By Claire Corrigan
Fresh back from a ten day stint in London, Mullingar singer/ songwriter Darren Flynn aka Just Flynn is in high spirits as he chats to Topic. “I can’t say too much yet but I’m basically writing some singles along the lines of singing to someone.
Since I got all the media coverage in Ireland this is kind of what I’ve done since then. So I’m working on singles at the moment in London with songwriters who have worked with people like Lilly Allen and Will Young’s albums and are very well-known in the business. It’s really positive and things are going really well at the moment.”
Darren describes the music is writing at the moment as a mix of soul and hip hop and soul or ‘soul pop’. “ It’s what you would call soulful pop with hints of hip hop.” he laughs.
The 23-year-old has had a busy year playing gigs in Bristol and Devon and also garnered a lot of interest from the Irish media.
As well as singing live on Spin 103 a number of his covers have gone viral and being picked up by Joe.ie, Her.ie and the Irish Independent. He has also released a number of original songs during the year including ‘Ask Yourself’ an emotional song about moving abroad and struggling to fit in.
Describing what inspired him to write the song he said: ‘The song is about someone that inspired me to move home. This particular person has always been stressed and caught up in the city life of London and has been since he was 18. He’s now in his 40’s and finds it hard to get away from the place. Living with him for a while made me appreciate where my real home was, I guess I didn’t want to see myself in the same position years down the line’.
After being scouted by A&R (Artists and Repertoire) ”For anyone who does want to do music, I just want to say keep going because they are on the look-out for talent, including Irish artists, to work with and take to the next level.”
Darren said he began to take a serious interest in music during Transition Year when he was 16 and took up guitar a year later. “It gave me a year to think about what I wanted to do rather than focusing on studies. It wasn’t that I wasn’t academic it was just that I didn’t have much interest. I was always more interested in the more creative side of things so Transition Year really helped me get in touch with that. We had class in music which was good and over a six week course we had teachers come in and teach us a bit about song writing and that got me interested.”
After completing his Leaving Cert Justin moved to Bristol at 19 and enrolled on a Music Performance fscheme for a year before leaving to pursue music himself. “I spent three Bristol busking and gigging and doing various jobs. I’ve done over 200 gigs and made a lot of contacts. I think experimenting with different music too by meeting different people.”
He played many venues around the city including The Fleece- an established venue for live indie music gigs. “For the first year there I just lived I suppose and wrote about what I witnessed over the year and the experiences. From there I started busking when I had enough tunes together. A lot of them were about the move from Ireland to England and my life in general. A few people came up to me when I was busking and asked me if I wanted to play a gig and I would also go into venues and ask them if I could play a few songs and they’d say yes or no. So I just started slowly building up gigs over time.”
The musician also spent a year in London which he spent gigging as often as he could. “I think I did 60 gigs in something like three months. It was a lot of gigging. I was meeting industry people all the time that could help me and get me gigs so it was just all about getting out there and taking the plunge and not worrying about it and just doing it. I did take risks.”
Darren says that sometimes he wonders where he’d be if continued down the academic route. “Sometimes I think I would like to have finished the degree just for the sake of it but if I had I don’t’ think I’d have been able to work on music. If you want to be a music teacher or work behind the scenes a degree is fine but if. I kind of want to leave an imprint with my music, (who doesn’t) and the only way to do that is finding yourself and writing songs and you don’t really learn that in college. “
