Freedom is the key for Gary Fitzpatrick and Angie McLaughlin - which is why their gigs are free, they tell Tony Clayton-Lea.
It's as heartening a rock'n'roll'n'roots story as you'll hear this year, a tale of quiet triumph against the iniquitous nature of the music industry, its dictates, its occasional absurdities and its general level of commercially driven drivel.
It's David against Goliath, Bray Wanderers against Arsenal. Folks, it's the Sick & Indigent Song Club against the world. And who, you might well ask, are the Sick & Indigent Song Club? It's a fair question, and the answer lies in a seven-piece Dublin-based roots band of several years ago called the Great Western Squares.
Genuine, heartfelt country/roots music is difficult to come by in Ireland; broadly speaking, we're a nation of facsimile skinny-tie indie rock, surprisingly good electronica, embarrassing hip-hop, karaoke pop, slithery remnants of country'n'Irish, and rather less quality acts than we think we have. Country/roots with a hard edge - raised on a diet of punk, Hank and Lucinda Williams, Johnny Cash, and Gillian Welch - is all the more rare given that so few even deign to embrace it, let alone play the stuff. Which is why the Great Western Squares remain a small but important footnote in contemporary Irish music. Two albums in, however, and they were nobbled, according to the band's former frontman, Gary Fitzpatrick, by the industry's sterile cry of "where's the hit single"?
"The Great Western Squares finished in one of these confusing, semi-melodramatic ways," says Fitzpatrick, now one of the two mainstays in the Sick & Indigent Song Club (the other is a transplanted Scot, via San Francisco, Angie McLaughlin). "Plus, there was a general malaise within the band, people not speaking to each other, which was all very George Jones and Tammy Wynette. Overall, it wasn't really clicking, and it was becoming way more work than it was worth. I was just enjoying playing with a fiddle-player in pubs, anyway - and not just that, but getting paid more for it. Besides, trying to get seven people into the same place at the same time was becoming tiresome."
Fitzpatrick gradually gave up playing music.
"I cut my losses, and applied for college," he says. "I did a pre-college course, and then applied to Trinity, where I'm now studying English and Classical Civilisation."
Enter McLaughlin, a psychotherapist, who had moved to Dublin following a lengthy sojourn in San Francisco. Her love of music (all-encompassing but notably favouring songs of the 1940s, the Andrew Sisters, Doris Day, Johnny Cash, and Lucinda Williams) prompted her to seek out willing accomplices. A Dublin-based friend of hers knew Fitzpatrick and arranged an introduction, and before you could sing The Black Hills of Dakota, the Sick & Indigent Song Club had been loosely formed and a Monday night residency in Dublin's Ha'penny Bridge Inn had been arranged. They proceeded to beaver away irrespective of public or industry expectations. That was just over 12 months ago and, steadily, the audience for their rough-cut, eminently enjoyable roots music has grown.
"Someone we know used the word 'organic'," says McLaughlin, "and that's pretty much what it is. We've never pushed it; it's always been a natural thing."
"How it's progressing is something we haven't really thought about," offers Fitzpatrick. "It'll probably change when records come out - we've got bucket loads of material. But yes, it's been very slow progress. It started with the two of us, taking turns singing songs, and then a few other musicians came along."
The result, honed over the past year in a swift blur, is possibly the most gratifyingly carefree gig Dublin has to offer; and cheap, too, as admission is free.
"If people like it, then fine; if they don't, then they can move on," says Fitzpatrick evenly. "That's part of the reason why we don't charge in: if people come on a Monday night looking for entertainment that they pay for, then there's an onus on you to do what they want - which I didn't want to get trapped by. That stems from my time in pubs, every Friday night, being asked to sing Fields of Athenry, which was the kind of thing that drove me ballistic. So now if people don't like what we do, there's always another pub up the road where they can hear Fields of Athenry all bloody night."
"I don't want people to put us into a box, or categorise us," says McLaughlin. "It's simply music for us to enjoy."
"There are regulars who show up every week, because it's something to do on a Monday," adds Fitzpatrick. "It's a mixture of people we know, people who have heard or read about us, and tourists who are passing the pub, see the 'free live music' poster outside the pub and who just wander in.
"We used to have the name of the band on the poster, but that was taken off because it was thought the actual title would put people off. If you're a tourist - even some Dubliners - you might not be aware of the origins of the name." (The Sick and Indigent Roomkeepers Society is Dublin's oldest extant charity; founded in 1790, it was established to help the ill and destitute of all denominations in Dublin.)
"I actually ended up playing in the original place a few years ago - some people thought I came with the building!" Fitzpatrick adds.
For purely pragmatic reasons, an album is in the process of being recorded.
"After the gigs, people keep asking us for CDs," says McLaughlin. "Tourists would want a souvenir of the night, to remind them of their holidays."
As befits the unscheduled nature of the operation, neither Fitzpatrick nor McLaughlin have given much thought as to when the album will be ready for release, or what record label it will be on. Judging by their independent natures, it will be with us before the start of autumn, and on their own label. Neither have any idea what might happen after that.
"All we know is that we gig in the pub every Monday," says McLaughlin, "and on Thursdays we rehearse."
Not too many bands can say with conviction that they don't care about fame, fortune and Celebrity Squares. Such agreeable ambivalence comes with experience, age, and Fitzpatrick's nonchalant acceptance of his good looks.
"The thing I'm really enjoying about this at the moment," he reflects, "is that because we play anything and everything, we can perform anywhere. We played the over-60s night in the Dublin Conservative Club, and the homeless shelter in Aungier Street, which was just brilliant. You can do all these things without any pressure. And that's the organic bit about what we are; the same week we played the homeless shelter we performed at the Hugh Lane Gallery - with a completely different set in each venue. What we have here is a song club and not a band."
It makes more sense that way, affirms McLaughlin. "You listen to all different types of music anyway, so why should you play just the one? Embrace everything."
The Sick & Indigent Song Club is at Ha'penny Bridge Inn, Wellington Quay, Dublin 2, every Monday. Admission is free