Introducing 49th & Main

From the hometown of Kilkenny to headline tours and a Glastonbury performance, Irish duo 49th & Main is becoming an earworm powerhouse. Introducing their debut album, ‘Happy Tears,’ producer Ben O’Sullivan and vocalist/instrumentalist Paddy King present a 21-track project infused with their signature jazz and indie take on house music.

Within the first listen of ‘Catching Eyes,’ and ‘Never Gonna Stop,’ Noctis has followed 49th & Main very closely. Ben and Paddy open up about their journey and how one Canadian Summer has changed their trajectory. “It just didn’t click that me and Ben could do that on our own until we moved to Canada,” says Paddy about the early days of making music together.

The release of ‘Catching Eyes’ got the ball rolling; Ben and Paddy were surrounded by nothing but support and championing from their friends. Ben described the transition from Kilkenny to touring and playing bigger shows as “a strange current to navigate.’ He shared more about feeling like an imposter and struggling to look people in the eye.

The duo also reveals more about the freedom to experiment with sounds, such as drum ‘n’ bass and garage, during their hiatus. The debut record ‘Happy Tears’ is bound to open more doors for 49th & Main as it explores more themes, new transcending sounds, and more layers to the duo and its promising future.

In your opinion what is the best song/album to start a day off?

Ben: Kraftwerk – Europe Endless. It’s a 9-minute journey that just makes me feel like everything is gonna be fine and also makes me imagine that I’m an 8-bit video game character.

Paddy: For me Greyhound by Palace, this song was one I rinsed on tour. The lyrics and the guitars are perfect and it just makes me feel like I’m walking on clouds.

As musicians, can you recall a moment when you heard a new artist and you felt significantly inspired?

Ben: I used to watch Jon Bellions ‘Making Of’ videos after first hearing him when I was a teenager and I was always inspired by how much he cared about the fine details in songwriting & producing. Also how he blended different sounds into pop music.

Paddy: ‘Easy life’ or ‘Hard life’ now were instantly a favourite of mine when I heard them during college. It just felt like a different way of doing lyricism I hadn’t heard before, the music that supported it all then was just so pleasing on the ear. Murray has bars.

How did you first met and what were your first impressions of each other?

Ben: We first met in secondary school when we were about 12 I’d say and honestly I can’t remember any significant first impressions. We were into similar things and just became friends from then on. We are still part of pretty much the same friend group as we were then.

Paddy: All I remember is that I was jealous his voice had already broken and that he was a huge Liverpool fan.

Can you describe the mood of the Summer when you started making music together? What was on the radio? What was your favourite drink? What were the most prevalent themes in your lives?

Ben: The mood was giddy that summer. Awful silly carry on. We were in Canada on a student visa for the summer with a group of our friends and essentially most 20 Irish 20 year olds. I think ‘Sunset Lover – Petit Biscuit’ was having a big moment that summer. It was hard to get away from that song but to be honest it fit the mood quite well. My favourite drink was probably Colt 45. They came in small cans, tasted good but were like 8% so they packed a punch. Well we were 20 year old students. All we really cared about was having fun.

Paddy: Still probably my favorite summer to date, it wasn’t actually planned that Ben and I were even heading together, as it was with all the lads. We all just ended up hearing the other was heading after we had visas, 49th and main was the street we lived on that summer. I do remember one drink called White Lightning which was a 50% vodka and was cheap which was often bought for pre-drinks, ‘white lightening’ then ended up being used as a song title on our earlier ‘Covid tapes’. There was a really interesting work-life balance of working demolition, then making songs with Ben in the evening and then we would be heading on nights out till all hours and losing sleep to do it all again the next day.

Was making music something you talked about a lot before?

Ben: Not a whole lot to be honest. We had conversations and even attempted to write stuff together but it didn’t work out. Safe to say I’m thankful we decided to give it another shot.

Paddy: Even when we began making music it was never with intentions of it being music we would release, we just enjoyed making it so much that we didn’t stop. I mean I always wanted to do music. It just didn’t click that me and Ben could do that on our own until we moved to Canada.

When and how did you come up with the name of 49th & Main?

Ben: We were making songs at that address in Vancouver and had made a few decent ones (so we thought). The idea was to maybe release them together and call the little project ‘49th & Main’. Lockdown came, we wrote more songs. We ended up liking the sound of the name so much that it stuck.

From recording in your hometown of Kilkenny, you worked your way to selling out international tours. What was that shift like? Do you feel acclimated to touring life?

