Dublin Music Spotlight; ‘Sell Everything’

‘Sell Everything’ have been making moves in the Dublin music scene. I first heard of them back in October when they put out the music video for their song ‘Landlord Blues’, directed by Jasmine Grace, and during a trip back to Dublin for the holiday season, got to see them play twice; first at a Lips2Ears event on New Years Eve at the Fourth Corner pub, and again at Whelan's Ones To Watch - the Dublin venue’s annual showcase of up and coming talent. They played the first day of it, closing the night on the main stage. Both nights they had the crowd bobbing their heads and singing along to the songs they knew, and both nights I left with their lyrics and guitar riffs stuck in my head. 

I sat down with the band’s frontman Tom in the early days of January, on a cold night outside Grogan’s to find out more about the band’s origins, what they have coming up, and his thoughts on the current Dublin music scene. Also to uncover what keeps the band’s pulse going and why their music is growing; it’s fun.

Róisín: So how'd you get the name? Sell everything.

Tom: Sell everything. Yeah I just wrote it down, and it looked good really. I wrote down, like 100 names. We had to change our old name and yeah it just looked good in all caps. I make loads of posters so I knew it had to look good on a poster. I drew it the way I usually would and I was like, that looks pretty good. 

Róisín: How did you guys all meet? And what were all your musical backgrounds?

Tom: Well, I've been playing music for a long time, from when I was younger, as a kid with my dad, my uncle. Then I went to Spain during lockdown, and pretty much just played guitar the whole way through, for like nine months. I went to Granada and Malaga, and I just stayed around there pretty much. They’re beautiful spots. It's pretty much empty, so it's only like people who live there, musicians and hippies that live in caves and stuff in Granada. So I just played there for a long time, and I kind of developed my guitar playing and my jamming. I was just jamming constantly, and then came back, started doing that in town as well. I was kind of skeptical at first, but ended up finding loads of people playing on the street, just like in Spain. Then I ended up meeting Jack, through a couple friends, and started playing with him a bit, producing with him.

Before that, we found Oisin. We used to jam as a three piece. Played our first gig as Berto Hain, that was the name, kind of like Kurt Cobain, yeah. And then we found Oisin. He joined the band, played as a three piece for a while. We just started gigging loads, producing loads, and just been producing music for the last year and a half, two years, non stop, so we’ve got loads of music there that’s ready. 

Róisín: Do you all write together?

Tom: We all kind of write separately. I would jam a lot with just voice memos, and bring those songs to the band, and then the band would write their own parts for it, and I try to stay true enough to the original recording, and then go wherever it led with the band. But for the stuff we put on Spotify, all the stuff we release is kind of like a mix of all of us kind of jamming with each other. So it's not necessarily the whole band together. It’s kind of like a project, you know, just all dip in and out. 

Fionn is a very accomplished jazz musician. He plays bass, so he's in DCU jazz final year at the moment. Oisin is in his final year at BIMM, and he's a brilliant songwriter in his own right as well. They both are, everybody in the band makes their own music. Jack used to make a lot of indie with his old band, Kneebrew, and they were pretty big in Wicklow and Dublin. Fionn and Jack met because Kneebrew played a Battle of the Bands, and when they were, like, 16 in the Academy, and they ended up winning it, and Fionn was one of the judges. They didn't really know each other at all. I think Fatboy from Bricknasty was also judging. And Fionn used to play with Fatboy, and he would have jammed a lot of the tunes on ‘Ina Crueler’ and helped out with a lot of those demos. Yeah, Jack ended up making loads of hyper pop as well while we were making all this Sell Everything stuff, his name’s Pawn 20nG, he kind of blew up a little bit there at the start of the year.  Yeah so, everyone's just doing their own thing, really,

Róisín: What's been your favourite gig so far, if you had to pick one?

Tom: I’d say, Whelans Ones To Watch there was probably the tightest we've been for a whole set. We played the closing slot and that was really, really fun. Crowd was pretty packed out. And Bricknasty then, we supported them in the Academy which was a really fun gig as well, because that was just huge, bout 600 people or something. That was just the 18th of December. That was really good. Great to watch brick nasty as well, and after I could see their full tour set up. 

 I get a lot of hope off of other artists and a lot of enjoyment, so I just like to try to pass that on and try and create something cool and unique and fun. And inclusive. Anytime we've like, run events or done gigs or anything like that, it’s trying to give a feeling that everything's inclusive, instead of pushing the other way, like, I feel like other bands can be more closed off. For me, it's like, there's no big secret really. It's just like, if you enjoy it, you enjoy it. 

And it’s accessible. 

Róisín: If you had to describe Sell Everything, the message that you want your music to have, if there is one or just, for someone who's never heard of the band, what would you want them to know?

Tom: I'd say, because of all our different musical backgrounds and different experiences, we have a lot of different kind of influences, ranging from, like, I would have loved, a lot of 60s Rock and Roll, like Velvet Underground and then King Krule and contemporary artists, expanding indie and jazz chords, and then lots of production as well, like Cooper B. Handy and Channel Beats. 

And so ‘sell everything’ to me kind of means, like, sell everything and go for it, that's kind of my attitude with a lot of things. I just get into things, get tunnel vision, and just go for it. And yeah, I think, we're just trying to do our own thing. We don't really try to write a type of music. We just do whatever feels good, just play it. And it's kind of like, you know, with music, it doesn't really matter what kind of music you're playing, if it's the same people playing, it usually sounds cohesive. So we don't really try to stick to a genre or anything like that, you know. It’s just fun, really, and yeah we wanna keep it fun. No point doing it otherwise. 

Róisín: Now going into 2025, What have you got coming up?

Tom: Yeah 2025. Well, we have a good few releases planned, and we're trying to get all those finished up now; music videos, clothing, merchandise, yeah, just like pushing as fucking hard as we can. I want to try play some festivals, either this year or next year. We have an EP in the works as well. Things are always changing, but we have about a dozen songs there that are up for release, like you know. So we’ll pick a few of them start off the year and see how it goes. I don't know, yeah, yeah, we got some good work. 

Róisín: How would you describe the Dublin music scene at the moment? 

Tom: I think it’s really good. I think there's pockets of lots of different music, and there's great support for all types of music, and there's loads and loads of gigs and good opportunity, really good coverage as well, because we have such big artists coming out of Ireland and Dublin especially and people looking over like, from the States and from the UK. I feel like we have something very intimate like, in terms of our music and our art. 

Róisín: Yeah, I think a lot of people know Ireland to be the home of a lot of storytellers. Why do you think that is?

Tom: I think in this day and age, we're very isolated in a nice way. It’s like, Ireland is like a cozy little sitting room, like you can watch everything else on TV. It depends on how you want to take that. You can take it as like nothing else going on in the world is real, and we're just like, happy as Larry over here, but I feel like it's nice to observe the rest of the world and learn from everything and appreciate how safe and nice our country is. To be in a position of privilege, which is being in a country that's not war torn, but standing up for what you think is right. I feel like Irish people have got good morals most of the time. I mean, there's lots of ignorant people everywhere, but - 

Róisín: We’re not the worst

Tom: Yeah we’re not the worst. No I think, the Irish you know, we haven't been colonizers, we haven't been the big dogs ever. So it's like we have a nice attitude in terms of, like, the rest of the world we can just, like, have a nice take on it and try to help out where we can. And I think that's where storytelling comes from maybe. 

Yeah, I think we’re doing good as a nation, as a people. See what happens. 

Stay tuned for more.

Róisín: Yeah, any last words?

Tom: Last words; Sell everything. Dublin’s got a great music scene.