Shock and Flaw
Right now, they are one of the hottest acts in Ireland. But The Flaws started out as a covers band who couldn't play their instruments.
Shilpa Ganatra, 16 Feb 2006
Welcome to Carrickmacross, population 3,800 and best known as the home of Patrick Kavanagh, Ardal O’Hanlon and a mighty fine bypass.
More recently, the Co Monaghan town can boast of The Flaws, the local four-piece who are still celebrating after being signed at the end of last year. Signed? And not based in Dublin or Cork?, one may splutter. In fact, singer and guitarist Paul Finn cites the small town boredom as a major factor in his and best friend Stephen Finnegan’s decision to form a band.
“There was nothing much to do in Carrickmacross,” he begins, his accent mapping the town’s border county locale. “I was never really into sports like all my friends, and that was why I got more into music. If you don’t fit in anywhere, you have to invent your own wee scene and be really good at something a bit different. Although we were terrible at that stage!”
Speaking from Dundalk’s Tumbleweed studio, where the band recorded their The Flaws EPlast year, Paul elaborates on how much the quartet had to learn when they started out back in 2000.
He isn’t shy about revealing that, when the idea for the band came about, it was merely a minor hindrance that they couldn’t play their instruments (“I only played guitar a little and Stephen wanted to learn the drums”).
Later, when Dane McMahon has been recruited on bass and Shane Malone on guitar, they found themselves plying their trade as a covers band.
“We met up for one practice and we learnt a load of songs, but we quickly found out we were no good at them. We did about 10 gigs at 10 different venues, but none of them would ask us back,” he laughs. “I suppose that’s because we used to throw our own songs in the middle of the set. The whole place would just go quiet and think: ‘Bon Jovi never played that’.”
Yet publicly shooting themselves in the foot only increased their determination to write original material.
“We used to spend time figuring out our own stuff when we should have been concentrating on learning covers,” Finn recalls. “But playing our own songs was something we really wanted to do, and when you do what you love, it comes easy and quickly.”
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