Introduction
On the west coast of Ireland, a community of musicians seeks joy and connection through music as they face a modernizing world.
Synopsis
The Job of Songs is an intimate film about the musicians of County Clare, Ireland. At the ends of the earth, teetering on the edge of the Cliffs of Moher and the first to break the stormy Atlantic winds is the small village of Doolin. Travelers from all over the world gather in the local pubs, hoping to connect with their Irish heritage through traditional music. But things are changing: facing rapid modernization at the hands of tourism, confronting depression and mental health issues, and grappling with a history of colonization and oppression, the people of Doolin turn to music to find solace.
Christy Barry shares the rich history of place and music while bemoaning the changes that tourism so quickly brings to this idyllic village. Luka Bloom seeks a legacy while passing his adoration of music onto his sister Anne and friend Kieran. Katie Theasby longs to vitalize her music yet struggles with self-doubt, single motherhood, and depression. Each of them battles their own personal demons, fighting their fears of putting themselves out there, coping with the changes that tourism has brought to their community, and dreaming of writing the next ballad that will fill the pubs for hundreds of years.
Music has the power to bring people together. In an age where everything is speeding up in life and everything is instant, we’re missing the person that walks right in front of us. We’re lonely and we don’t know why. We’re depressed and we don’t see a solution. In this community of musicians, the artists explore what it means to exist in the old music, the long-standing tradition, and find community through the strumming of a guitar, the beating of a bodhran, or the sharing of a song.
The Director
A Word from the Director
The Job of Songs was born of a feeling. When I traveled to Ireland for the first time, chasing my ancestral roots, I stepped into a session in Doolin, County Clare, and felt overwhelmed. I could not describe it in words, yet there was something so important and gripping in those moments spent in the pub. The community. The history. The music. It did not leave me. I wanted to capture this feeling the best way I know how – and so this film came into being.
We spent time in County Clare getting to know the musicians and music lovers of the area, hearing stories, and forging relationships. We were so fortunate to earn people’s trust and time and spent four weeks exchanging stories and tunes with the vibrant community.
My grandmother says that the Irish keep everything inside, never burst, and then die. That’s how it was when she was being raised by Irish immigrants in Chicago, and that’s how it was when her parents were being raised in Kerry, Ireland: just don’t say anything. And so, music is a way for us to unleash our feelings so that we may express the unspoken. Luka Bloom says “The job of songs can sometimes be to entertain, but it’s this thing of giving people who don’t have songs permission to feel things that are really deeply ingrained in them – that they don’t necessarily intellectually understand.”
Music grants us this freedom in ways that benefit not only ourselves but also those in our communities. It is creation, not destruction. I’d like to describe the feeling that led me here, but as is the nature of the beast, words do not capture, so I present to you The Job of Songs.
(Edited for content and clarity)
Interview
Glen Dower:
Lila, thank you for talking to me today about your new documentary, The Job of Songs. As you may have guessed already, I am from Ireland myself, originally from Belfast in the north, and your film really hit home with me. I’ve lived away from home now for nearly twenty years but I get back once in a while, but your film took me back to being in a pub or front room with my granddad and the music playing in the background, either live or on records.
It reminded me of a former pleasure of mine: the ability to just ‘be’. As one of your contributors said, we’ve lost the ability to just be, and I think your film really captured that. Was that something you were aiming to capture? Because we know you happened upon this little town almost by accident, really. You wanted to visit your ancestral roots, and you happened upon the pub and thought, wow. Was that your aim; to capture those moments?
Lila Schmitz:
I think so. And thank you for saying that. I haven’t put it in those words, but that’s absolutely right. We travelled and just lived in the pubs following musicians around. Trying to just gain trust and be in the spaces so that we were not intrusive. We came in with cameras without shooting so that we could just establish a sort of level of, hey, we’re just here to be friendly.
We’re not here to attack or anything like that. It’s really scary to come in with cameras and for something intimate. And, I think, Irish people are very sensitive about anyone coming in. So it was, I think the quality of this existence, in the music and in these spaces and with other people is exactly what it was that I personally was touched by in the sessions, and wanted to go and capture with the film.
Glen Dower:
Irish music is interactive. It’s physical activity as opposed to passive. But I was asked the other day what music you listen to. I said, honestly I have actually stopped listening to music. I listen to or record podcasts pretty much non-stop. And the last time I bought a physical album was in the last century! Just for me, music has just become this bubblegum concept or audible wallpaper. But then going back to listening to these people making music in the pub you can’t not move to it. And you capture that as well in the film. Even if it’s just your toe tapping or you slapping your knee. Were you physically, and kinetically excited when you went into a session for the first time and thought what is happening to me?
