MacD on Music: Back again

Somehow, we're almost at the end of 2024. The year may have flown in, but the past twelve months have been very prolific for the musicians of this fine town. We've seen a trio of singles from Parker, TRAMP's long-awaited EP and the one-night-only return of The Whole Tribe Sings.

We've also seen debut albums from Pilosa, CHERYM and Foreign Owl (the latter two of which are available exclusively in Cool Discs). Of course, the year isn't over yet, and last Friday saw the release of another much-anticipated debut from tessio.

Made up of Jude McCandless and Callum Feeney, tessio. have been building up a sizeable audience over the last few years, playing show-stealing opening slots for the likes of GETNER and Polar Bolero and, more recently, traveling for a number of Other Voices gigs. I caught up with Jude and Callum recently to discuss the album.

Callum: “It’s all written, recorded, mixed, engineered, all that stuff, we did everything. Eight tracks, short and sweet. It’s just a load of songs that we’ve had for years that we’ve been gigging for years. There’s a couple of new ones too. It’s just good to get them out now.”

Jude: “When Callum came back from Manchester, we were just flat out recording because we were together all the time. That’s what it came out of.”

Callum: “Our eight favourites. A few of them didn’t make the cut.”

Jude: “See album two.”

Callum: “Instrumentation, it’s acoustic guitars and vocals. We added a couple of different elements, piano, bits of percussion and stuff too.”

Jude: “Furniture playing.”

Callum: “As much as we can do ourselves.”

Jude: “It’s all done in a bedroom. We did all the artwork and stuff. It’s out on DistroKid, so it just goes out everywhere.”

Talking about the feedback they’d received pre-release: Jude: “A few people we’d sent it to have given us good feedback, which is nice to hear. You don’t really do it for anybody else, you do it for yourself, but when you hear people enjoying it that’s a bonus.”

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Callum: “We kind of forgot to even send it to people too. We’d made it and me and him would just listen to it and think ‘ah, class’ and then some people would go ‘could you not send me it?’.”

Next, we talked about their now-annual Christmas Jamboree in Bennigan’s (this year taking place on December 27th and doubles as an album launch). Jude: “We do the Christmas gig every year so we thought we may as well join the two together since we’ve got the album coming out. We’ll be playing all the songs off the album probably.”

Callum: “We do a big party every year, usually on the last Friday of the year, and the album comes out the week before, so we thought we may as well put it back, have the album out for a week so people can hear it and have the big party on the 27th then. It’ll be a class night. We always do a load of surprises and loads of giveaways and stuff. It sold out in, like, a day and a half.”

Jude: “We don’t have to worry if people are going to go or not, whether they like the album or not.”

Callum: “It’s better craic every year. It gets more upscale. Plenty of raffles, people walk away with a lot of bottles of wine. I can’t wait for it. It’s one of my favourite nights of the year.”

Jude: “Hopefully the weather stays good. It was freezing last year. Not for us, we’ve got heaters on stage, but for everybody else.”

I asked them about the line-up for this year’s gig. Jude: “It’s Cathal Francis and Polar Bolero, but a smaller version. That should be class. They’re both some of our favourite artists about.”

Callum: “It’s hard to pick because there’s so many amazing ones, and you don’t want to repeat yourself too much. We had Cathal before, but not for a couple of years. We met Cathal again recently in Belfast. His music’s so class and we love everybody out of Polar Bolero too. I think there’s maybe three or four of them doing the gig. It’ll be Cathal, them, then us, then maybe everybody up for a few together or whatever. No spoilers.”

And that’s it from tessio. Their self-titled debut album is out now and available on all good streaming services and they’ll be playing Bennigan’s on the 27th of December.

Finally, time for the last other business of the year. First, Pilosa will be playing their final gig of the year tonight in the 7Twenty, with support from Black Lanterns, Craic Pipe, Shasma and more. Tickets are £5 and doors are 6pm.

Also, in what should be a contender for gig of the year, Touts will be playing Sandino’s on December 30th, with support from The Switch and The Suite. Doors are at 8 and tickets are available now on Skiddle for £15.

Now, just about space for the socials. Pilosa can be found on Instagram @pilosa__music, Touts @touts_band and tessio. @tessio__.

That’s it now, the last column of the year. From everyone here at MacDonMusic (aka me. Just me.), Happy Christmas and a Happy New Year. See you in January!