YOU'VE just released Fawks Ache, the debut album by The Tragedy of Dr Hannigan. How did this blues-rocking duo with Dean Stevens come about and what's the concept behind it?
A series of toxically contaminated petrie dishes were left in direct sunlight and treated with various bleaches and curling products, until the airborne vapours became sentient and infected the hapless but handsome duo you see before you.
As far as the album concept, whilst there is some sincerity on there, most of the lyrical content is tongue in cheek. I felt like not being a downer, variety being the spice of life and that.
Dr Hannigan are playing their first ever show for the album launch at The Empire in Belfast on November 8. How are rehearsals going and will there be more gigs to come?
The rehearsals are going really great. I'm genuinely really excited by how well they're going – it's so nice to play with a band again. The band is pretty special too. We have the mercurial No Oil Paintings and possibly my favourite singer from the north, Donal Scullion, giving life and freedom to those sounds that we caged in the studio. There should be some more gigs to announce soon too.
Dr Hannigan is the latest musical project in an ongoing 21-year-long career in music which began at age 15 with your first band PepperBook and has seen you win acclaim in post-rock combo And So I Watch You From Afar and as a solo artist under the name VerseChorusVerse. What do you think the teenaged Tony would make of Dr Hannigan?
Probably a combination of surprise, intrigue, disgust and pride. Mainly at the fact that I'm still alive and doing this!
PepperBook was a noisey grunge/pop band and laid the foundations for all I've done since. There are a few ASIWYFA licks that started life in the original incarnation of PepperBook – I think it's OK to plagiarise yourself?
I'll have to check with my teenaged self and hope we don't end up in court. I think I'm probably more mature than me so hopefully we don't come to that. But we'll see.
Were you always in music for the long haul or did your passion develop over the years?
Well, PepperBook played our first gig just days before my 15th birthday; we played mainly original songs whilst all the other bands were doing covers.
Not that we were cooler or anything – they were just more accomplished musicians than us! My only other interests back then were art and performance – be it musical or acting – and that's remained fairly constant.
The 100 per cent genuine truth is I had no idea that I'd still be alive 21 years later! I'm still surprised everyday. Who knows how much longer?
The passion was always there though. I was a bit of a slave driver to the band. Three hours' rehearsal every day on holidays and four nights a week during school time.
All I did when I wasn't practising with the band was write songs. I was a strange teenager in that I didn't drink. Art was and is all that matters. For better or worse.
Major label BMG were interested in PepperBook. How did those early dealings colour your view of the 'music business’?
That was a weird time. Whilst I should've been studying for GCSEs like my friends, I was being flown back and forth to London getting my head filled with how I was about to be “the next big thing” whilst turning down recreational drugs. A strange way to deal with a 15-year-old boy from trouble-strewn NI.
I learnt very quickly not to believe the throwaway superlatives that are showered upon you. But it was a tough lesson. I think that is why I embraced the DIY punk rock ethos so much more in later years.
Will there be new music from VerseChorusVerse soon?
There's an album ready to go! I'm hoping to put it out with a book I've written... (seamless segue!)
What can you tell us about the book you’ve written?
It's done, save for a few edits here and there, but yeah, I wrote a book. A real book. Not a colour-in one or a pop-up one, a real one. With sentences and everything.
It was one of the most satisfying things I've ever done, not to mention the most disciplined. It's part memoir, part travelogue, detailing mainly a strange trip across the USA last year, whilst in tandem with doing *a lot* of soul searching, 20 years into this career.
It's very honest, alarmingly so at times, but mainly I think it's both pretty damn funny and of more than a passing interest to anyone with the creative urge/affliction.
You've recently done a bit of acting too?
I did, yeah. I was lucky enough to get an audition for a small but vital role in the biopic of Man City footballer, Bert Trautmann. I really didn't expect to get the part as it was my first ever movie audition, but somehow got it.
Acting is something I used to do a lot of when I was a kid – even before music – so it's more like the welcome return of an old friend.
Any other non-musical projects on the go?
There is something else coming out next year that I can't say too much about as it's not really my project. I contributed heavily but it would be wrong of me to announce it ahead of them.
All I can say is that a lot of cool, very talented people helped to make it a reality and that we're all very proud to have worked on something that is so ambitious and a definite first in Irish music. It's very cool, like you. You're cool too.
What is your ultimate ambition as a musician?
To keep being able to do it. Physically, mentally and, alas, financially. BUY MY STUFF PEOPLE. Ahem. Y'know, please.
The rewards to being a musician are usually not materialistic, in my experience anyway. I've been lucky enough to see a lot of this planet and all because eight-year-old me old had a guitar placed in his lap by his mum. That's pretty mind blowing.
I'm a really lucky guy. For the most part, haha.
Best advice you’ve ever received?
"Don't be scared" – Daniel Johnston. Then he told me I looked like Eric Idle in The Rutles. It was a pretty cool night.
Whilst I believe fear can be unavoidable if faced with a wolf, a shark, or a sharkwolf, I do believe that most fear and anxiety is conquerable.
But by god it can be tough. Like all things worthwhile.
Fawks Ache is out now. Tickets for the The Empire show cost £6 via Ticketmaster outlets. Find Dr Hannigan online at Tinyurl.com/drhannigan
