Anyone who has walked down Shop Street during the past two years will be familiar with Keywest. The five-piece who cut their teeth busking are now ready to mark the release of their debut album The Message with a show in Monroe’s on Friday, February 24.

Lead singer Andrew Kavanagh and pianist/guitarist Andy ‘Glove’ Glover have been playing together since they were teenagers in Dublin, when they bonded over mutual influences.

“For myself, there were a lot of singing influences because I didn’t play any instruments at the time,” recalls Andrew Kavanagh. “So it was all Stevie Wonder, Michael Jackson and Prince. Glove was playing classical music, but he was into pretty alternative stuff and straight up classic rock like U2 and The Beatles.”

The Keywest line-up is completed by Sam Marder on bass, James Lock on lead guitar and Harry Sullivan on drums. When the band found themselves in Galway to play a covers gig, they decided to go busking. It helped them bond as a group, and soon became a regular thing.

“It was when we began busking that the identity of the band really formed; that was in 2010,” says Keywest’s singer. “We started busking to make ends meet and then we started to understand what we were going to be.

“You’re on the street, it’s like being in the trenches. Sometimes it’s not a very pleasant experience – we did it through the winter as well as the summer. You get to know the people on the street; you get to know the drunks by name, the people that work there.”

Many people will remember the winter of 2010 for the extreme sub-zero temperatures. The members of Keywest busked through the cold spell, an experience Andrew can still vividly recall.

“We used to wear three layers of thermals underneath our clothes,” he says. “Then we’d take turns going across to Eason’s to warm up! The lads had to get heatpacks and keep them inside their clothes, and then take them out between sets to warm their hands up for playing. We even busked in Christmas Eve, in minus seven or eight temperatures.”

Busking became the way Keywest made ends meet, and it also helped to fund the band’s trip to Los Angeles.

“It was great so we started to do it as an alternative way of making money, instead of the covers gigs. We were concerned that our name would pop up on a few too many pub doors and people would just assume we were a covers band.”

Yet songs from pop stars like Katy Perry are a regular part of their busking set – are they not running the same risk on the street?
“We didn’t mind doing covers on the street, to get people to stop,” Andrew explains. “But then we could have a chat with them, let them know what we were doing, what our plan was, why we were there.”

Andrew Kavanagh does indeed have a chat when Keywest are busking in Galway, talking away to the often sizable crowd who gather outside River Island on Shop Street. It’s a peculiar sight, this young singer treating a busy thoroughfare like his sitting room.

“On the streets, after a while, you don’t care,” he says. “I wasn’t a super-confident person before busking. Some days you might have 10 coffees in you and you’d just start chatting away! I realised the best policy was honesty – you’d talk about what the lads got up to the night before, the funny stories that happened over the years.”

For more, read this week's Connacht Tribune.