Darren Morrissey and Greg Marshall are the unlikely lads that everyone likes. An Irish duo of no fixed haircut, whose gloriously uplifting harmony folk-pop songs have swept aside all obstacles in their path, they have been compared to such giants of the genre as Simon & Garfunkel and the Everly Brothers. But this wasn’t quite what they planned when they started out.
The pair come originally from Dublin, where they achieved local success as part of a five-man, rock & roll band called Deshonos. “I was the lead singer and frontman, doing the wild, Jim Morrison thing,” says Morrissey, the one who looks like Jesus. “I was the lead guitarist with the pedalboard, wanting to be like John Squire,” says Marshall, the lean, clean-cut man of the two. They moved to London three years ago on a wing and a prayer, but lost the rest of the band somewhere along the way. “They were going to come, but…” Morrissey shrugs. “Life got in the way.”
Finding themselves in the capital with no band, but a bunch of songs and a consuming ambition to let people hear them, the pair picked up acoustic guitars and embarked on a manic and sustained assault on the open mic circuit. “Every night we would find an open mic night, and when there wasn’t an open mic night we’d go somewhere and busk,” Morrissey recalls. One of the more lucrative spots they discovered was outside Barclays Bank in Hampstead where, for a while, their regular Saturday afternoon busking session brought in what amounted to their weekly wage.
Over the course of the next two years their music gradually changed to suit their circumstances. Morrissey became an accomplished acoustic guitar strummer while Marshall began singing beautifully-crafted harmony vocal lines. Their new songs not only lent themselves to the duo format, but quickly achieved a surpassing state of seemingly effortless grace. Gradually it dawned on them that, without a fixed band around them, they had stumbled on a musical marriage made in heaven.
They weren’t the only ones who thought so. Sean Gannon of the Magic Numbers happened to hear them soundchecking at a competition in a bar in Kilburn and was bowled over. He helped secure their first decent bookings, got them some early press coverage and took them out on tour with the Magic Numbers. A chance meeting with Sinead O’Connor’s producer and drummer John Reynolds at a recording session for Kevin Godley’s WholeWorldBand app, led to another creative twist in the road. M&M asked Reynolds to record a single for them. Reynolds, more than happy to oblige, jumped straight in and produced and played drums on the whole of their debut album, aptly-titled And so it Began.
“I believe that if you’re positive about something, you will achieve what you want to do,” says Morrissey, who writes the lyrics. “In the last band it was all about me feeling sorry for myself, and people got it to an extent. But people latch on to my lyrics a lot more with these songs. If you are positive you will attract a positive response.”
They're currently recording their second album which is due for release early next year. They're new single 'Cold November Sunrise' is due for release on New Years Day 2016. Check out the Soundcloud link.