Ben: Still learning how to deal with the fact that people spend time & money to come hear us play. It’s been a strange current to navigate. For the first couple years of shows I actually couldn’t look at people directly in the crowd. I just felt like such an imposter. I just wanted to get through the shows as quickly and as pain free as possible. Now I really make a conscious effort to be in the moment, as uncomfortable as that is for someone like me who really doesn’t like the attention. I try to look people in the eyes and appreciate them. They are the literal reason any of this is possible.

Tour life is both fun & tough. The build up of anxiety before shows and then these big adrenaline dumps before you have to pack up and head to the next place to do it again is exhausting on the old nervous system. Exercising and eating well are necessities I’ve found especially now that we’re getting old 🙂

Paddy: As Ben said I still feel we are learning how to be a custom to it all. I know for myself I struggle with nerves a lot while on tour and it’s funny sometimes it’s so fine and other times it just makes me so ill I can’t eat, this happens until we go out on stage and adrenaline kicks in. Adrenaline is a hell of a drug.

As touring is still pretty new for us and the tours are getting longer, it’s vocal rest I guess I need to master. It is so hard not to end up singing (shouting) our hearts out in the first legs and then be struggling the rest either from sickness or just vocal fatigue. I think coming into this next tour I’m gonna try to have a lot more time on vocal rest between shows.

When did you start feeling like the world was opening its arms to you and your music?

Ben: Since day one to be honest. I remember so many of our friends supported our music from the very beginning. They would play it for people at every opportunity. They would champion us online and since then people from all over the world have done the same. We’ve been truly blessed with the best and most supportive fans on earth.

Paddy: Catching eyes is still one of our top streaming songs and I guess that really got the ball rolling for us. I just remember hearing it out in public places during college and that was a surreal feeling.

You had to take a year off, and in the meantime, you explored new sounds from other genres, what effect do you think the pause has left on 49th & Main?

Ben: I had a lot of isolated, idle time away from the highs of being on stage. I actually made a whole other concept album on my own. It was quite strange but it really helped cope. I did it for myself and wasn’t really concerned with what anyone might think of how it sounded so I ended up experimenting quite a lot and I loved it. Some of the songs on that album have actually made it onto ‘Happy Tears’. So this feeling of freedom I got from creating for myself is something that I am going to try and bring to the table as much as possible when writing from now on.

On June 13th, you will release your debut album ‘Happy Tears.’ What does this record represent to you?

Ben: For me personally it is emblematic of this period in my life. The past 5 years have been nothing short of crazy. The best and worst moments of my entire life seem to arrive in such quick succession. And I’ve now learned to be grateful for it all. To exist is to suffer and I’m really happy to exist if you get me. Releasing this album puts a nice bow on this chapter for me and represents a real discovery of myself.

Paddy: This record represents a time period, highs and lows we experienced, the lyrics, the music and the passions we had that influenced us to make it are all part of that also. I do hope people can hear something of themselves in it, and maybe it helps.

What were the biggest takeaways from the recording process?

Ben: I need to get better at the recording process. That’s always the biggest takeaway. That and Boojum (NB: Irish Mexican Restaurant).

Paddy: I think the biggest take away is we need to video more of the recording process as it would be so handy later on when the ideas come to be full songs that end up on the album. I just think it would be fun to have an album movie of it coming together.

There is an undeniable sense of freedom flourishing in your new single ‘Feels Right.’ What is the backstory of this track?

Ben: This is actually one of the tracks from the concept album I had mentioned before. It sounded quite a bit different before but that’s so weird that you mentioned the sense of freedom. Yeah well again I made it just for me and didn’t really have any care for what people might think of it so I made some ;’strange’ production decisions and had some fun with it.

You will be back in the UK and Europe in September. Can you give us a sneak peek into your next line of live shows?

Ben: Genuinely we haven’t rehearsed anything yet. With that being said I feel the most confident I’ve ever felt in our live show right now. So we are going to build on that and push this show even higher. We are playing our biggest venues yet so we have to go big. Someone once said it feels like if Boiler Room was a kids TV show so we’re going to run with that.

Paddy: As Ben said we haven’t got into breaking down the songs and what stays from the previous shows song wise, but it’s exciting there’s gonna be so many more new songs to scream/bounce with the crowd. I guess for the same reason it makes me nervous but that’s all part of it. It’s gonna be our first time playing in lots of the European countries! Really looking forward to exploring each city even though it’s usually quite brief and meeting new fans that come to the shows. Sometimes it’s easy to forget this is what it’s all about.