When Ro (Ronan Bell), Bee (Jonathan Byrne) and Teddy C (Ted Conway) met in secondary school, their focus was to win a competition. The three Tullamore lads were put together by their music teacher for a local music competition. They laugh as they tell VIP Magazine that they ultimately lost the thing.
However, their love for music kept them together. They left the competition behind and opted to come together as a trio to form Chasing Abbey – an electronic dance music band.
Chasing Abbey first entered the music scene in 2017 with their self-released single That Good Thing winning the Irish Choice Music Award for Song of the Year in 2018. Their EP, The Odyssey Project, appeared at number one in the Irish Charts upon its release and they even made waves over in the States.
We caught up with the rising stars to chat playing live, musical inspirations and making it in the Big Smoke!
Hey guys! Let’s get straight into it! How did Chasing Abbey begin?
Teddy C: We started playing music together in secondary school and we started out playing trad music and folk music. All our families are involved in that scene. That’s how we started and we kept playing together throughout the years. Myself and Bee were in fifth year and Ro was in second year. There was a competition on the local radio and our music teacher put us together. Me and Bee got Ro from Spanish and brought him up to practice.
We played Gnarls Barkley Crazy and we did that competition and we didn’t win. So that was that. But we stayed together and we kept playing music together. We went through a few different genres, we started playing folk and then we were trying to do a bit more electronic music and then it turned into pop. It eventually progressed to electronic dance music because we decided to get the proper software and the whole studio set up. We learned how to use Ableton and we went from there.
You’re probably as far away from trad music now, do you still take inspiration from that for your current tracks?
Bee: Absolutely. One of our singles at the moment has banjo in it. Our new single, Lie, the main melody of the chorus is inspired by Irish melodies. It comes out naturally, it’s just who we are.
Ro: Even with all our fully produced tracks that we release, we always have a stripped-back acoustic version that we play when we go down to radio stations. They sound so different when they’re in that form but it sounds so folky and Irish. It’s going back to its roots.
You were put together as a trio in school, but when did you realise that you could go all the way as a band?
Teddy C: All three of us were always involved in music because of our families growing up. But I don’t think we really thought we could do music as a job until we got the whole studio set up. I think we saw the potential there. We had a lot of time to experiment with stuff there. We were starting to get good results there and we thought maybe we could get a proper single out and see how it goes. Once we got that going, we started believing in ourselves a lot more.
Bee: We come from a rural part of Ireland, and not too many people were hearing our music. But when Ted went to music college in Dublin, which is obviously the big city, he was playing our songs for people up there. He was coming back to us and saying, “Jesus our music is actually really good.”
Tell us a bit more about playing your music for people outside your circle, Teddy.
Teddy C: I was really surprised! I was in BIMM for a year. I was a bit intimidated going up there being from Tullamore! I was nervous I wasn’t good enough to fit in amongst them all. But when I started to play some of our demos in class I couldn’t believe the reaction. I was really shocked. I would come home on the train and meet up with the boys. I’d be like, “This is actually really good, boys!”
That must have helped your confidence a lot!
Ro: We had that mindset, in the beginning, coming from a small town that you weren’t as good as the other people coming from a big city. That was a big eye-opener. It gave us a lot of belief in ourselves.
You’re well aware it’s not easy to make it in the music industry. So what did your parents think when you said you wanted to pursue a career in the industry?
Teddy C: The three of us were very, very lucky. Our parents supported us from the get-go. There was never a question raised when we decided to make music our career.
Bee: They deserve an awful lot of credit because they believed in us 100 per cent. They probably believed in us more than we did at the start. They have been a part of our journey from the very start and all along the way. Ted’s mam is the first person to tell us when our songs have been played on the radio. They’re all so heavily involved, it’s great. It is a bit mad though – three lads from Tullamore making dance music. No one had done it before. So them supporting us says a lot about them.
Teddy C: There’s one thing about picking a career in music, there’s a whole other thing about picking a brand new thing that hasn’t been done by people from here. But that’s how we do things. We do things to the extreme.
Do you have any musical inspirations?
Bee: I think longevity is a big one for us and legacy. We have a lot of different inspirations but for myself anyway, Thin Lizzy. The legacy of Thin Lizzy and the vibe of them. The stamp they left.
Teddy C: The originality as well. One thing we wanted to do when we started Chasing Abbey was not to be another guitar band. That’s no disrespect to guitar bands. What I mean by that is we wanted to be something completely different. Thin Lizzy is a really good example because their music still rings through today. They influenced some of the biggest bands in the world.
What would your ideal five-year plan look like?
Teddy C: We really want an international hit. That’s what we’ve been focused on. We’ve had success in Ireland but we want one of those songs that’s everywhere in the world. If we could achieve that in the next five years that would be huge. Everything else would fall into place after that.
We can see it happening! Going back now, what is your biggest achievement?
Ro: Selling out the Olympia or Longitude. It was a very surreal moment selling out the Olympia. I remember seeing the poster with the stamp that said Sold Out and thinking, “What?” I couldn’t get my head around it.
Bee: I think an achievement we should be proud of is that we’re still here. After the pandemic and everything that happened with other artists, it was a weird time. The fact we’re still here, releasing singles, we’re moving in the right direction. We’re very grateful.
Congratulations on both counts. What is it like playing live and hearing a crowd sing your lyrics back to you?
Teddy C It’s surreal. It’s hard to describe that moment because it is an out-of-body experience. There’s a moment in a performance where the energy just hits right and it hits the peak. It’s like time goes into slow motion. It’s other-worldly. It’s so different from anything else. It lingers in you for months.
Bee There’s this noise when the crowd all sing back to you at the same time. There’s literally no other sound like it. There’s something so powerful about people singing in unison but when it’s your lyrics…it’s something else.
You just released your new single, Lie. But what’s next for you guys?
Ro: We plan on releasing a lot of unreleased stuff on Soundcloud. We usually release three songs a year but this year we want to push out 10 songs on Soundcloud. We have all this music sitting here and we’re always trying to pick a single. So we thought why don’t we just give everyone, everything? Especially for our live shows.
Bee: The process of releasing a single through Spotify can be quite slow. You have a lead time of six to eight weeks and you have to get the song written, mixed, mastered…it can be quite time-consuming. So the fact we can do it ourselves through Soundcloud is great. We’re going to get a lot more out.
Ro: We have loads of festivals and gigs coming up. This year feels like a proper year. Everything is open and out. Gigs weren’t back fully this time last year. Its great gigs are back. It’s the way it should be.
Chasing Abbey’s single Lie is out now
