Hozier & Jess Kav at Electric Picnic
Photo: Owen Humphreys / GoldenPlec
THESE LEGENDS TOGETHER AGAIN
Last Friday night, Hozier headlined Ireland’s largest music festival, Electric Picnic. Andrew Hozier-Byrne was the original singer in ZASKA years ago (alongside Karen Cowley of Wyvern Lingo) and is still a good mate who has been known to drop in for a jam when schedules allow.
Headlining EP in Ireland for an Irish artist is a big deal, so I was buzzin to see Andrew command the stage in front of 25,000 people!
The song ‘Nina Cried Power’ on his latest album features Mavis Staples. But live at Electric Picnic, Andrew invited Jess Kav to sing Mavis’ part and she absolutely killed it!
EARLY DAYS
Jess and Andrew often sang together back in the early days of jams around town when we were all finding our feet. She was his original backing vocalist when he released Take Me to Church, before it blew up, and then sang BVs on his first short tour of America back in 2014.
Me and Jess go back to those jam days of the early ’10s as well. Here’s a clip from my ‘Got To Go’ single launch in 2016 with Andrew and Jess joining myself, Karen Cowley, Keith Fennell and the band for an encore jam cover of ‘Doo Wop (That Thing)’ by Lauren Hill.
Whelan’s
Jess has been super busy this year writing new songs with her band BARQ, doing session work, and touring BVs around Europe and Japan with The Waterboys.
I was delighted to have Jess sing ‘My Body’ on my album and I’m a lucky man to have had her perform with the band several times this year, including the just-released video of our RTÉ Studio 8 session.