County: Galway

About The Walls

Steve and Joe Wall moved to London after The Stunning split in 1996. After spinning their wheels for a few years they returned to Dublin and put together a new band, The Walls, along with Carl Harms, and Rory Doyle. Their 1995 album 'New Dawn Breaking' produced by ex-Frames guitarist David Odlum went straight to no. 5 in the Irish charts.

Listen a superb radio session by The Walls on LA radio station KCRW

From The Walls' web site:

1998 û 2000
Steve and Joe Wall returned to Ireland after a two-year failed label stint in London. They convinced their Camden housemate Carl Harms to pack in his job and follow them over to join the band on guitar and keyboard duties. Drummer Rory Doyle was the next recruit and then there were four Walls. Very necessary. They set up their own label, Earshot Records (later changing it to Dirtbird Records) and recorded and released a string of singles. They recorded their debut album Hi-Lo in a derelict building awaiting demolition. It was released in May 2000 to excellent reviews and outsold Gold status in Ireland. A remix of one of the album tracks, Bone Deep, clicked with radio and became a nationwide hit. Many of the songs have featured on a number of TV series and feature films such as Bachelors Walk, Dead Bodies, Goldfish Memory and On the Edge (starring Cillian Murphy). They played a few gigs in New York and Boston that whetted their appetite and basically gigged their asses off at home.

2001 û 2004
The Walls heard rumour of a second Slane Castle date for U2, as the first one had sold out in a millisecond. They sent four copies of their album to the band. Bono loved it and offered The Walls a support slot. RockÆnÆRoll fairytales rarely come this good and that day the band played to their biggest crowd to date û around 80,000 people. To the Bright and Shining Sun was their next single and became the most-played track by an Irish act in the summer of 2002 reaching No. 11 in the charts. That June they supported the Red Hot Chili Peppers. They spent the next year gigging as well as getting up to their eyeballs in dust while building their own studio in Dublin. In February 2004 original member Carl Harms decided to leave the band to make his own record. They recruited bassist Jon OÆConnell, who had just 2 weeks to learn all the songs before a two week tour of the new EU accession states: Poland, Hungary, Slovakia and the Czech Republic.

2004 - 2006
For the next album they went to Studio Black Box in France to record with producer and ex-The Frames guitarist David Odlum. The band loved the sound of recent albums by Wilco and Kings of Leon and they concentrated on capturing the magic of a great live performance - four guys in a room doing take after take and trying not to lose the soul of the music in the process. Originally scheduled for a release date in Sept 2004 The Walls decided to hold their album until the New Year. U2 were releasing 'How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb' that autumn and according to Steve 'we thought that it would be a fair and gentlemanly gesture to stand back and give them a fair crack of the whip, so to speak'. In Oct 2004 they released a taster - Drowning Pool - a blistering, spleen-venting, blues explosion, 2min 52sec long. It took people by surprise and divided opinion - exactly what the band wanted. They supported Bob Dylan to a capacity crowd in Galway that summer and played a storming set that showed there were changes afoot in The Walls sound. They christened the album New Dawn Breaking after the final and longest track on the record. It went straight into the Irish charts at No. 5 in itÆs first week of release in June 2005 and has produced four hit singles: To the Bright and Shining Sun; Passing Through; Drowning Pool and Black and Blue. The band head to the US in March 2006 for a long-overdue visit.