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A New Day - songwriters Phelim Byrne and Donnie Hardwidge - Brief Article
Interview, March, 2000 by Ray Rogers
After years of scraping beans and guacamole off dishes in greasy Mexican restaurants and picking up bottles in bars, Phelim Byrne and Donnie Hardwidge decided to try their hands at songwriting and Day One was born. "We chose the name," says Byrne, "because it was definitely a fresh start musically and certainly a clean start in our lives. It was the beginning of something." On one of the year's freshest-sounding debut albums, Ordinary Man (Astralwerks), Day One fuse hip-hop beats and street poetry with electronic mood music and the melodic snap of great pop tunes. In person, the Bristol-based duo of singer Byrne and multi-instrumentalist Hardwidge are just as laid-back and bemused as their music suggests they'd be.
Just as they make the connection between many musical genres, their songs are all about trying to connect--a theme played out in songs that describe chance encounters with strangers on public transportation or finding "love on the dole." "it's very much about relationships you have with the world and with people in everyday life and everyday situations. I think these little things you see, almost like plays you see or scenes of life, are some of the most interesting scenarios around. There are certain things that--no matter who or where you are--are ordinary to all of us, and that's what that record was about for us. What is an ordinary man? Who is an ordinary man? An ordinary man is everybody."
For now, it's back to Bristol after a two-month-long promotional tour. "I just bought a flat, so I'll probably spend the first day with my bills. The second day I'm gonna walk around in my boxer shorts and scratch my balls." Spoken just like an ordinary man.
COPYRIGHT 2000 Brant Publications, Inc.
COPYRIGHT 2000 Gale Group
