Hi, I'm Marc, nice to meet you!
- How ya going? - Good!
Let's just go back to the beginning, where did the interest in music start?
I'm not sure, I was obsessed with playing football so it kind of wasn't something I
really even took heed of until I was 15 or 16 maybe.
That's when I started writing songs and got a bit more serious about it.
Do you still have the songs you wrote when you were 14,15?
- Yeah, they're still on YouTube. - They're still on YouTube?
Oh, I'm gonna have so much fun finding those. (Both laugh)
When you go back and watch those videos now, tell me about that kid.
How different was this Dermot to that Dermot?
I just never second guessed anything so I would cringe at everything if I was to look back on it now.
What were you listening to at that age?
Probably a ton of David Gray and Glen Hansard and stuff like that.
You said in an interview that one of the best decisions you made was to go busking on Christmas eve.
Yeah, I can't even remember what year it was now but basically
Glen Hansard, every year, busks on Christmas eve to raise money for the homeless in Dublin.
He's out there for like six or seven hours playing non stop and
It's almost like an open invitation for everyone to bring a guitar and join in.
So I did that and I was only 18 or 19 or something like that.
I was basically planed by his side all day elbowing people away and stuff
so I was like determined to be there.
What do you learn about yourself when you are out there, belting out a song to people who may or may not care?
I mean, you kind of get really comfortable with the idea of 'I don't care if someone likes this or not."
You're gonna do it regardless.
If the day wasn't going well I used to just start playing songs that I loved.
Like Ben Howard and stuff, putting my head down and getting it done.
This is for me now.
Yeah and that's a lovely thing to know that everyone is passing by and not caring at all.
Having a total isolated experience by yourself.
Now I'm playing shows where people actually want to be there.
(Laughs) What do I do? My god! They like me!
Cause when you're in the street there's so many people that will take off their headphones
then put them back in and keep walking.
If they did that at a show I think there'd be a problem. Yeah, that's not great.
You have to remind yourself that people are there and happy to see you.
I want to know about the first time you uploaded something where you realised it was different now.
People were really starting to pay attention.
Yeah, there was a gig in London that I organised myself in the Servant Jazz Quarters.
There was only like 60 people or something like that.
A lot of people came up to me and said they had heard the music on Spotify that day.
So I went home and it had gone from a few plays a day, literally five to ten plays,
to 30 or 40 thousand, something like that.
So, it had been picked up on Spotify and then that just grew and grew and was a bit of a turning point.
Is it a little weird to think that so much of your success now can be tracked back to an algorithm?
You know those people who make amazing music and they just haven't had that thing to kick it off.
So when that thing happened it helped me hugely.
See I really struggled with the fact that people started to care about my music.
Creatively, because I was like waring with myself lyrically - cause that's what people connect with in my stuff
a lot of them time.
So I was like this is it, every line has to be perfect.
As you know that there's that level of attention, do you have a mechanism to cut yourself some slack?
No, no I haven't figured it out. I really haven't, honestly.
I'm thinking about it all the time. I do find it hard.
I'm not sure, it might be because I'm in that stage where people are beginning to care.
Maybe if it goes huge I'll be like ok I'm good at this.
Maybe I would have that confidence and now second guess things but I basically went from making music
to having quite a few people interested into it so I want to kind of nail it every time.
To the point where it's kind of counter productive most of the time.
So in moments pass, I was kinda like, having stressed out about lyrics for quite some time,
I was like I'm just going to write.
Challenge myself not to second guess anything. Just whatever comes out of your brain just do your best.
It's funny, I was in an Uber in San Francisco recently
and I told the guy what I do and he put music on and "Moments Passed' came on
and he was like "Oh, I don't like this."
(Laughs) Really?
- That's awkward. - I know!
Just lastly before I let you go, what's the story behind the tattoo?
My sister plays the piano really well, and I was three she might have been five or six.
We basically used to play these songs and make my mum and dad come in and listen.
She was messing it up, making the same mistake every time,
and I was getting really pissed off so I basically said this quietly a couple of times
and then screamed it into the microphone.
Out of nowhere, I went from being pretty chill about it to basically roaring at her.
So, that's basically what it's about.
"We want this to be good."
(Laughs) Yeah!
Kinda sums you up in a way doesn't it?
Kinda yeah, in the terms of everything we've been talking about.