Malachy Tuohy: ‘There was no point putting out an album that sounded like The Riptide Movement’

Another Covid album, I hear you ask. Well, yes, because when you’re a songwriter like Malachy Tuohy, you have to respond to the world around you. Tuohy focused on the kind of songs he didn’t think would suit his full-time gig as lead singer in The Riptide Movement – and ideas for songs never stopped popping into his head.

“As a songwriter I’m always between different projects, either for myself, for the band or with other artists, so Covid didn’t change that. When it kicked in I started doing streaming gigs under the title of The Lock In Sessions – they consisted of stripped-back songs, some Riptide Movement tunes, some cover versions, anything to connect with people, whether or not they were fans. As is my way, other ideas kept bubbling up, and I Cross This Universe was one. It was an idea I had ages ago, but it came together during that quite anxious time, and I thought it might be a good concept for a record that would allow me to go anywhere with the songs.”

Tuohy’s debut solo album (for which his mother painted the cover) is far removed from what Riptide Movement fans might expect. There are no boisterous tunes, no anthemic lighter-in-the-air choruses, no jump-up-and-down moments. The album title, he says, was inspired by his love of sci-fi’s depiction of time travel, the multiverse, television shows such as If I Hadn’t Met You and Quantum Leap, and movies such as The Butterfly Effect. The throughline, he says, is “that we’re all connected, that there’s something greater than ourselves”.

There’s no getting away from the album’s sense of melancholy; almost half of its 10 songs touch on death. Jarlath is a tribute to Tuohy’s late uncle, who was in palliative care during the pandemic. He wrote it as a balm, but his uncle slipped away before he could listen to it. Song for Suzie is a cover version of a song by Tony Colton, a UK songwriter and producer with a surprising Irish connection, who died six months after Covid hit.

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“Tony was a good friend of mine and The Riptide Movement. We had known him since 2006, when we had just started out as a band. We met him in a queue in Heathrow Airport, and this guy in front of us turned around when he heard us talking about music and gigs. He noticed that one of us was wearing a Rory Gallagher T-shirt, said he liked the design, but when we started to explain who Rory was, he stopped us and said he knew exactly who Rory was, because he had produced the two albums by Taste,” Tuohy says, referring to the band Gallagher formed in 1966.

If I were to summarise, I Cross this Universe is an album of love songs, tributes and eulogies. I guess it’s reflecting on life and death and of that time period

“We were blown away by that, so we exchanged details, and less than a year later Tony was in Dublin producing What About the Tip Jars?, our debut album. He gave us advice on how to write songs, gave us belief in ourselves, and when he passed I said to myself that if I was ever going to make another album – at this point, no one knew if the industry would come back – then I’d cover one of his songs as a tribute.”

Another song, Rainy Boy Sleep, pays tribute to the Irish musician Steve Martin, who died in 2016, while The Artist references Tuohy’s great-great-grand-uncle Patrick Tuohy, a painter. The track Requiem, featuring suitably sublime vocals by Moya Brennan of Clannad and emerging singer Rachel Grace, holds these particular works in place. Despite the depths of sadness, Tuohy says “the songs seemed to come together very naturally, and as a songwriter I tried not to get in the way of that.

“Because it’s a solo project, and because it was born out of the time when we were coming out of Covid, when everybody was so unsure as to what was going to happen, I thought that if I were ever to release a collection of songs again, then what would I do, what kind of album would I put out? If I were to summarise, I Cross This Universe is an album of love songs, tributes and eulogies. I guess it’s reflecting on life and death and of that time period.”

What perspective does he have on that period now? The processing continues, he says, adding that when he wasn’t in a creative frame of mind he returned to studying what he gave up when The Riptide Movement started. “Back then I had a year of my law degree done, and I let it slide, but because I had the time during Covid I went back to it. One thing led to another, and I had the opportunity to finish that, along with humanities, in Bratislava, in Slovakia. That moved the academic gears along for me, but it was also good for creativity.”

He returned to Ireland last summer. “I had finished recording the album in the summer of 2021, but I was unsure what was going to happen. I sat with it for the year I was in Bratislava but still didn’t know if or when I’d do anything with it. Riptide Movement had a really busy summer last year with festivals, and so when it came to last autumn, when I had time to think, I decided to release it.”

My first love will always be the band, because it’s such a massive part of who I am. But I also love solo acoustic songs, ballads - people like Nick Drake, Bob Dylan, José González

Where does the solo album fit into his overall creative output? “It’s another avenue, a different part of who I am. I definitely think my history with the band and the collaborations with other writers have naturally brought me to it. There was no point putting out an album that sounded like The Riptide Movement. That said, the band is family, and when we’re in a room together, with all the shared, collective experiences, it’s truly something else.

“My first love will always be the band, because it’s such a massive part of who I am. I love the way we do festivals and I love the songs we write. But I also love solo acoustic songs, ballads – people like Nick Drake, Bob Dylan, José González and too many others to mention – so I can explore that side of me in my solo work. There was also no pressure of thinking it might be nice to come up with a radio-friendly song – with these songs, that didn’t matter to me at all.”

Patrick Tuohy (1894-1930): ‘According to Wikipedia he killed himself, but this was refuted’

“Art runs in the family,” says Malachy Tuohy – and it certainly does. His great-great-grand-uncle was Patrick Tuohy (1884-1930), a highly regarded artist who studied under Patrick Pearse’s sculptor brother, William Pearse, at St Enda’s College in Dublin. Tuohy was subsequently a student of William Orpen at what is now the National College of Art and Design. Tuohy’s work included a commission, in 1923, by James Joyce to paint a portrait of his father, John Stanislaus Joyce. Tuohy went on to paint James Joyce’s children, Giorgio and Lucia, as well as the novelist himself (the portrait is at the State University of New York in Buffalo), but the artist and writer had a conflicted relationship, causing the latter to portray him in Finnegans Wake as “Ratatuohy”. Tuohy emigrated to the United States in 1927, cofounding the Irish University Club in New York – where he died in his studio, from gas poisoning. “There’s a bit of a mystery around his passing,” says his great-great-grand-nephew. “According to Wikipedia he killed himself, but this was refuted, so I don’t think anyone knows.”

Malachy Tuohy is launching I Cross This Universe with a concert at Smock Alley Theatre, Temple Bar, Dublin 8, on Wednesday, June 28th