Pa Sheehy is an Irish singer-songwriter from Dingle County Kerry. Formerly of the band Walking on Cars, Sheehy has been a solo artist for the last few years.

Sheehy released his debut solo single Saw You at a Funeral in June 2021 with a follow-up single, titled Roisin in August 2021.

His debut EP, The Art of Disappearing, was released in September 2021 at charted at number 9 in the Irish Albums Chart on the week of its release.

Recently, Sheehy released his second EP Lost In a 90’s Arcade. His current single from the EP is titled Guided and is a stunning, chilled-out alternative/Indie-Folk track much like the EP itself. Each track is hauntingly beautiful with stunning vocals and gorgeous instrumentation.

Pa Sheehy will be supporting Bruce Springsteen at BST Hyde Park on Saturday July 8th 2023 where he will be headlining the second biggest stage (Rainbow Stage). Music to simply get lost in – be prepared to be completely captivated!

Pa Sheehy will also be on tour across the UK and Ireland in the autumn. Tickets and info here!

We caught up with Sheehy to discuss his new EP Lost In a 90’s Arcade, his tour at the end of the year and of course his support slot on Saturday 8th July at BST Hyde Park supporting Bruce Springsteen!

Enjoy!

Hi Pa, how are you?

All is well, all is well. Busy making music and getting ready for gigs and all that jazz.

Ah yes, you have a very small gig coming up on Saturday don’t you? (BST Hyde Park)

Yeah! Very small

Supporting someone very unknown (Bruce Springsteen)

Yeah, I think he has potential, he could make it!

Haha! Are you excited?

It’s going to be crazy! I don’t think I have ever had a crew this big going to a gig before!

Really?

We are going to pull out all the bells and whistles. We are really excited!

You are headlining the second biggest stage over on the Rainbow Stage…

Correct! At 6.00pm. We can enjoy the show after!

So you’re bringing a full band?

Usually I bring four of us on stage, but we are going with a five piece this time. I usually do full band shows or stripped back shows and on stripped back shows I use a viola player called Hannah so we are actually bringing Hannah along for the full band live show! Full shebang! So yeah, it’s going to be very cool! I can’t wait to start playing!

Have you been to BST before?

No never!

Oh it’s one of our favourites! It’s crazy busy but nice! What can we expect from your set? Obviously the full band as mentioned!

A load of new music!

Oh good!

Tell us a bit about your EP ‘Lost In a 90’s Arcade” as the title alone is intriguing!

Yeah. So the title came from the last couple of years. I didn’t know where I was going in my life, I was lost! Whenever I get lost I revert back to a place when I did know where I was going! I found myself listening to records that I would listen to as a teenager. I found myself buying a play station one – I found a gameboy with Pokemon blue. It was all coming back to me! I don’t even think it as a good thing as it was me regretting. This EP is designed out of that, just the kick I needed to get my life moving on again!

What was the writing process behind it in general? Was it lengthy? Did it flow easily?

It actually took a while, it took a while! I had been writing songs for about a year! Because I love loads of different music and I get inspired by loads of different artists very quickly, I make lots of different sounds and tunes. I find it quite difficult to make something cohesive! Somehow, I stumbled across these five tunes and they all feel like they live together! A year to maybe 15 months, these songs have slowly accumulated and I find them quite nostalgic. Some of them are about secondary school, some are about things that will never happen, what will I be? – Questioning who I am and how I got here. What if I had done something different? There are hope in those tracks but are mostly melancholy.

What song was the hardest to write?

The one that probably took the most bravery was Calling which is the last song on the EP. I wrote that with a bunch of friends of mine. We had this writing trip planned for a couple of weeks and I was late to the session because my Grandmother had passed! Going down to the writing session, it was very clear in my heart what needed to come out – to write a song about her! Writing a song about her with a group of people so soon after it had happened was a big week! Calling is my favourite track on the EP and I am really proud of it!

You said you wrote it with friends. I guess it’s a much easier environment to write something that’s so vulnerable like that with friends in a writing session rather than strangers?

