INTERVIEW Ham Sandwich singer Niamh Farrell

LUNCH-BOX LEGENDS Niamh Farrell and Podge McNamee from indie-rock sensation Ham Sandwich.

All in a name?


Edwin McGreal catches up with Niamh Farrell, lead singer of Ham Sandwich, ahead of the band’s much anticipated gig at Westport Arts Festival.

Dublin taxi drivers are often pigeon-holed as narrow-minded, Liveline-calling, anger-filled men. They wouldn’t necessarily be known for their musical appreciation. So when singer Niamh Farrell hopped into a Dublin taxi a couple of years ago, she wasn’t expecting much of a conversation about the band she plays with, Ham Sandwich.
But the taxi-driver provided her with a perfect example of how effective their name has been.
“Ah I’ve heard of ye alright, I remember the name. I don’t know any of yer songs though,” she was told. The band were a lot more niche then than they are now, but always, their name leads and their music follows.
“When we first started out in 2003 we got so much stick about the name,” Farrell told The Mayo News last week. “We believed in it though and we were probably too stubborn to change it when people were telling us to do so. The more we went along, we knew that living by the name didn’t really matter anyway, it is so much more about the music.
“People remember it, that’s the great thing. Since ‘White Fox’ [the band’s second album] was released [in October 2010] we’ve had people who used to tell us they hated it say that they’ve really warmed to the name and don’t know why they hated it now.”
So where did the, ah, inspiration for the name come?
“We started off as a band with no name and when we got a gig we started to panic about what to call ourselves and I think we went with something awful lame like The Famous Five for one gig … afterwards we were saying that we’d have to change the name. … The names we we liked were kinda silly names to have a laugh, but the only one that really stuck for us was Ham Sandwich, because it would make people talk.” And how.
The name could be seen as a clever profile-raising marketing ploy, but Ham Sandwich have more than proven themselves as having more substance than that. In 2008, the four-piece indie rock band from Meath released their debut album ‘Carry The Meek’ on the same day as the Meteor Awards, where they picked up the Meteor Music Hope for 2008 award. Farrell readily admits that releasing an album and the positive reviews that followed gave the band great belief in themselves, as did the promptings of their late manager, Derek Nally, who died suddenly in July of last year. ‘White Fox’, which came out that October, was a tribute to Nally.
The album received plenty of critical acclaim. Tony Clayton-Lea in The Irish Times had described ‘Carry the Meek’ as one of the best Irish albums of 2008, but when he heard ‘White Fox’ he said it knocked ‘six bells of crap out of it, such is the advance in songwriting, arranging and the general sense of achievement’.
The band – which also includes Ollie Murphy on drums, D’arcy on guitar and piano and Podge McNamee on vocals and guitar – now regularly grace the airwaves, and their sound continues to find plenty of favour with critics, especially the much-lauded contrast between McNamee’s and Farrell’s vocals.
Ham Sandwich is in the middle of a national tour and will wind down in November before deciding on their next direction in the new year. For Farrell, the past 12 months have been the best yet for the rock group. And those who have seen Ham Sandwich play live before will  not be surprised to read that live performing is their thing.
“Gigging is my favourite thing, live gigs are what I really, really love,” admits Farrell. “Recording, by contrast, can be quite a stressful time. Five of us would be spending a full week in closer quarters and that can be quite testing … the smallest of things might turn into a massive deal,” she laughs.
“But playing live is what we love. We want to create a party atmosphere. We’re not going to be on stage looking at our shoes, singing and then go away. We always get the audience involved. Podge McNamee has a laugh with the audience and we try to make it as much fun as possible. We feed off the audience.” And the audience feeds off them.

Ham Sandwich play the Mill Times Hotel, Westport on Friday, October 7 as part of the Westport Arts Festival. They go on stage at 10.30pm; admission is €15.
For more information or to buy tickets, visit westportartsfestival.com. To keep up with the latest news, find the festival at facebook.com/westportarts or twitter.com/westportarts.