As an extraordinary filmmaker, Myles O’Reilly documented a special era in emerging Irish music, mostly from 2009 – 2020. He calls it ‘an epic journey filled with enormous creativity and passion’. Since then, he’s returned to music and gradually embarked on a journey of writing and performing his own compositions. Resulting in many solo albums (nine in the last four years, a tenth set for release in September!) and two collaborative albums with Rónán Ó Snodaigh – the latest, The Beautiful Road, an absolute masterpiece.

During Kilkenny Arts Festival in August 2023, I met up with Myles O’Reilly before his performance with Manchán Magan at the Watergate Theatre and pointed the cameras towards him for once, while he played Shine and covers of Lau’s Ghosts and Low’s Point Of Disgust.

A million unforeseen circumstances

Following from a little distance, the joy of creating radiates from Myles O’Reily, whether it’s his film making, his solo music, or the music with Rónán Ó Snodaigh. “I was very bad in school. I was terrible at learning things; I had no enthusiasm for subjects. It’s not that I just didn’t like the subjects; it’s that I just couldn’t. I have a learning disability—ADHD. Attention deficit hyperactivity. I would like to call it hyper creativity disorder. But where I did excel, of course, was in creative things. When I did drawings, when I painted, in music class and music school, and all the way up through my school years, I only really excelled and showed passion and drive for the creative things.”

“That meant using the right side of my brain and not really using the left—the calculus side of my brain. It doesn’t function very well, and it hasn’t functioned very well. Thankfully, my mother loved me so much and encouraged me so much that I never thought there was something wrong with me. I failed my school, I failed my Leaving Cert, I failed my college, everything until I just quit it all and started playing music.”

“Creating is all I can do, and it makes me happy”, Myles O’Reilly knows: “It’s effortless for me to do creative things. It’s very fulfilling for me; sometimes I can do them very quickly. It’s great that more people notice my work now, and I’m rewarded financially more for my work, and everything’s going well. I just stuck to my guns. But look, I literally couldn’t do anything else.”

Shapes and sounds

“Rónán is the exact same. He might have a different version; everyone has slightly different aspects of neuro divergence. But Rónán’s very similar to mine. We think in shapes and sounds, and even when we talk to each other and when we talk to others, it might sound more poetic. The order in which we say things is normally quite skewed compared to neuro typical answers. We give kind of poetic answers to things. But thankfully, we understand each other, and that’s one of the reasons why he has inspired me so much; He’s just so able to be a master of his craft. We inspire each other to really embrace the way we think about creating and what that does to us, what that is to our hearts and our minds.”

“It was a late night in the smoking area of Whelan’s, and I was having a conversation with my friend and musician Branwen Kavangh. It was at the height of my film making era. She was so kind taking the opportunity to remind me that I had a singing voice and that I should use it. ‘Just learn one song, one song that’s new, that excites you. It’ll do you the world of good.’ Some people often inquired about my musical ambitions, and Branwen was one of those precious few. I appreciated that she wouldn’t let it go, even though I had completely let go of the idea of singing again.”

“Her words stayed in my mind for years, and I often thought that if I were to learn a song, it should be Ghosts by Lau—I just adore Kris Drever’s melody. Then, as it happens, a million unforeseen circumstances led to me playing music again, and so in tribute to Branwen, Ghosts became the first new song I have learned since my return to music.” 

‘Point of Disgust symbolizes our relationship.’

Myles O’Reilly played music from when he was a teenager up until his mid-30s. “In my twenties I had a different reason for singing as I do now. Back then, the intention was much different. I mean, I was looking for true love, I was looking for a partner, I was singing a lot of love songs, and I was singing a lot of different stuff. When I found my wife, and I found my true love, that intention went away – and singing suddenly wasn’t something that I would utilize as often. I just came back to it because I found a different intention.”

His mother always loved his singing, Myles O’Reilly remembers: “She encouraged it so much, and that’s really why I did it all the way through my childhood and all the way through my twenties. When the film making took over, my mother wasn’t as keen; I really felt that she wanted me so much to shine in a more forward way, to be in front of the camera, and to kind of inspire in the way that I inspired her.”

“In lock down, when my world collapsed and lots of film projects collapsed, it was a pleasure to come back to music as a hobby to keep myself busy here in the house. Then the singing came back. Unfortunately, my mother never got to see me start singing again because she died in 2013, really in the middle of my film career. So Shine was a tribute to her, a tribute to what she wanted, which was for me to start singing again. And I’m glad I put it out there into the world, and I’m glad it affected people and makes people cry in the way that it made me cry when I first started singing it.”

“After years of just filming, the only song I still knew how to play and sing was Low’s Point of Disgust. This song became significant for me because it’s the one I associate with meeting Aideen, who is now my wife. It’s our song, symbolizing our relationship. Just as our relationship has morphed and changed over the eighteen years we’ve been together, so has my version of the song. The whispered version I chose to record for my album, Cocooning Heart, is a penultimate rendition, representing an album about rediscovering love – love for music and for each other. I raise my voice more live as a way of keening in tribute to its author, Mimi Parker, who recently passed away from cancer.”

Talking about influences…

Myles O’Reilly has created some of my favourite music videos from the last decade, and they are too many to mention, but to name a few: he filmed with Niamh Bury, Lemoncello, Ye Vagabonds, The Staves, Glen Hansard, Lisa O’Neill, Martin Hayes and Lisa Hannigan. A special mention is needed for his two videos called A City Under Quiet Lights, volume I and II – that capture intimate, one-song performances by the artists set against the backdrop of cherished Cork landmarks. I highly recommend you visit his YouTube channel and click on the subscribe button.

“I was just so busy playing music that I forgot about my first creative passion, which was editing. I used to do a lot of that when I was a kid with VHS tapes and a handy cam. I used to make films with my friends in the park, and I just thought it was the greatest thing in the world. When I was 35, going back into filming stuff felt like the dream job, you know? The music didn’t really pay much. I wasn’t doing well—maybe it’s because my intention was just so narrow. And then the filming just felt like I was doing my childhood plaything and getting paid more, and it just took over from the music.”

The Influences in Ireland.

In August 2023, The Influences traveled to Kilkenny, Ireland, to film sessions during Kilkenny Arts Festival. Over the course of two weekends, I filmed eleven sessions, with acts on the festival’s line up, and other Irish musicians that I admire. Myles O’Reilly’s session isn’t the last of those eleven to appear on the website. More will follow in the weeks and months to come. So, please subscribe and keep coming back!

Photos

Keep watching

Thank you for watching and enjoying this session. You’ll probably like some other sessions from The Influences’ archive too, like these earlier ones we filmed at TakeRoot festival.