Don’t be foolish!” So he went back to playing in the street.Īfter turning down BGT, he waited a long time to sign a record deal. “It was quite clear in my head: Dermot, you don’t want to do this. But he didn’t want to perform on TV, and more importantly, he wanted to play his own music. Kennedy auditioned for the producers and was invited to appear on the show, but declined, to the dismay of his friends and family. Pop music’s veteran kingmaker saw Kennedy and invited him to try out for Britain’s Got Talent. Those street performances were good enough to get Simon Cowell’s attention. Fucking hell, that was really deflating.”īusking arguably led to more opportunities than studio sessions did. I’m driving around Dublin, dropping off press packs to different labels and just getting ignored all the time. “We’d blow all the money on studio time, friends and family would share it, and then nothing would happen. It was always a means to an end.” When he did make enough money to record, however, the sessions didn’t go anywhere. That was the best way I knew how to rent a studio to make my own music. He dropped out and became a regular in Dublin’s busking scene, covering Ben Howard and John Legend for tourists and playing in bands around town.

After three years, though, he realised he could get a better education in the kind of music he wanted to play outside the classroom. He went to university to study classical music. “I saw live shows and I was like, I want to do that.” Up until that point, Kennedy played guitar like countless teenagers around the world – which is to say, clunkily plucking out Green Day and AC/DC hits in his bedroom. Seeing performances by artists like Ray LaMontagne and David Gray inspired a change in direction. “I’m kind of still like that, to be honest.”

I used to carry two days’ worth of books in my bag just to avoid the social interaction at the lockers,” he remembers. When I was in secondary school, you’d have your locker with all your books, and you’d take whatever you needed for the first half of the day, then go back to your locker and replace it.

At school, he insists he was an awkward kid: “I think there were people who didn’t hear me speak for six years.

The kingmaker series kennedy ryan