Setting fire to antiques and being a one band low-level crimewave… The Virginmarys boys are busy. Newly released single ‘Northwest Coast’ has been hitting up some heavy streaming figures while the video was viewed 5,000 times in just six days. They have live dates coming right up (including a headline tour in November and December with a sold-out hometown show) and a new album with a touching dedication and a heartwarming backstory. With Ally Dickaty’s throat full of knives belting out songs on subjects including addiction, mental illness and, erm, the seaside, backed by Danny Dolan’s incendiary beats and relentless rhythms, these lads are one of the most full on, flat out duos ever to duo. So Devolution’s Jo Wright has a lot of important questions to ask Danny – but none more vital than……….
‘What sort of Danny are you?’
The thing is, Jo is blessed with a Danny of her own (vital stats: Aged 14. Year 10. An absolute sweetheart), whose name used to elicit two different responses. ‘Awwww, you can’t go wrong with a Danny’. Or, ‘Oooof, you’ll always have trouble with a Danny.’.
So, Danny Dolan (vital stats: An absolute sweetheart), what sort of Danny are you? ‘I’m the one you can’t go wrong with. I’m as good as gold! Come to think of it I do know two other Dannys who are mates and they’ve always been absolute tearaways!’
‘Northwest Coast’ is the lead single from album ‘The House Beyond The Fires’, which is set to be released on November 1. And even if he was that type of Danny, there’s been no time for causing trouble. ‘The last three weeks have been non-stop really. From setting up the online shop (thevirginmarys.com) with pre-orders, sorting the shows – it’s a bit never ending at the minute. But that’s good! Ally’s pretty exhausted. He literally finished the final vocals for the album yesterday. He’s done amazing.’
In a previous interview with Devolution Ally mentioned how his voice wasn’t a perfect one. But Devo believes for the band’s biting social commentary lyrics it’s spot on. His vox is brazen yet vulnerable, with Ally singing his soul. And in the tracks to come, it’s right at the front of the mix.
‘There was a Swedish producer that Ally came across a couple of years ago, possibly during Lockdown.’ says Danny. ‘Ally got in touch with him and he’d heard the band. He had our first album (King of Conflict) and he really liked it. His schedule’s pretty much full up – he’s got so much going on, but he produced ‘Where Are You Now’ and we loved that. He said he could maybe do a few songs but not the whole album, but luckily he got some space in his calendar [to produce it all]. It’s been really exciting hearing the mixes come back from him. He was really complimentary about the level of song writing. From a mix point of view we’ve let him do his own thing. Ally might’ve given him some pointers but we mainly just said, ‘You do it how you want it’.
So could it be time to adopt the brace position come November if ‘Northwest Coast’ is anything to go by?
‘It was great to get that one out,’ says Danny. ‘It’s had a great reaction. I don’t think it could’ve gone better.’ He adds, ‘Lyrically it’s very different to what Ally would normally do. I was quite surprised he wanted that one to be the first single because it sort of sets the tone. I think people are going to be quite surprised as to the rest of the album. It’s got a little bit of everything. There’s definitely some more songs in the same vein as ‘Northwest Coast’, in vibe and tempo. There’s probably, dare I say it, more poppier songs?! Then there’s two or three gut-wrenchers. It’s probably the most well-rounded collection of songs we’ve done for an album.’
‘The House Beyond The Fires’ is dedicated to Danny’s dear dad Tommy, who sadly passed away last year, and takes its name from his shop ‘House of Fires’ in Manchester. The moving tribute was his bandmate’s idea. ‘Ally’s really close to our family,’ says Danny. ‘He’s like a brother.’
Speaking of the album’s striking artwork, Danny smiles, ‘The shoot got put off three times because of the Macclesfield weather. It was probably Tommy doing that!
‘The cover was an idea I’d had for a while but it wasn’t involving the fire. It was the idea of being stranded at sea. Because it was outdoors I didn’t feel confident taking the photo myself, so we got a photographer from Manchester called Debbie Ellis who’d done some studio photos with us that we really love. I told her the concept and she really liked it.’ The perfect – and poignant – location for the picture was a reservoir in Macclesfield. Danny tells Devo, ‘Me and Ally were walking around it one day and we realised at a certain spot beyond the trees is my dad’s house. So we thought, ‘We’ve got to take the shot there’. But we weren’t allowed!!!
‘I spoke to a couple of friends who do wild water swimming, and I told them I’d love to do a photo there but we couldn’t because swimming wasn’t allowed, but one of my friends said, ‘We all swim in it!’.
The artwork has received some lovely compliments on the socials. ‘We had another idea where we’d set an umbrella on fire rather than a torch,’ says Danny. ‘So I practised on a few umbrellas and realised it’s not possible, and the umbrella goes up in about two seconds. It’s molten plastic!’ Turns out should you feel the need to torch your trusty brolly you’re better off to find a vintage one made of less flammable material. Possibly. ‘We found an umbrella on Gumtree for £15 including postage. When I got it I was like, ‘I can’t set this on fire!’. It was so beautiful. It was made in 1926! So we decided not to do it. After we got the shot that’s on the front cover our photographer said, ‘What about the umbrella idea?’.’ Sad to say the ensuing antique umbrella blaze was rapid – too fast for a photo. ‘We burnt a 98-year-old umbrella for nothing! I was really devastated. It looked like the type of umbrella you’d see on The Titanic or something,’ sighs a remorseful Danny.
There was a slight incident with the making of the ‘Northwest Coast’ video too, which took the lads to Blackpool – and saw them thrown off North Pier. Apparently using yellow smoke to achieve the desired visual effect comes with the unwanted side effect of looking like a homemade bomb…
The boys have a couple of festival dates (including Pride Rock Brighton) and are touring with Ugly Kid Joe once again in August (having supported the American rockers at the start of the year too). And then… a headline UK and European tour. Hurrah! So what’s the main difference between supporting and headlining, Danny? ‘I think supporting is easier not just because you play for less time, but it’s easier to choose a setlist. You’ve only got half an hour or forty minutes to try to get your message across to people who’ve never heard of you before, so it’s much simpler to pick songs.’ When you’re the band the fans have come to see, filling almost one and a half hours of stage time is trickier. Danny explains, ‘It’s about trying to work out how we get a bit of light and shade in there. It’ll be our first headline tour playing primary markets, as in London, Manchester, Glasgow and Nottingham, for example.’
There’s no need to tell you that Danny and Ally are massively looking forward to playing songs from ‘The House Beyond the Fires’, but do they feel the same about ‘Just A Ride’? It’s an absolute fan fave, with more than four million Spotify streams, and can possibly be described as their ‘Mr Brightside’. Please can we still expect to hear it when you guys hit the road Danny?!
‘Me and Ally have always had the same thought that we feel we should play it, because if we don’t then people who love that song are really disappointed. It’s rare that we don’t play that one,’ he says.
Well fancy that; one delightful interview with Danny Dolan, one half of The Virginmarys, done – without the usual religious puns that Devo struggles to resist. Thank you for your time. Thanks in advance for what is bound to be a brilliant album (and tour!). God bless you boys! Ah. Ooops.
Interview by Jo Wright