Jamie Duffy is on the rise

Duffy’s is a story which melds social media with Icelandic inspiration and his own Irish traditions. His early musical experiences were rooted in the sounds he grew up with through his family and neighbours. “I was surrounded by musicians, but casual musicians,” he says. “My grandparents worked in factories and they always had full-time jobs, but music is something they did on the side. They'd pack up after work, go ahead and do a gig, and that would be around Ireland, Northern Ireland, over to England to play in the Irish clubs there.”

Duffy grew up in the small village of Glaslough in County Monaghan, at the foot of the Castle Leslie Estate. It was here that the former head of the family, Desmond Leslie, opened Ireland’s first rural nightclub in the ‘60s. “He was a bit of an aristocrat but he was also into writing about flying saucers and spaceships,” Duffy says. “People came over from London and America, which was a complete revival for this very Catholic village. There's archive footage of my grandmother in the '60s, she was the DJ there, and she was putting down these vinyl and dancing on the television back then.”

Get the Best Fit take on the week in music direct to your inbox every Friday

In his teens, Duffy would spend several nights a week playing piano in the Castle’s restaurant. “I feel like a character that was written in a book sometimes,” he laughs.

Despite his natural musicianship, he struggled with formal tuition growing up. With a very small pool of one music teacher in his village, he never felt he gelled with her process. “She's a wonderful woman, but I just don't think we ever really particularly got on,” he says. “I failed my piano exams. There was no room for creativity. There was no room for my own sound. You just got to play three pieces, regurgitate them exactly as they should be played, and to be honest, I hated that and I didn't thrive in that at all.”

His musical growth can be pinned to his dad’s “dodgy mate from work” who supplied him with burnt CDs, one of which was The Paradise Edition of Lana Del Rey’s Born To Die. “That completely changed everything I wanted to do and be,” he says. “The orchestration on that album, the sound of the strings, that completely inspired me. I mixed that with my own background of traditional music and that really informed my own sound and what I wanted to make and create.”

During the Covid lockdown, starved for connection, he began to upload covers onto TikTok using his tin whistle, rewarded with “insane” reaction and the odd comment likening him to a certain character from The Shire. “For context, [the tin whistle] is an instrument people in Ireland learn in school like the recorder. Most people go on to absolutely hate it, because if it's not done right, it sounds abysmal,” he laughs. “I can't remember learning how to play it, I can only remember being able to play it. I picked it up and ever since it's been my favorite instrument.”

It wasn’t until over a year later that Duffy turned his attention to the piano. “I remember that night so vividly,” he says. “I was living in Belfast City Center in my student accommodation - literally just one room; tiny little bathroom and a keyboard at the very bottom of it. I was supposed to go out to the nightclub as I did four or five times a week with my mates and I said, ‘No, I'm not feeling that. I probably should just stay in.’ And I just had this moment where I thought, ‘Ok, the piano's kind of looking at me.’"

Shot in the near dark, he posted an improvisational piece with the caption, “Just sitting at the piano before going to sleep, feeling a bit ill, but I think I made something that’s quite simple, yet a little bit cinematic.” The post blew up. “If only it was that easy for every tune,” he laughs.

Released as a single in 2022, “Solas” went on to become the most streamed debut by an Irish artist since Hozier’s “Take Me To Church,” with over 128 million streams and 6.6 billion views on TikTok. Duffy found himself the centre of attention from plenty of labels, eventually opting for a deal with the Dublin-based indie Rubyworks. “I turned around to my solicitor and I said, ‘I just want to make an Irish label work. I know there'll probably be sacrifices in other elements of the deal, but I just think if this is going to work, it has to stay in Ireland for now.’”

At the same time, his solicitor had set him up in a writing session with Icelandic composer Atli Örvarsson. Their connection became a pivotal partnership for Duffy. “I remember on the plane back to Dublin just before I took off, he texted me and he said, ‘I really see something special here and I see a lot of my younger self in you.’ To me that was like, oh my goodness. For somebody like that who's making an incredible mark - he won a BAFTA last year - to tell you that is really wonderful. Since then, he was the executive producer on all of my music including my album.”

Part-recorded in Iceland with INNI Music, an independent creative hub in Reykjavik founded by Örvarsson and former Bedroom Community label manager Colm O’Herlihy, they bring together musicians, writers, producers and composers from around the world. “There are Irish people, there are Icelandic people, there are Australians all living here in Reykjavík in this bohemian community and it is wonderful,” says Duffy. “I guess there are parallels between that and if you go back to my own younger upbringing of just being in a small little place with so many creative people. So I went up there and I just found a lot of peace and creativity and solace there. It was magic and this record wouldn't exist without that community existing.”

Released almost three years to the day that Duffy shared the improvisation which became “Solas”, Jamie Duffy is a rich and mature debut. Bringing together his earlier piano-led releases with the more heavily orchestrated pieces produced by Örvarsson, it shows the progress and promise of the 24-year-old’s talent for melody and composition.

“I look at this album as the soundtrack to the last three years of my life. A big beautiful ethereal mess at that,” he laughs. “If I look back at “Solas,” I wish the piano sounded different. But then I think, there's 127 million streams and it's the track that I just walked into the studio, sat down, recorded it and left. I think that recording has a lot of magic or something in it, so I didn't want to change that.”