From UCD Battle of the Bands to the glittering stages of Electric Picnic, Bees and Sawdust are on the rise.
Bees and Sawdust defy categorisation. While blending sounds and genres, the band pulls threads from various influences to weave together something entirely new. Their gigs are electric and exciting, fueled by the band’s chaotic sound and striking stage presence, yet always remain grounded by the clear friendship, care, and camaraderie within the group. With four of their five members being current or former UCD students, and having competed in UCD’s Battle of the Bands last year, there’s a particular interest in them as a home-grown talent. Their most recent EP, Teething, was released on the 24th of May of this year.
“Bees and Sawdust basically didn’t exist, because it was just four lads in a sweaty room.”
Formed in Galway in 2021, Bees and Sawdust didn’t really kick off until the summer of the following year, when drummer Ruby joined the group. Prior to that, the band’s existence was mostly resigned to the four walls of various members’ bedrooms - occasionally even Glenomena. As lead singer Oliver puts it, “Bees and Sawdust basically didn’t exist, because it was just four lads in a sweaty room.” This time was used to learn to play as a group, as well as writing songs. In fact, the band finished writing their first EP before ever playing a gig.
The band sprung from the secondary-school friendship of its four original members; Oliver, Tom, Daragh, and Fionn, who founded the group ahead of their first year in UCD. The future bandmates had known each other, in one form or another, for years; Daragh and Fionn are cousins, and Ruby knew Daragh through summer work.
Tom, on guitar, describes their arrival in UCD as the catalyst for them taking becoming a band seriously; “I think the idea floated around for a few years. And then it was once we moved up to Dublin to UCD together. Because yeah, in the first year, all four of us were in UCD. We were like, okay, we all live together in Glenomena. Let's do this.”
As singer Oliver recounts, their fist EP, Joyaholic, was their original choice, but a late-stage intervention from his mother who called it “shite and very immature” scuppered that particular boat.
The usual teething phase ensued as the group came together in a chaos of experimentation in an effort to master their instruments and find their sounds; any of their initial practice sessions were clashed out in the living room of their Glenomena dormitory … much to the annoyance of the band members’ roommates; “In the living room with roommates cooking. Pretty bad. It was pretty fucking bad … And every time, we were just getting booed out of the place. Our first bomb was in Glenomena, house three.”
Arguably the most crucial element for the band was deciding on a name. As singer Oliver recounts, their fist EP, Joyaholic, was their original choice, but a late-stage intervention from his mother who called it “shite and very immature” scuppered that particular boat. There followed a succession of failed contenders including; 'Pyramid Scheme, Teddy Boys, and the Pyjama Boys.' All taken unfortunately.
Tom described the 'a-ha' moment; “I think I said it when I was hungover once to describe how I felt. I was like, ‘oh, my head's full of bees and sawdust.’ And then that phrase kind of entered the group lexicon for a couple of years … it was a name that none of us disliked. So somehow we ended up with it.”
In the years since their 2021 formation, Bees and Sawdust have hoovered up a litany of impressive achievements, including placing second in the 2024 Battle of the Bands, an event which the group consider one of the biggest and best they've ever played; “The gig was fantastic … 500 people. Fucking crazy.” Further, Bees and Sawdust achieved another one of their lifetime goals this year, playing at Electric Picnic. And one of their recent singles – Idiot Party – has garnered over 18,000 streams on Spotify.
But at times, the bands drive is such that they sometimes forget how far they've come “Yeah, it's weird to … I think we're still like, oh, I wish we were like XYZ band … further, further, further. But, you know, it's only when you look back, you go, fuck, we actually have gotten to a stage that I think we were looking to get to at that time … but we kind of feel like we surpassed it. We're already looking forward to bigger, better things.”
Here, guitarist Daragh quips that, “There was always big talk, though.”