Yes, absolutely. Absolutely. The feeling that came over me in that first session that I stepped into with my mom as a teenager, was just to listen. And I think we stepped into the pub probably to get water or something. And the music just came over me and stuck with me for years. So that was the only thing I could think of wanting to make a film about years later. It’s definitely the physicality that takes over your body. And I completely am in the same boat as you as I’m always listening to people talking.
I’m always listening to podcasts and just keeping my mind busy. And I think that there’s something about the music that some of the contributors in the film talk about. It just takes over and sort of takes the place of needing to describe your feelings and it gives you permission to feel things. Luca Bloom says it gives you permission to feel things that you wouldn’t necessarily intellectually understand. And I think that is something really beautiful. And that trying to intellectually understand everything, at least for me personally, is not always the best move because there’s so much to life that is about existing in our bodies and feeling and existing in space with other people. So I think that that part of it was a huge part of capturing what it was that this community is creating and that this tradition creates.
Glen Dower:
In the film itself, an audience going in perhaps expecting that the narrative is all leading to a competition. Or maybe it’s going be a case of ‘if they don’t play really well, the pub’s going to close forever’. But you avoid that, and it’s just about those little communities and drop it into their lives for snapshots. Was there any point you thought, there’s no narrative to this, what should I do? Or was it a case of, I want to enjoy these people and let the audience enjoy them too?
Lila Schmitz:
Oh, absolutely. I mean, writing a documentary is very challenging. And my take on it is it’s always going to be about the people who are making the film and what we are bringing to it. It’s never going to be an objective truth. That’s impossible with storytelling. But trying to do justice to the storytellers on the other side of it and give them the space to share what really touched us as filmmakers and that we think will touch audiences in actually creating a narrative. Yes, that was incredibly challenging because it’s very delicately woven together as it has ended up being in an effort to engage people. But also let you sit in on what it might feel like to be in rural Ireland on the West Coast and sort of sit in these sessions.
It sort of goes in the pacing of a pub in some ways because we move from song to song. And in between sets, you’ll have these long periods of time where the musicians are just getting up and doing what they’re just chatting for. It could be anywhere from thirty seconds to fifteen minutes to thirty minutes, so naturally, the way that it moves. So that’s what we ended up using and sort of focusing around the radio DJ, Eoin O’Neill helping us to move the film and keep it somewhat cohesive. But we went through many iterations of the narrative and hoped to communicate all of these feelings which don’t make up a movie on their own to try to put those pieces in the right places.
Glen Dower:
Like Eoin O’Neill, for example, and have really great contributors with so many great quotes in there. Like Eoin’s Perfection is Boring. And the title of the film itself, The Job of Songs. I’m guessing there was a working title before you met Luca Bloom, who is great in the piece. And he said the job of songs is…did you think, oh, title!
Lila Schmitz:
No, we did not. I actually showed a cut of it to my partner and he was like, oh, that’s your title for sure. And I was like, no, it isn’t. No, no, no. And then I go and talk to Anika and Fengyi, who are the team behind this mostly. And we talked about it and it sort of just crept in and it became this title that I am personally just so attached to at this point. But yeah, it took an outsider watching the movie and being like, I think that would be a great title for you.
Glen Dower:
How did you go about collecting your contributors? Were some ad hoc, were some prepared in advance? Or was it a mixture of both?
Lila Schmitz:
None were prepared in advance! Yep. It was very natural. We intended to make a short film, so we were there for a month Anika and I were there for the first two weeks, and Fengyi joined us for the last two. The first two weeks were meant to be sort of a research period, getting to know people like I talked about and finding contributors. It turned out that there was just so much story and people opened up in a way that created space to make something that could not be captured in ten minutes, or fifteen minutes.
So while we were there, we were like, this might be longer, this might be something else. And we won’t decide until later. So when we were there, we would go to the pubs, like I talked about. We would just sort of come in with our cameras and try to just be around and chat to people a little bit, but we’re kind of shy. And so there wasn’t a ton of that. And what it really was was that our B and B hosts introduced us via email to Luca Bloom and to The Fiddle Case, and Kieran O’Connell specifically I believe, in The Fiddle Case. Those two were the beginning.
And then I think it sort of spiraled from there or ballooned from there in that they would be like, oh, you know what? You should talk to this other person. And this interview was very interesting. I enjoyed this. I think my friend might enjoy this, which was quite a compliment to us, but also just made it what it was. And so I think the fact that the musician sort of decided for us who we should be speaking to felt very natural and really built out the community itself. And then, of course, we did find people in the pub, like Christie McNamara, we met Ted McCormack. I had seen him perform before, so I was very much like, we have to find Ted, who’s this great singer…
Glen Dower:
Who is in his eighties?!
Lila Schmitz:
Right! And he just is such a character. And we went to his house twice and the first time he had actually both times I think he had a singing karaoke with him on floppy discs that he had. He was like, well, you have to sing with me, obviously. And so it was a lot of just trying to have a good time with them and capture what was real.