Yeah, totally, totally! They made it easy for me and for some reason we all had a similar energy going into the session. Everyone had losses that they hadn’t written about that was all coming up. There was all this energy going on so it turned into that track!

Did any of the songs sound much different from how they were originally written to the full production?

A lot of the songs were written with just the acoustic guitar. What I usually do before is to throw the kitchen sink at it and plan every little thing but these songs deserved a more delicate approach and were very much guiding it along, taking over the song. So there’s no big drum beats, there’s no big bass sound the song was guided along with very subtle instrumentation with it! I think the songs are pretty close to when they were written!

Do you have a lot of involvement in the production?

I do, I do indeed. I think as an artist, I love to work with a lot of different people. Unless you communicate constantly throughout the production phase, you are going to get a completely different sound of songs from a different producer. These five songs were actually recorded with five different people. The communication alongside the production is so so important! It can go off in a way that you don’t want it to very quickly!

I can see that! I have actually loved songs by independent artists and when they have then been signed to major labels and had a producer brought in with no involvement, they have completely butchered the new version of the song to the point that I couldn’t stand to listen to it!

Yeah, I totally get it and it’s happened to me and it’s happened to other people! I think the biggest thing is knowing what you want and being strong regardless of the people around you because at the end of the day you’re the artist! It’s you with the vision. Obviously you will have people help guide you along but at the end of the day if you see something, you have to go and get it! Other people see you differently and what makes an artist an artist is what they see and how they create what they see!

I agree! I think people like Taylor Swift are making artists more confident to do that, to be confident with their own creativity and visions and so on.

Absolutely!

I love Meet Me at The Record Store and that lyric ‘meet me at the record store, to find out who I was before’. I wanted to know if you could possibly elaborate on that lyric and song because what I love about lyrics is the listener can make their own narrative around it and I have with this song. But what was yours?

For me being in a record store and looking back at that ‘eureka’ moment inside a record store when hearing a track on the radio and asking at the counter what they are playing and they would say “it’s this album here” and I would say “ok I want that”. For me, when I used to go to a record store, I would go to the rock and metal section and I would never know what I was buying. I would look at the artwork and if the artwork looked amazing then I was in and I would go home and fall in love with a track or with an album! So that line is me going through the music industry and realising that this industry is tough going and I wonder if this moment never happened, would I be someone else? Who would I be? Because these store memories as a kid is when I decided “ok, music has to be for me”.

What is a typical 90’s record for you?

From my early teens Nirvana, a lot of Metallica, Green Day, Korn. Korn I had a favourite record called Follow The Leader. It was one of those records that I have a very vivid memory of walking into the record store and seeing that artwork and just thinking that album was amazing! I was a bit of a metal head and then in my later teens I was kind of pop punk! As a kid I was obsessed with pop music but I didn’t have records at home so I would listen to the radio and that was it! So then pop punk came along and that was a bit more easier on the ears. I was falling in love with bands like New Found Glory, My Chemical Romance and that kind of stuff!

You are lost in a 90’s arcade, so you may as well stay there and play a few games. What are you playing?

Ha, when that title came along, I did have a vision of myself in an actual arcade. There was only one arcade in our town and it closed down when I was about 9. My older brother and his buddy would have a much more idea of what that was but I would play pinball machine, nintendo; Super Mario, things like that!

And those games (Mario) are still so popular now!

It’s amazing how things come back around!

I was explaining to my son about having a playstation one and playing Abe’s Odyssey.

Abe’s Odyssey haha, I was so c**p at that

As was I haha!

So what song of yours was a family favourite?

Ooh, I think These Days is probably a family favourite. It’s got a nice pulse to it and is kind of folky and it feels like it’s hopeful !

You have a headlining tour coming up in November/December….

Yes I do! I can’t wait! Tickets are on sale now and I am coming to the UK! I can’t wait to play London, at the Bush Hall. I have never played there before and it looks amazing!

I like it there!

Yeah so I am excited about that and I get to go to Liverpool and Glasgow as well! Jimmy’s in Liverpool and McChuills in Glasgow!

I hope I can go! Thank you so much for your time today and see you on Saturday!

My pleasure! Thank you!