asking him about Lost In Translation. He seems right civil. They’re definitely very influential. I suppose it doesn’t come across in the music, but I just like hearing it, and hearing how they did everything. They were sort of pioneers, ya know. I have a lot of respect for them. DH: Are you signed to a label? LM: I’ve never been signed, and hopefully I never will be. I’m very lucky I can be like that- never signed. What do I need one for? I can’t think of one good reason why I would be on a label. DH: Do you have a manager? LM: Yeah. He sorts out everything I need. He tried to sign me to his label. He signed Dave Blunts. Fucking Dave Blunts, I have so much faith. I call him fat Usher. DH: Do you feel uncomfortable being a celebrity? You’re a very humble bloke. LM: I wouldn’t call myself a celebrity. I’ve been watching ‘Entourage’, that’s a celebrity. Vinny Chase! I really just kick about.

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