Glen Dower:
You’ve been on the festival circuit for about a year now with the film. What has been the audience’s reaction?
Lila Schmitz:
People really like it. Let me gather my thoughts. I’ve heard things like, ‘I laughed and I cried, and this is an Irish movie and this is about Irish music, and I did not think that would happen.’ So I think that has been really wonderful because it’s like we’re not sitting here writing jokes or anything. We’re just putting in things that entertain us. And so that’s been great to get the emotional reactions from an audience. And in Galway at the Galway Film Fleadh, we had a lot of the contributors come to see the film for the first time, which was so nerve-wracking. But we sold out the audience and we had this great big theatre and they all got up on stage with me and Anika afterward and were just so kind and so sort of still processing the film and just very complimentary.
And Eoin said something along the lines of, ‘You’ve really seen us.’ Then Adam Shapiro talked about how he learned things about people within the community that he’s known for twenty years. And so specifically, I think they were our most important audience to us in trying to make sure that they felt seen and heard. But audience members across the US have really been touched by it and have sort of suggested us to other festivals. And that’s a very natural way that that has happened. And when we were at DOC NYC, this man came up to me and said I was the music director on Once, which I’m obsessed with. It’s a great film. This great Broadway musical, and this is what we were trying to capture.
This feeling is what we were trying to do with Once. And that to me…I was over the moon. And so then we went off to the pub and had a session that lasted for hours and hours in New York. That was the premiere. I had a British actor who I randomly met who watched the film say that he was very taken with this nostalgia for a place that he’d never been to. I thought that was a really wonderful take on it because a lot of the audience that I’m sort of gearing towards are people who have been to Ireland and know about it or have family who are from there.
Because I think as somebody from this family who’s immigrated and left behind, I still feel this connection right to Ireland. But I think for someone who has nothing actually tying them to this little island and to still feel this sense of nostalgia and this sense of community. That’s built out within it and is really special because I think it is sort of this larger concept than just, it’s, to me, it’s not really about the music so much as what human beings can do together and how we can sort of create spaces and come together in community.
Glen Dower:
That definitely comes across. When The Banshees of Inisherin came out with great success last year, did you think ‘Yes! Let’s get in there too’?
Lila Schmitz:
Yeah! I think there’s been such a great rush on Irish movies in the us. A Quiet Girl is represented by one of our lovely sales agents. And so that has been very exciting for them and for us to be like, yes, hopefully, there’s a space in there. And I think those are great films too, so it makes sense that they would be so celebrated.
Glen Dower:
It’s a good playlist for sure. So, I’ve had the privilege of talking to many documentary directors for Cinema Scholars. I always ask one question and the answer is always different. Here we go. So as a documentary filmmaker, when do you know you have enough? When you go, we can stop now or does that not happen?
Lila Schmitz:
Oh geez! I’m not really one for stopping! We didn’t really eat enough while we were in production! This is one of my regrets. We sort of forgot to get meals. We were, and I think back and I’m like, wow, was that my fault? Probably. We were just going. So I think because we had so little time in production and such a small amount of funding. We had a day where we filmed three interviews and a session. Which is insane. We’re driving all around. We have to go from place to place. And the way that I do interviews is it’s a chat over tea usually. Or coffee if I’m lucky…
Glen Dower:
No Guinness?!
Lila Schmitz:
Well, this was at the sessions but I did budget for a pint for us because I was like, well, we have to participate! We can’t just be outsiders. So I think because of my approach, it was sort of like, if you’re willing to keep talking to me and this isn’t the most painful thing in the world, which I don’t think we had any of that, then I’ll just keep going because I want to know. It’s a lot about if the person is excited to talk about what they’re talking about. That’s going to be valuable for us as storytellers. And so I think it’s sort of an empathy thing of how do you feel about what you’re sharing and are you in it?
And Luca Bloom sat down for three hours by accident. This was our second interview, and he was just like, where did the time go? What have you guys gotten from me? And I think that’s my favorite part. I love to sit with people and encourage them to talk about things that they love in ways that they don’t get to talk about. And I think that really was important to this film. So enough. I don’t know about ever getting enough, but at the end of the trip…we got enough.
Glen Dower:
There we go. And what are you working on now, Lila?
Lila Schmitz:
I joined a company called Dropout TV that makes unscripted comedy and is really beautiful and lovely. I’m working with them and then creatively on my personal projects. I’m developing some stuff…but nothing to talk about right now.
Glen Dower:
Maybe down the line? Well, thank you so much Lila for your time Lila and for the film. And on a personal note to end: I’ll be sharing this movie with my mom. She’ll absolutely love it.
Lila Schmitz:
Thank you, Glen. Oh, that makes me so happy. That’s awesome.
