After embarking on prior music endeavours, Richie Power and Eoghan MacMahon are embarking on a brand new music venture, with their new band HAWKE. The Irish duo describe their music sound as ‘alternative pop’ and they have been working incredibly hard in recent months on their new music, with the official launch of the band taking at the beginning of March.
Dividing their time between both Dublin and the UK to work on their music, HAWKE inevitably marks an immensely exciting new chapter for both Richie and Eoghan.
You can watch their cover of Post Malone’s ‘Sunflower’ below:
CelebMix had the opportunity to exclusively speak with HAWKE about what they’ve been working on behind the scenes, their music sound, their plans for the coming months and much more! Make sure you keep reading to check out our interview!
CelebMix last spoke with you guys back in April 2018. What have you both been up to since we last spoke?
“It’s been a while! Since then, we’ve just been working really hard, trying to perfect everything before starting a new band. We’ve been recording our new music in Abbey Road in London which has been great – hoping a bit of The Beatles influence will rub off on us! We then went to America for a couple of months during the summer, meeting contacts out in LA and writing a lot of music. Throughout the year, we put on small intimate acoustic ‘preview’ shows around Ireland, the UK and Europe, performing some new songs we wrote in order to see what people thought of them before launching our new music project. We really focused on our music and making something we’re proud of, as well as meeting and chatting to new producers and different management companies. It was also important for us to go travelling together and try to pick up as many life experiences as we could – hence why we went all over Europe and America together. We’ve met a lot of interesting people over the last few months. All in all, it’s been a really busy and productive year for us, which was class!”
Regarding the launch of the new band, how does it feel to finally unveil what you have been working on?
“It just feels so good to finally be able to show people the songs we’ve been writing and recording over the last while. One thing we consciously decided was to take time away from social media to create new music. We knew this might cause some fans to lose interest and people might start to fall away during this period, but we felt it was the right thing to do in order to fully concentrate on our music. We’re really excited about engaging with our fans online again and also excited about reaching out to new fans too!”
No doubt the launch of the band is very exciting, however do you feel an element of pressure?
“Definitely yes, as it’s something we have been working hard on for the past few months, so we hope people like our new music and come on this new journey with us. Pressure is good, it helps you keep on top of things and motivates you to try make it the very best you can. Our Manager, Caroline, supports us through it all.”
You headlined your own shows throughout 2018, whereby you performed some of your original music to fans. Has it been important for you to get your supporters’ input?
“100%. All feedback, no matter how good or bad, helps us grow as artists, so it’s invaluable to get as much feedback as we can. Funny enough, we had one track called ‘Did You Know,’ which we wrote in LA. We performed it at some shows and during these shows, we came up with a new chorus and we were debating whether we’d use the old one or the new one. We asked for the crowd’s feedback on which chorus they preferred. At every single show, the crowd preferred the new chorus, which is now the chorus we use. If we hadn’t tested them at those shows, we would have stuck with the original chorus, so we do take feedback on board – sometimes anyway!”
Speaking of your fans, they are incredibly supportive. How does it feel knowing you have such a dedicated group of supporters?
“Absolutely! Knowing that we’re doing exactly what we want to do and having people support us and help us try push it to become as big and as best as it can be, there’s just no words for that, it’s unreal. We want to say a special thanks to those who stuck around during a pretty crazy period last year. We’re really looking forward to meeting new fans and also going on this new journey with our amazing and loyal fans, who have been around for a while now. Our fans are unreal and we really appreciate all the support they give us!”
What can be expected from your music sound? Does it follow one particular genre/a mixture of several different genres and sounds?
“We would say alt-pop probably best describes our new sound. We love big singalong-able choruses and atmospheric sounds. We’re really into a lot of the new sounds that we’re hearing in music art the moment, such as electronic-based percussion, so we’ve been trying to mix that with some of the more ‘organic’ acoustic sounds that we enjoy. Somebody recently described some of our demos as a mix between The Verve and The XX – we think that was a decent description! Essentially, we love both the music we grew up with, like U2, Aslan, Coldplay, The Beatles and the music that’s currently out on the airwaves, so we’re trying to take influence from both.”
Is there a message/messages conveyed through your music?
“Actually, this was something we really thought about before we decided to start this band. When we became friends, probably the first time we connected was when we were travelling in the car talking for hours about psychology, philosophy and mindsets, as pretentious as that might sound, we had some great chats and we still chat for hours and hours! When it came to writing songs, a lot of the stuff is about the bittersweet aspect of life and there’s a positive outlook running through a lot of the songs. One track ‘Never Too Late’ is about recognising that even though sometimes things can get/feel a bit low or rough, it’s good to remember that each new day is a new chance at making things right again. With another song, we sing about the importance of recognising that sometimes our own mind can make things seem bad when we see negatively and focus on the bad stuff. This negative thinking can actually blind us from reality and from all this is going good in our lives. We also just like to write about everything really though – whatever is on our mind at the time, whatever feelings we’re feeling, whatever issues we see people have. It’s not all that deep though – sometimes we literally write about the importance of not putting pineapple on pizza!“
Now that you’ve launched the new band, is there anything that you would collectively like to achieve in the coming months/years?
“Obviously, we’d love to be selling out a worldwide stadium tour this summer! But in reality, we’ll start small and work hard playing in lots of venues doing gigs in the UK and Europe increasing our fan base and growing together as a band. We have to continue to write songs and make music that people love and want to be part of. After that, we’ll see where it all takes us!”
What have you got lined up in the coming months?
“We’ve got some festivals coming up, Hit The North in Newcastle being one and we’ll be playing a couple of support shows and university balls. Towards the summer/autumn, we hope to release music and videos, possibly an EP, then we’d like to close the year with a UK/Irish tour of our own. From March 1 2019, we kicked off with a bit of an online campaign. We launched all our socials and we’ll also be launching our website, merch store and we’ll be posting covers.”
Finally, do you have a message for those who support you?
“You’re all legends! You’ve saved two lads from doing jobs they would hate and allowed them, so far, to live what they would’ve considered only a dream as kids. Now let’s grow a band together that we’re all going to make thousands of memories from. This is the beginning and we can’t wait to enjoy this journey together with you all. Eternally grateful.”
You can listen to one of the tracks, titled ‘Did You Know,’ by clicking here.
Make sure you are following HAWKE on their official social media accounts to stay up-to-date with what they get up to in the coming months: