Nerves nearly did for Myles O'Reilly, but he's spurred on by his father's memory, says Mick Heaney

As far as Myles O'Reilly is concerned, when it comes to performance, it's good to talk. The front man of the Dublin band Juno Falls has long been afflicted by a crippling nervousness when playing his folk-tinged, pop-inflected songs. Once, in front of a tiny audience in a west Cork pub, he had to stop the show in order to be sick, such was his anxiety. But when, last year, he was invited by Travis's singer, Fran Healy, to support the Scottish popsters on their British tour, O'Reilly found a way to overcome his fear and make the most of the opportunity. He made himself, rather than his songs, the centre of attention.

"I went on stage and immediately told the audience, 'Listen, I'm dead nervous, I don't know what I'm doing here, I'm just going to throw some songs at you.' I actually found that talking worked better on stage than singing. It was a soother for me, because if I got a reaction from the audience between songs, suddenly it didn't matter how good or bad I was playing, it was a good vibe.
"So that did huge things for me. To stand up in front of huge numbers of people and face up to who I was, with all those faces looking at you, it really focused all my energy into one spot. And I totally have that confidence after that."
It seems an odd admission for a man who is the singer, guitarist, songwriter and occasionally sole member of Juno Falls : throughout his career, 33 year-old O'Reilly has frequently left behind those who hampered his musical vision. Yet to hear the tall, quietly spoken O'Reilly tell it, such self-belief has been hard won. "I'm not a confident person at all," he says. "I'm a mouse. And a tiny bit agoraphobic as well, so it's a terrifying situation for me to be on stage. It has taken me a long time to resign myself to the fact that I have a purpose when I'm up here." And all the while, O'Reilly has been propelled by bereavement and calamity.

O'Reilly has long done his own thing : Juno Falls' winsomely tuneful new album, Weightless, is a band effort in name only. O'Reilly contributes most of the instrumentation and is the only remaining member from the line-up that recorded the groups previous disc, Starlight Drive. "We were so sick of trying to flog that record and getting nowhere that we took a bit of a break," says O'Reilly. "But I wanted to retain the name."
For all his professions of self-doubt ----- "I've always had a little battle as an artist as to which direction to go" ---- O'Reilly's mind-set is one of stubborn self-sufficiency. When he wants something, he does it himself. It is an instinct that he traces back to his upbringing: the son of the late RTE sports broadcaster Brendan O'Reilly, the young Myles spent his early years moving around the country.

"I had a pretty lonely childhood," he says. "I kind of grew up on my own because my parents separated quite early, when I was one, so it has been ingrained in me. And I still have trouble today working with other musicians, because I want to let them in on the project, but it's just so difficult for me to do that."
As a teenager, now in the Dublin suburb of Rathgar, O'Reilly wrote "awful" songs on his guitar, though his first ambition was to be a painter or photographer. (He designed the artwork for Weightless.) But while studying at the National College of Art and Design, he preferred to hang out in a city-centre music store: "I learnt that there were other people like me in the world." O'Reilly dropped out of college and concentrated on his new-found passion for music. In this, he says, he was following the advice of his father.

"My dad was quite a talented actor and a singer and a writer, very involved in everything creative ---- I think that's where I get it. But he always said he wished that he had focused on one thing and not tried to spread out, because that was how he had landed up working in RTE for 25 years. He was always

Thanks Norma Macken for filming this little bit of our 2fm tour

I brought a little camera with me but unfortunately circumstance doesn't allow me the privilege of filming myself... eh.. as weird as that might be anyway..

SO THANKS Norma! Yer great!


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_INKt...


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So, what do you do when you sign your first big record deal ?
Head for the bright lights of London, take the plaudits, and listen to everyone telling you how wonderful you are ?

Not for Juno Falls frontman and songwriter Myles O’Reilly.

Packing his bags, Myles left behind his native Dublin and headed for the tranquility of Dingle, on Ireland’s rugged west coast. “Don’t get me wrong”, says Myles, “I love Dublin. It has a great energy and the music scene is very healthy there, but for me the remoteness and honesty of somewhere like Dingle makes the creative process so much more natural”.

Living in Dingle while writing material for the new album brought it’s own perils. While returning to Dingle from Dublin in the early hours of a winterly morning, Myles knew that he was almost home. The grey silhouette of Mount Brandon loomed ahead, as the narrow country roads snaked onwards. Nearly there.

“Suddenly I’m fighting with the car, battling to keep it on the road. Failing!”.

Upside down and compressed into the only space left inside the car, Myles struggled to pull himself free. “I remember making my way back onto the road and looking back at what was left of the car”, he says. “It wasn’t until several days later that it dawned on me just how lucky I was to have walked away from it without a scratch”.

“Some of what I had been writing about prior to the crash now seemed trivial to me”, says Myles. "I had been given a second chance. After the accident I became more engaged with my art than ever before. It was imperative for me to immerse myself in music and lyrics and to draw from every inspiration. The floodgates were open".

Returning to Dublin several months later with a lap-top full of songs, Myles began the process of “putting meat on the bones of the songs” with the rest of the band

"They brought something really special to the songs," explains Myles."They made the songs sexy, adding a 'groove' and taking them out of the whole singer-songwriter genre“.

Recorded at various points over the course of the last year, including Wicklow, London, Dublin and Nashville, the result is a collection of beautifully crafted songs, sometimes intimate, sometimes fragile, always honest and unmistakably Juno Falls.

"I've always loved pop songs because they're braver than any other kind of music: you're trying to be universal and appeal to a whole lot of people. But there's a side of me that's always been attracted to the beauty and the sadness of artists like Elbow or Rufus Wainwright”.

Road-tested on a month-long tour of the UK and Ireland with Travis, the new songs have already found their live legs. "Fran [Healy, Travis singer] heard 'The Boy Whose Skin Fell Off' on my Myspace page and liked it so much, he asked us to come on tour with them," explains the frontman