The band's inspiration shifts with time; for a few months they consider themselves like Queens of Stone Age, then My Chemical Romance, or Model Actress. They prefer not to bind themselves to any particular music inspiration or genre, opting for a more 'leef-in-the-breeze' philosophy to creating their music, striking in wherever the mood takes them, “I think when we're pulling from bands, I don't want to say we pull heavily, but we [do say], ‘actually, we want to make this kind of music now’, all of a sudden.”
A particular inspiration for the group was the now-broken-up band, Turnstiles. A band local to Galway, Tom describes watching them perform on a friend’s front porch, “It was the first local show I'd been to. And when you're standing two feet from a musician and you can see exactly what they're doing, it doesn't seem nearly as intimidating or far-fetched.”
From there on, the reality of performing felt a lot more tangible. They all remain active in watching their fellow bands perform. Tom describes how attending local gigs keeps him energised and inspired - “I've been listening to a lot of really noisy, evil-sounding music for the last year or so. And then it was only when I got to see local bands, like Nerves or Stratford Rise, or Tone Deaf, or Clay Pigeon Shooting, performing that kind of music live, I kind of realised … we’re allowed to do that … be that noisy and that crazy on stage”.
Oliver jokes, “So I guess what we're saying is it's all local bands we like. We only like local bands. We won't give credence to the bigger ones. They suck or something. Yeah, we're too punk for that.”
Thanks to the diverse medley of sounds which the group draw inspiration from, it is very difficult to place them in a genre box. Asked if they conform to any particular genre, or have shifted genre since they started, Bees and Sawdust believe that there are elements of their music, thoroughlines, which have persisted throughout their music since the start.
In the beginning, Oliver saw Bees and Sawdust as embracing an “indie-rock to grunge” vibe, but the singer teased that the future holds a “noisier, weirder, kind of less adhering to pop, structuring.”
Fionn believes that you can hear the evolution of their confidence as performers in the way their music has focused since they started, “you [could] hear that we haven't really decided what we want to do yet. Whereas I think the last, the most recent stuff that we've done is definitely more like distilled and decided…”
Asked what they have learned most from the release of their first single, the band concede that they are not overly skilled in production, “Oh my God, we can't produce and that's okay. It’s okay to get someone else to do the production.” They consider music-production as much of an art as crafting their lyrics, and performing their sets, “…but let's get a person who really knows what they're doing, because that's a different art.”
With the ever increasing levels of competition in the music scene, any band that wants to stand out from the crowd is forced to wear two faces; that of the artist, and that of the promoter. Oliver describes being a lot more expansive than any of them expected, “You can't just be a singer or a guitarist or a drummer. You have to be a social media expert and you have to be able to print stuff and video production and all this and co-ordinating all that, and knowing people who can do that.”
Drummer Ruby describes another steep learning-curve they had to negotiate: breaking in. This challenge wasn't made any easier by the fact that Bees and Sawdust started during Covid, when gigging and concerts were impossible. Their first gig, near the tail-end of Covid was played in Áras na nGael, Galway at 2 P.M; many of the band-members were turning eighteen around the time, and thus there was the double disconnect of their first attendance at a small gig being one that they were performing at, “So my first exposure to smaller gigs was my own. So I suppose that was just like, ‘how are we navigating it, and who do you ask to play a gig? What are the structures?’ ”
However, Covid came with a few silver linings for the band. Forming near the end of Covid as they did, the months of pandemic restrictions afforded them plenty of opportunities to hone their craft, all while hordes of live-entertainment starved young people were champing at the bit to see someone perform, “when we first started, it was this thing of people were just dying to go out. So it was like we had audiences for shows where no one really knew who we were.” And benefiting from the creative cocoon of lockdown wasn't unique to Bees and Sawdust either.
Daragh recalls that “Tons of bands like popped up randomly out of people that we knew and we didn't know that were in bands either as well. Same situation as us.” Oliver adds; “People were quietly working on stuff in their bedrooms. And we were doing the same… So I think it was actually, for us, it was helpful, but I know it killed loads of bands. Yeah. If that happened now, I don't know what we'd do. So we got lucky.”
