Despite a growing presence in the Irish music scene, the name Bitch Falcon might still be unfamiliar to some. The Dublin-based band known for screeching guitar riffs, raging vocals and an uncompromising approach to hard rock are easily one of the more exciting artists to have emerged from the capital in recent years, carving a unique niche for themselves in the process. Having had quite a few set-ups since their inception, the band seem finally settled as an archetypal three-piece, comprising of drummer Nigel Kenny, bassist Naomi MacLeod and guitarist and vocalist-come-front-woman Lizzie Fitzpatrick.
“We’re very lucky that we’ve had enormous support from our peers and the press in the music scene in Dublin, Cork and Galway who just lifted us up on their shoulders and carried us around the place”, admits Kenny. Despite growing in prominence in recent years, they’ve remained humble, as Kenny shows: “I guess ‘prominence’ is open to interpretation. In our minds, we’re just constantly pushing to try and better our musical output and reach more people. Playing more and more gigs is great but we need new music to be in the works in order to keep everything moving along.”
The pressure to play more gigs, release more music and display their talent is evident in the fact that Bitch Falcon are reinvesting everything they earn back into their art, with Kenny noting that “everything we earn from the door goes back into paying for releases, videos, travel…we need to be able to write and perform to keep things going”. Despite this, the band have shown an endearing charitable streak, with the proceeds from the five shows preceding the current tour going to a range of causes. MacLeod notes: “Playing charity gigs is a win-win, because we get to help a cause we feel strongly about, while people coming to see us hopefully have a good time doing so. As [Kenny] said, we do have to consider running costs which makes it hard to be as involved in charity gigs as we’d like to, but in general I would hope that we’d quite often have a charity gig somewhere on the horizon.”
There is an audience out there for every passionate artist. The best we can do is steer the Good Ship Falcon toward international seas and throw as big a party as possible, wherever our talons may land
The most recent tour is their most extensive yet. “It’s a nice little add-on that we get to support the likes of Girl Band and the Redneck Manifesto. They are two bands we really admire and respect on a few different levels, so it’s a pretty cool thing to be able to do”, remarks Kenny. Nevertheless, there’s more to the tour than playing across the country alongside bands they admire, with Fitzpatrick highlighting that “there’s nothing like the work you do on tour: heavy lifting, taming nerves and just having lots of fun with the two closest friends in your life”.
Beyond the current tour, the band are set to play a number of international gigs in the coming months, most notably as part of Canadian Music Week alongside compatriots BARQ and New Valley Wolves. Despite their unique sound on this island, MacLeod does not feel they have any more advantage over their contemporaries when going overseas: “Personally, I don’t think it’s any easier or harder for our music to cross borders than other [Irish] acts. Not to pull up the cliché about music being ‘the universal language’, but I don’t see how we’d be in any better or worse position than our contemporaries in pushing our music beyond our tidy coasts. There is an audience out there for every passionate artist. The best we can do is steer the Good Ship Falcon toward international seas and throw as big a party as possible, wherever our talons may land.”
What’s it going to take to push themselves to the next level? “Work harder, play more, write more and keep writing and playing music for the same reason as when we started playing together. We had a vision in the beginning and it’s being realised because of the decisions we made over the last three years”, says Kenny. This sentiment is clearly shared by MacLeod: “Continually pushing and striving for better, not only in how we write and produce our music, but how we translate our creations to a live show and to released media.” This is re-emphasised by Fitzpatrick: “I think we’ll need to work harder for sure, and be more forgiving to ourselves in terms of writing. Sometimes it can be difficult to pass by the standards of your own critic and I think letting yourself flow with new ideas without putting them down is important”.
So, penning more tracks and playing more gigs are priorities, but even these, the most rudimentary aspects of being in a band, seem difficult tasks for one on the rise in Dublin. “We find it difficult to pay for studio time and also to have enough time to write, practice and record”, Kenny laments, adding that “the process of recording has never been an issue but the other factors are and remain an issue while satisfying our addiction to playing live. It won’t be forever, and thankfully we now have a great management company helping us to make these things easier”. Fitzpatrick reiterates this, and sums up the passion they have for what they do: “There’s nothing more I’d like than to record and produce an album full time. That’s the dream! We don’t want to rush anything.” Looking ahead, Bitch Falcon’s future seems uncertain, but definitely promising. “Currently, many tracks have been mixed and mastered with artwork for a more robust release being finalised. That’s about all I can say at the moment”, according to Kenny, provoking a sense of curiosity into what exactly the future holds for this Dublin band on the rise.
