Paul Byrne

Paul Byrne first came onto the music scene as the young drummer for Dublin new wave band ‘Deaf Actor’ in 1979 with Conor Brady and Jack Dublin. Deaf Actor were one of Dublin’s lesser known but well rated post-punk bands of their time. They played many landmark gigs and venues including The Magnet Bar, The Baggot Inn, The Sportsmans Inn, The Project Arts Centre and the second Carnsore Anti Nuclear festival. In 1983 Paul was a founder member of the internationally successful rock band ‘In Tua Nua’ with other local musicians Ivan O’Shea, Martin Clancy and Steve Wickham. It was in the pursuit of a singer that Paul came across a young Sinead O’Connor. O’Connor was singing solo at his sister, Jeannette, wedding. Paul worked with Sinead and recorded some early demos’. Sinead went on to sign to Chrysalis and the rest is history as they say! In Tua Nua’s debut single was the very first release on U2’s own ‘Mother Records’ label (mother001) and was an instant hit in Ireland. Following a brief signing to Island records, they were eventually signed to Virgin Records in 1986. The band toured extensively in Europe and the US as supports to U2, Simple Minds and Bob Dylan to name a few. The band had their US breakthrough in 1988 with their second album on Virgin Records ‘The Long Acre’ on which Paul sang the title track. By this stage he had forged a writing partnership with guitarist Martin Clancy. Paul also co-wrote a few songs with Jack Dublin for the album making him the main songwriter for the album. Besides the title track Paul’s best known songs were ‘The Innocent and The Honest Ones’ and ‘Woman On Fire’. When ITN broke up in 1989, Paul continued writing with his ITN co-writer Martin Clancy but this time Paul was singing all of the songs. The duo performed as ‘Sugar Candy Mountain’ and had an Irish top 20 hit with ‘Do you know what hurts the children?’. He also formed cow-punk outfit ‘The Texas Kellys’ with banjo ace Jimmy Kelly and fiddle player ‘Steve Wickham’ (Waterboys). While he was primarily the drummer, Paul got to sing a lot more lead vocals with the Kellys and went on to produce their album ‘Stay All Night’. Both bands broke up in 1993. Around this time he started to work with Sean Loughman, better known as a certain Jack-L! Another friend and co-writer Brian Lynch had asked Paul if he would be interested in fronting a new show based on Jaques Brel. While flattered at the proposition, Paul suggested they try out this amazing young singer Jack-L instead. The resulting band was The Black Romantics which also included Paul’s sister Jeannette on vocals. In 1995 Paul helped Jeannette launch her solo career by producing her album ‘Elegy’ which featured some of his own original songs and later produced her second alum ‘Café Diva’. In the late nineties Paul trained as a video editor. In 2001 Paul formed Optophonic with composer and multimedia guru Derek Cronin, The idea was to combine their video and music skills under the one roof. Along the way they also created Phonic Recording Studios with guitar legend Conor Brady and finally the I-NV-U Record Label. In late 2004 Paul reformed In Tua Nua for a small Irish tour and in 2005 he joined the newly reformed ‘Rocky de Valera and The Gravediggers for a short stint that ended up lasting for 4 years. In 2009 Paul decided to help out with some young bands from his hometown of Howth. He produced albums and an EP for Von Shakes and The Kapitals respectively which he released on I-NV-U Records. Later in 2009 Paul was asked to form a new band with Shane McGowan entitled The Shane Gang. This lasted about 2 years but from it came The Guilty Party, one of the best pub rock bands on the scene, where Paul does his best Levon Helm impression as their singing drummer. After a lifetime of writing, producing, managing and generally helping everyone else’s careers, it was time for Paul to come out of the shadows. So in late 2013 he decided to put together a collection of songs and record them with the help of Conor Brady. The songs span the last 25 years but the first single is one of Paul’s most recent compositions ‘I’ve Got You’. Paul Byrne’s debut solo single “I’ve Got You” is released on 28th February 2014. His debut album will follow in early May.