Wally is guitarist with the excellent Irish punk rock band Stomach Inc., whose recent release “Substantive” is the best punk album I’ve heard in a long, long time. Strangely, Wally (real name - Paul Walsh) lives in Gothenburg, Sweden but he attempts to get back to his native Dublin as often as possible, be it to write new songs, play gigs or to just drink Guinness!!! He also plies a trade as an independent distributor/promoter with a project named Praxis Ireland. Interesting fodder for an interview indeed, so I set about getting his thoughts on the state of the music industry, file sharing and of course what have Stomach Inc. in store for us…

RD. “Substantive”, Stomach Inc.’s latest offering is quite an album, you must be happy with it...

W. Yeah, very happy with it. Some of the reviews have been nothing short of spectacular, even the lazy reviews have been good. I knew the songs were strong before we hit the recording studio and the engineer/producer Jonathan done a great job in that department.

RD. Things that hit you about the album are the diversity and strength of the song writing and the fact that you really know how to play your instruments...

W. Thanx... yeah... I get asked a lot about the diversity in songs thing, “Is it a conscious thing to diversify” or whatever. To be honest, the idea is there to write diverse songs but we don’t dwell on it. It seems like every other fucking punk band is releasing an album with the same old song written with the same tired out formula and I’m fucked if we’re going to be like that... What’s the fucking point... I mean, we don’t bring anything really new to the hardcore punk genre, we are certainly influenced by different bands but at the same time we want something that is ultimately a Stomach Inc. thing.

RD. So what other bands influence you?

W. The three of us listen to a lot of different things so we draw on a range of them I suppose... From a collective point of view we’d share... well, Government Issue would be the big one, maybe Poison Idea, The Damned and Leatherface too, Damo and Dave would probably share more influences than with me I suppose, bands like Dag Nasty, Pegboy and Husker Du who I don’t really listen to... I’ve got a lot of shit over the years, not from Dave and Damo mind you, for not being a fan of Husker Du fan, but then again they don’t listen to Death Metal at all and I fucking love it, that’s where I’m at!!!

RD. You don’t like Husker Du???

W. Not really, I liked their live album, can’t even remember what its called, which all Husker Du fans seem to hate!!! But I like it... I love the sound of it... the guitar sound is great.

RD. How has “Substantive” done sales wise...

W. The sales haven’t gone as well as I hoped for, but saying that it hasn’t gone bad. On the publishing side I’ve done OK, although bizarrely Dave and Damo haven’t... the reasons for which still baffles me. But on the reasons we didn’t get the sales I hoped for was because we had to pull out of selling to North America and to some people in Europe...

RD. You got interest from other labels wasn’t it?

W. Exactly that. Basically what happened was the album was released, the promo was going well and then we got interest from some bigger labels interested in signing up “Substantive”. So we had to kind of stop selling it, especially to North America. It took us an enormous amount of time, far too much time in fact, to decide whether to take the deal on offer or not, and by the time we decided, the promotional stuff that was done went stale. A lot of promo money was basically wasted because of it, but saying that...

RD. Do you regret that?

W. Well... Yes and No... on the promotional side, I put a lot of time, effort and money into it. It was all going along nicely and then BANG!!! Fucking wasted. So yeah, I was very pissed off... but I’ve only myself to blame to be honest. On the financial side it all came from my pocket and in no way can I afford to lose that amount of money so yeah, I’m definitely pissed off about that. Basically, what happened was, it took us a ridiculous amount of time to decide on whether we should sign for another label. We then decided not to take the offer and by the time we said no the promo work done was totally stale... Saying that though, we weren’t going to jump into anything.

RD. You work for yourself as a music distributor and promoter. When did you set up, what exactly do you do, what are the plans for the future???

W. It all started about... Christ, 5 or 6 years ago!!! Basically what we do now is help out independent bands and labels in a variety of ways, be it with seeking distribution or helping with their promotion or shipping or even sometimes I help out with people trying to start up record labels or distribution type things. We also do shit like sorting out manufacturing, making websites and some graphic design. What are the plans for the future!!! More web related stuff I reckon... there will be a mail order thing on the site but it’ll be sporadic at best!!! New stuff, general diversity, maybe get a couple more people involved in the thing, the workload is building up... the future looks great!!! We’re also going to get the Wreckage Rex record label going properly next year which I can’t fucking wait for to be honest...

