‘I was born uncool, but I’m cool with it,” says affable Gareth

“I tried picking up the sayings, and saying them just right, oh but I didn’t like how they made my tongue feel / I tried the hip clubs, but I wasn’t getting in just like everybody else was / I tried everything I could think of....But heaven knows I was born uncool, but I’m cool with it.”

In the accompanying video for Born Uncool there he is as a child, playing with a toy gun, messing about in the garden with friends, blowing out the candles on birthday cakes, sporting a questionable fisherman’s hat or overly colourful tracksuits.

“That song grew out of watching a load of VHS videos of my childhood that my dad had...and when I watched them I just thought, on no, no, I really, really was not cool,” he laughs. He did have a bit of a bowl cut as a toddler, but who didn’t?

The down-to-earth partner of Amy and father of Joni (6) and Wilson (4) has managed to blaze a musical trail since he first seriously committed to being an artist in 2009; and the success has not been simply local. After winning a competition held by the Belfast Nashville Songwriters Festival in 2011 he crossed the water for a debut set at the prestigious Bluebird Cafe before signing publishing deals with Moraine Music and Nettwerk that led to numerous songs in his repertoire being used in hit US shows such a as NASHVILLE, House, One Tree Hill, Private Practice, Switched at Birth, Army Wives, Lucifer, Cougar Town and Bones.

In 2013 his song Wrap Your Arms Around Me was part of the soundtrack for the movie Safe Haven, based on a romance novel by the immensely popular Nicholas Sparks. Over the years Gareth has toured in the UK, Europe and the US opening for a diverse group of artists including the peerless Van Morrison, The Stereophonics, James Morrison and many others.

His debut album ‘No.79’ was released in 2017 and his eagerly anticipated second album ‘ANIMAL’ is awaiting a release date thanks to the pandemic. But his latest songs, including the aforementioned declaration of uncoolness, are to be released as part of a new EP.

His insistence that he is a music geek makes him entirely lovable: who is so self-conscious of their own coolness that you do not in reality want to clobber them over the head with a baseball bat?

Much of his other music is plaintive; he is a master of the heartfelt ballad and influenced by the kind of folk and soul traditions that easily tug on the heartstrings.

CultureNorthernIreland has called Gareth a man with a voice “that could tame dinosaurs”; while the uber current Huffington Post bills him impressively as a “singer of uncannny ability”.

Listening to his music it is hard not to feel emotionally swept up in the intensity of his lyrics and performative authenticity. Ballads like Can’t Stand Myself and When I’m With You come from the very pith of an anguished, restless soul. Are these songs vignettes of years of heartbreak and travails?

“There is a lot of heartache scattered across my work for sure. All songwriters tackle the big life subjects, don’t they? Love, someone you lost, am I a romantic? I dunno, some people might disagree!

“I’ve never really been able to put rhyme or reason to how songs get written. They just seem to come to be. It’s a mysterious process in many ways. Sometimes a lyric will come to me, sometimes I’ll just be sitting noodling on the guitar and something will fall out of me.”

Gareth, who now often works from a studio at his east Belfast home, remembers first picking up his dad’s old Yamaha guitar at age 14, then started listening to an extensive collection of vinyl LPs and 45s. He loved and still loves, The Beatles, Bob Dylan, Jimmy Page, Led Zeppelin, Deep Purple, Cream, U2, Pink Floyd, “all that 70s really fast guitar playing. But is was Blood On The Tracks by Bob Dylan that changed everything for me. It made me realise I didn’t just want to play guitar; I knew then that I wanted to sing too and that lyrics mattered to me.”

H started performing in clubs around the province at just 16, quickly gaining a reputation as a captivating live performer.

“It was more of a progression into music for me and being really lucky in that, when I started making stuff I had people around me who encouraged me and told me that they liked what they were hearing. I went to music college in Bangor and when I got my first residency, I remember I just could not believe it when they paid me after my set. They told me to come back next Friday and I was like ‘Really?’ I couldn’t believe it’.”

He feels the music industry has changed radically since the advent of social media and other platforms that allow independent artists to release and promote music and gigs on their own terms.

“Back then you booked a gig, tried to promote it and sold some CDs from the boot of your car. Now it is so different and everything is online.

“I have been very lucky, which is just as well as I haven’t been much good at anything else apart from music. I enjoy it every day. Each day is different.

“I do have those moments where I think I must be doing something right, but then at other times I do think ‘What am I doing? Should I get a real job?’ But music is where my heart is and where my talent lies.”

Like most artists in the current climate he is concerned at how the pandemic will impact on creatives here.

“A lot of revenue is dying in the music industry because of online streaming. Things were difficult enough before lockdown. Live gigs were the last bastion and now they too are under threat. That’s where most of your bread and butter comes from as a performer and it’s very unsettling to be without that and to be so unsure about what the future might hold.

“Life in the music industry is a rollercoaster. Sometimes you feel you need to scale it down. Sometimes you need to scale things up a bit. Sometimes it clicks along. It constantly evolves.”

But he feels the Ulster music industry is nonetheless “prolific, healthy and churning out great art with standout artists like Nathan O’Regan, Fiona O’Kane Joshua Burnside, and Anthony Toner...There are so many great artists coming out of here”.

“We have a small footprint of a music industry here. You know, it’s not massive compared to the likes of New York or London or Nashville, but important musical art is still being produced here and I am very proud of that.”

He credits his partner Amy with helping him craft a successful music career: “I don’t know if I ever would have got to where I am not without her. Music is my passion but family comes first.”

Gareth Dunlop’s Born Uncool EP is released September 18.