Interview with Bren Holmes

Bringin' it Backwards

We had the pleasure of interviewing Bren Holmes over Zoom video!
When you’ve been a professional musician for over thirty years, you can accumulate a large trunk of songs. The tucked-away tunes that Ireland-born / Los Angeles residing Bren Holmes shares on his solo debut, Everything You Never Wanted, reveal impressive singer/songwriter talents that never got fully displayed during his lengthy tenure as bassist with the Young Dubliners. While old Young Dub fans will connect with Celtic music flourishes that course through this album, they – and all listeners – also will be easily drawn into the spirited rootsy sound that fills Everything You Never Wanted, which arrived on his own Bren Holmes Productions label.
Holmes’ appealing vocals - sincere, confident, and a bit world weary – prove to be another strength of Everything You Never Wanted. The warm, friendly qualities of his singing particularly shine on two pub-friendly sing-a-longs, “Pieces” and “Somewhere – Ode To Shane.” The tunes also offer musical nods to his homeland, with the latter undoubtedly tipping its cap to Pogues’ legendary frontman Shane MacGowan as well.
Holmes co-produced the album with Bryan Dobbs (Brett Anderson, Rattle The Knee) and the two handled much of the instrumentation. Holmes performed on guitar, bass, mandolin, and percussion, while Dobbs played electric guitars, mandolin, banjo, lap steel and dobro. Holmes, however, also enlisted a number of his musician pals to lend their support. Besides Anderson, the album features contributions by Cindy Wasserman (Dead Rock West), ace session drummer Dave Raven (Keith Richards, Nellie McKay, John Doe), violinist Rachel Grace (Foo Fighters, Usher, Annie Lennox), producer/musician Tim Boland, and drummer Ward Poulos. The uilleann pipes, bodhran, and whistles, played by Holmes’ fellow Dublin expat Pat D’Arcy, injects some Irish flavor into the music.
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