By Sarah Donoghue
Since the beginning of the indie scene, local venues have been bursting at the seams with rock bands and their heavy drums and electric guitars. Many people discount the scene thinking it’s just the same bands with the same genre and the same sound. However, if you look a little deeper there is no shortage of talented young bands exploring every genre under the sun.
Karl Touhy and Donagh Kelly were once two young lads paired together in a music school – years later, they’re playing sold out gigs in iconic venues they used to dream of.
Llama Cult is an indie folk duo set up by Touhy and Kelly in 2021. The duo of frontmen are accompanied by drummer Al Power, violinist Norah Stevens and guitarist Eoin Roebuck.
Touhy and Kelly are both alums of Frank Kearns Rock school, it was here that they were paired together by teachers when they were 12. This was the true beginning of Llama Cult. “It’s like a band camp where you’re paired with people with similar music tastes. We were put in a band, before we were Llama Cult we were ‘Pigeons Make Milk’”.
As for the other band members, they were collected along the way. Al and Donagh knew each other from the Gaeltacht, Norah was friends with Donagh’s ex-girlfriend and Eoin studies Jazz, also with Donagh.
After a year hiatus Llama Cult recently had their comeback gig selling out upstairs at Whelan’s. “It’s the biggest gig we’ve ever played and it’s such an emotional thing that it’s in Whelan’s. It means a lot to us that it’s here,” said Touhy.
Young folk bands aren’t easy to come by – and you may think neither are their fans. “I’ve always been a singer songwriter type. I was into bands like Smashing Pumpkins when I was younger but for me it always came back to Fleet Foxes and Ryan Adams. Creatively I’ve always been drawn to folk,” said Touhy.
Kelly, on the other hand, said “for me, it was when I really started playing with Karl properly that I fell in love with folk. That was after COVID, we lost touch for a bit but when we started jamming again, we realised we had a shared love for the same bands and folk is just the name we put on it.”
“We’re kind of the only ones our age doing this kind of music, all usually indie rock bands so it’s nice to have that connection with it,” said Touhy
“It’s definitely our niche, if you’re looking for the sadder folky stuff that’s us. But in saying that it’s a niche audience as well, people are much more into the other stuff so it can be a hard thing to navigate,” said Touhy.
“I felt a lot of fear during the hiatus that we’d lose momentum and the audience we’d built. It was a tough year. But there’s been so much hype around the comeback show I think the break stood to us,” said Kelly
Both Touhy and Kelly have gone to study music in college. Touhy studies music in Trinity while Kelly studies Jazz in DCU.
“Studying music has absolutely changed the way we are as a band, it changes the way I analyse music and communicating ideas is so much easier,” said Kelly.
“I absolutely agree, this is our first gig since we’ve all been in college and it has tightened things up a lot more,” said Touhy.
“I had this one teacher, David Mooney, and he used to do a jazz course in Walton School of music, and he was like, ‘oh, man, you could be actually really good at this.’ He encouraged me to audition for Berkeley, and I got in. In the end, I wasn’t able to pay for it. But he was a massive thing that got me through that. So, I went into studying Jazz because I felt that it would be my best opportunity to have disciplined practice,” said Kelly, “Even though it isn’t the same as what Llama Cult plays, it’s done so much in helping me find my sound.”