Dermot Kennedy

One Liner: Lovely voiced Irish pop with folky undertones

Wikipedia Genre: Pop, rock, folk
Home: Ireland

Poster Position: 7
Both Weekends.

Friday at 7pm on VRBO Stage

Thoughts:  His voice is somewhere in between Marcus Mumford, David Gray, and Ed Sheeran, definite British vibes, with a very strong, soulful vocal.  Huh.  Looks like he was at ACL in 2018, according to Wikipedia.  Had zero recollection of his name (so not expecting that I thought much about him back then!).  I can't find that I made a post about him back then - that is weird.  (although, that lineup was so freaking fun!  Metallica!  Sir Paul!  Chvrches! Brandi Carlile! Brockhampton! Greta Van Fleet!)  I can't find his name on the poster - so Wikipedia must just be mistaken?

The fun thing about this guy's music is to look at the list of playlists where you can find him - Beast Mode (with a ripped dude working out on the cover), Mood Booster (feel good songs, apparently), Soft Pop Hits (exemplified by Adele), and Strange Fruits (the best Deep House and EDM).  Who can put all of those into one place?

Oh, a Kevin Gates collaboration?  A Kevin Gates collaboration.  He also has two techno songs with something called MEDUZA, and I deeply dislike those two things.  Of course, one of them is his top song, because we can't have anything nice these days.  I'm not going to play it for you, because it is not representative of his music at all.

Otherwise, his top track is "Power Over Me," with 234 million streams.

Hear that David Grey yelp at about 2:20?  This is also the song that he collabs with Kevin Gates, who pretty much turns this otherwise kind of blandly empowering love song into a purely nasty sexual thing.  Good tune - great voice!

One cool story about this guy - do you remember Glen Hansard?  The guy from Once?  That movie was fantastic, and the wife and I even saw a stage production of it at Zach Scott that was very good.  Anyway, that dude apparently spotted Kennedy busking in Dublin, chatted him up, and later on gave Kennedy a shot on stage with his band.  The quote I read was that Hansard "called back and offered me ten minutes onstage at his sold-out Christmas show. He said, 'You can use the guys in the band, you can do it acoustic, the stage is yours for ten minutes.'"  Which is cool as crap!  He turned that moment into massive streaming numbers for his first single, called "After Rain," which is more of a folky tune.

He looks so young in that video!  Beautiful song.

Just one album, that includes both of the tracks above, as well as his second-most streamed one called "Outnumbered."  222 million streams.

I like that one more than the more popular one - always good to know that Dermot is out there having my back.  It also turns into a rap, and I love the way he says the word "art."  And again, killer voice.  And a Tiny Desk!  A Tiny Desk.

Sometimes he borders on a yelling in his voice - he pushes so hard to be emotive in that opening song that he strains to the edge of his nice voice sounding pretty.  I like it much better when he backs off of that style where he pushes past his throat's limits.  Like, "After Rain," or "Rome" are damn pretty.

I'd go check this out.  Not that I would normally angle towards the emotive pop world, but this voice sounds like something I wouldn't be sad to see live.