Miriam Meets... Declan O Rourke and Paddy Casey

This week Miriam O'Callaghan interviews friends in music, Paddy Casey and Declan O Rourke. They met in early 2000 at a singer songwriters evening in a Dublin pub. Both men tell Miriam how life changing their first guitar was. Each of them spent hours playing music and writing songs.

They have different approaches to writing songs. While Declan can take years to complete a song, Paddy is more inclined to let things happen as they may. Declan explains how writers block caused him to think about the process of song writing while Paddy says that reading bad reviews of his work on line in the early days of the internet caused him difficulty.

Both men shared a flat for more than four years. Despite their different housekeeping styles, their friendship survived. Declan explained how generous Paddy was to him in the early years of his career, while Paddy disputed this version of events. Though they are always hanging out together, they have never written a song together and never sing together - so it was with some difficulty that they learnt a song the night before this programme was made.

Neither is with a record label at the moment and while this has been great for creativity and independence, there are still challenges for artists to make money. But Paddy explains that if money is your motivation, you will make money, but the music will be there either way.

Declan's album Mag Pai Zai is in the shops. Paddy is hoping to release an album before the Summer, the working title being The Secret Life Of....

They played - Declan - Galileo; Time Machine; Crown of Thorns
Paddy - Saints and Sinners; Wait! and they played A Wonderful World together.