Irish band “Picture This” primed to be the new music sensation of 2017.
Breakout duo Picture This arrives stateside in support of their self-titled debut EP, Picture This, which is now certified GOLD in Ireland and has over 4 million collective streams. Having recently won the coveted “Song of the Year” award for “Take My Hand” at Ireland’s Choice Music Prize, Jimmy Rainsford and Ryan Hennessy is ready to take the states by storm.
Q: So I know you both started collaborating in 2015, before then, what was each of your respective musical careers/path like? Were you both full time musicians?
Jimmy: I was pretty serious. I was touring the world with different artists. I was touring with another artist and I toured all over Europe and the world. So I was pretty into it and producing as well doing different stuff as well.
Ryan: This was my first musical effort. I got into music when I was 18, and I’m 21 now. It’s been 3 years since I was signed for the first time when I was 18. I took up music in school as a subject because I don’t like any other subject. So I was like, I’m going to do music now. I did music because there were loads of girls doing it so that motivated mc. I had to sing because I couldn’t read music or anything. You had to do a practical exam so a lot of people are doing writing, theory work and I couldn’t do that. So I turned to singing and realized I was pretty good at it. Everyone was encouraging me and telling me that I could sing. It helped that I’ve been writing poetry since I was ten, so I put poetry into songs and merged those two worlds together.
Q: Since working together what was it that helped secured your friendship and working relationship?
Jimmy: We knew each other before becoming a band. Ryan was in a different band and I saw him a few times but what made me reach out was a completely separate video that Ryan had on his profile page on Facebook that I saw. He was playing this song “Take my hand” and I was like “this is a good song. You should try and like produce it and make it into a proper recording song and I have a studio.” We did that and then we thought that we would make a band after we did the song. So it was because of that song.
Ryan: At the start, it was exclusively music, as Jimmy said. We knew each other but we were from very different worlds. Jimmy was into music and I knew Jimmy because in our school he was a sensational drummer. I didn’t know if Jimmy knew me because I wasn’t the most popular kid in school. I was playing football, I wasn’t into music at all. We were in very different worlds. It is just music really.
Q: What do you guys do to help get into the flow of songwriting? Do both of you work together or do one of you focus on melody and the other on lyrics?
Jimmy: Ryan is melody and lyrics and I’m kind of the rest. I base the production off of the song. So it’s really quick and we don’t manufacture anything. If Ryan has a song and it’s in a certain mood, then I just try to reflect that mood.
Ryan: I write the song on acoustic guitar and send the song for Jimmy. The process is pretty spontaneous. It could happen in my bedroom or hotel room. There’s one song that is going to be on the album that I wrote in 20 minutes while we were in Nashville.
Q: What did it feel like the moment you saw fans reacting so well to your song “Take my Hand”?
Ryan: I was amazed but I was also not so shocked. Ireland needed a song like that because everyone was writing kind of down trodden music. So that’s why I wanted to write a song about summer romance. I wanted to listen to a song about summer romance and I couldn’t find one that I liked that wasn’t cheesy. So I wrote one instead.
Jimmy: It’s kind of always been an Irish thing to write music that is melancholic. Tradition music is about stories from the past and there’s a general melancholic feel to that, which is great but it’s not what we want to do.
Ryan: I never went to college. It never suited me and there were all these college bands coming up and they were singing about being sad. I was raised on welfare and I’m happy so I didn’t understand why these college kids were singing about being sad when I don’t have a penny in my pocket and I’m here loving life. So let’s make some happy music and be positive. We kind of went against the grain and made happy music.
Q: Congratulations on reaching Gold for your debut EP, what’s your favorite song of it and do you have any plans for your upcoming albums?
Jimmy: We have recorded an album and hopefully it is coming out this summer. The album is basically finished and ready to go. There’s a song called, “You and I” on our EP that I think people should listen to after listening to “Take my hand” because that was the second song we released and that took us to a totally different level. Every song we put out has a different genre and story.
Ryan: A lot of these songs are creative writing. A lot of people don’t understand that. A lot of people think that these songs are our personal experiences and they forget that I am a writer first as I have a background in poetry and so it’s about merging those two. I think people will like the songs we have in a different way.
Q: If you had the chance to work/jam session with any musician of your choice, who would it be and why?
Jimmy: John Mayer. But he would have to be the one to play the guitar.
Ryan: I would like to work with Noel Gallagher, from Oasis.
Q: What do you like to do on your downtime during touring?
Ryan: I like to sleep.
Jimmy: I like going out with my backpack and walking around. We saw a lot of Nashville and a lot of Austin. The first time we came to New York last August, we did a lot of sight seeing. Now that we’ve been here for 4 or 5 times, we just relax a little.
What’s a song that you guys have on your most played list right now?
Jimmy: “American Country Love Song” by Jake Owen.
Ryan: Love by Lana Del Rey. Her new song. I really love her.
Q: Can you tell me about the funniest moment you’ve had while out on tour?
Jimmy: I remember we were in London backstage and this girl was trying to get into our dressing room. We were just standing there and this girl came in and exploded. Got really close to our face and this security guard came in with an arm around her neck and got her out. We just stood there. It was the funniest thing I’ve ever seen. We just stood there.
Ryan: The Olympia theater, we played three nights there and on our last night, my mic cut out and our sound guy; he separated the crowd in half so he could run to us. It’s actually on our Facebook page during the song “For you”. That moment was really funny to see him sprint.
-Summer Luk