RD. Promoting and distributing music, tough businesses just now especially with file sharing hitting the headlines, how are you finding it?

W. Tough is an understatement... It seems like every month you hear someone you know of has gone out of business or bankrupt or my favourite “Changed Careers”. I don’t really blame the file sharing thing at all, in fact I think it’s a great promotional tool for those, like myself, that deal with smaller independent releases. It certainly hits the bigger bands, Metallica, U2 etc. when it comes to sales but I don’t give a fuck about that to be honest... I think the biggest thing to hit indie distributors and record labels was the post-September 11th economic downturn thing, especially in North America obviously... Praxis suffered big time for about 9 months after that because a lot of what we were doing then was either with North American people or the stuff we dealt with was ending up in North America... I almost packed it in to be honest but now we’ve bounced back... I think the fact that Praxis doesn’t really specialise, we can do a bit of everything, was the main reason we got through it... What also helped is the fact that I’m a real stubborn bastard.

RD. I’ve known you quite a while and you’ve been preaching about the talent of punk bands in Ireland since I first spoke to you (thanks for the CDs by the way). Why do you think that bands actually from Ireland have missed out on the current popularity of Irish punk?

W. Yeah, I’ve been preaching about them all right and I’ll stand by the fact that there is an incredible amount of musical talent in Ireland that remains relatively unknown. I don’t really know the reason for the punk bands from Ireland missing out on the trend but there is fuck all decent labels in Ireland to help out independent bands, whatever style of music they play... too much talking and not enough doing in my gloriously esteemed opinion. There is one label that’s released a load of Irish punk bands, including us, but the bloke who runs that is of no use to any living being... The recently popular Irish punk thing I reckon is more to do with the punk/trad style of thing that has been embraced by a lot of American bands and stemmed from those in America with Irish backgrounds... the likes of Swingin Utters, Dropkick Murphys, Floggin Molly... they are all on decent labels as well with distribution all over the place...

RD. Do you deal with any Irish bands and record labels with Praxis? What can we look forward to!

W. I do indeed deal with Irish bands and record labels but apart from Stomach Inc, no punk ones... I did deal with an Irish punk label, the one I just mentioned and got sensationally ripped off by greed personified, which as well as the logistical problem of living in Sweden, turned me right off attempting something for a while...

RD. Sounds interesting, what happened?

W. Its an old story and I’m sick of it to be honest... basically I was naïve, placed a lot of trust in an untrustable and the rest is history, credit history in fact... a bad credit history... but on a brighter note, in hindsight if that kind of rip off shit is going to happen to you (which it will if you find yourself in the selling music game) you’re much better off having it happen to you when you first start out, which is when it happened to us. I mean it was the first big project Praxis took on, we done great, got some excellent orders for stuff and then all went pear-shaped!!! There was lessons to be learnt from the whole thing and I learnt them, mainly to trust your instincts and don’t put all your eggs in the one basket... better to learn the lesson asap, learn from the experience.

RD. But you do plan to try some stuff with Irish bands in the future!

W. Yes, with the record label (Wreckage Rex) but, and this is a big but, I don’t know when. I’m going to need help to get shit done because I don’t want to be just releasing CDs and doing barely enough bare-arsed promotion. I have a very definite idea for the label, which is as much promotion as humanly possible, getting involved in the recordings, making sure the bands are happy with the sound their getting and shit, doing up decent ads, helping out with publishing and that kind of stuff, helping out with getting the bands gigs and shit... making sure they get paid as well, in fact its going to be rapid... I’m not sure when it’ll happen, maybe summer 2004...

RD. Will it just be Irish bands then?

W. No. Absolutely not... once the music’s good and we like it, it doesn’t fucking matter where its from!

RB. Will there be only punk bands on the label?

W. ............eeeeeeehhhhhhhhhhhhmmmmmmmmm............. I don’t know... Harder, Louder, Faster music, if it fits the bill and its good, then its in...

RB. Harder, Louder, Faster! Sounds a bit like an album by a techno band!!!

W. There’ll be no fucking techno on any label I’m involved in... Fucking garbage that shit is...

RB. You don’t like techno then?

W. Music by wankers for wankers!

RB. Well, that’s that Wally. Thanks for the interview.

W. No problemo.

RB. Any last words.

W. Yes, I haven’t done that many interviews to be honest but the “Any Last Words” is always asked... why’s that then???

RB. It just is!

W. Why?

RB. Have you any last words Wally!!!