In their official bio, Bees and Sawdust describe themselves as gigging relentlessly, but does that ever take its toll on the band's enthusiasm for what they do?
“The gigging doesn't,” says Oliver. “It's the getting the bus to the gigs and getting the time to gig, like getting time off work. And that's the harder bit of it.” The work/life/family/exams balance can be a taxing juggling act. In order to catch the nine AM Dublin-based practice sessions, Ruby has to catch a 5AM bus from Galway.
Asked how they balanced studying and gigging at the same time, the band laughs and concedes that, well, they didn't. “It was easy. We didn't study. We didn't go to class. If you just take out the lectures, you would be surprised how much time you make up.” Typical group chat discussions include brief negotiations on who has to miss what lecture to make this practice work, and whether or not class attendance is mandatory.
But beyond dodging lectures for their creative pursuits, the group also find that being part of a band is a fantastic way to detox from the hectics of college life. As Tom says; “It is also very beneficial in a sense to have something like the band that you can kind of, you know, it doesn't matter what's going on in college or whatever. You can come into a practice room and just completely forget about all of that, and just hang out with your mates for a few hours and do something that is completely unrelated to school with people who are not in your course. And it gives you a really nice creative outlet that allows you to just turn your brain off.”
Their dedication to the band as a creative outlet comes with another unexpected side effect - they drink much less than they would otherwise. They don’t drink during practice or while gigging. As a college student, it can sometimes feel difficult to socialise outside the context of drinking, “If you look around Dublin, it's hard to find non-drinking related activities for people,” says Fionn. “You can not drink, but you will be surrounded by people who are drinking. So it's nice to have a little thing that we do that is not booze-related.”
So why don’t the band drink while they’re playing? “You don’t drink on the job,” says Tom. Once the members became serious about pursuing a career in music, they realised they didn’t want anything to hinder their judgement. As Ruby sagely puts it, “We can play sloppily after a few drinks, sure. But where's the fun in that?”
“If I flub a note or if I do something wrong or I miss a cue or I mess up a song or whatever and I've been drinking,” says Fionn, “the first thing my brain goes to is, if I hadn't had a drink, I wonder would that have been a better show and have I not represented myself properly because of it . . . It's okay to have fun with this, but also take it seriously. We have a lot of fun with it, but we take it seriously until we're off the stage.”
Ruby adds, “It's cool to see the people who stumbled in, but also it was very nice to see people that I know from school and stuff all gathered in a field.” Tom jokes, “I'm like, you should be at CMAT right now!”
And the band do take their commitment seriously. They’ve recently played gigs across Ireland as well as in London, along with taking the stage at Electric Picnic. The band were surprised to see how many familiar faces were in the crowd at the festival, and also surprised to see how many people they didn’t recognise. Ruby adds, “It's cool to see the people who stumbled in, but also it was very nice to see people that I know from school and stuff all gathered in a field.” Tom jokes, “I'm like, you should be at CMAT right now!”
Even with the stressful aspects of playing at one of Ireland’s biggest festivals, the band took the time to appreciate how far they’ve come. Oliver recalls, “It was a stressful day for all of us, because there was a lot of comings and goings and getting into the festival and all this, but Ruby was like, ‘I just want to say, we're playing Electric Picnic, we did it. We've reached one of our really big goals.’ And again, it's hard to see, you can't see the forest through the trees.”
Playing an international gig was another major goal for the band this year, a dream which came to fruition in their London gig. “We played in London, and it wasn't even like a huge show or anything, it was supporting a band over there, but we definitely had a moment of like - we're proud of ourselves, we managed to pull this off,” says Tom. “It is nice to try and stop and smell the roses every now and then.”
The only people at the venue were about 50 people dressed like Where's Wally with party hats on
Although the band hugely enjoyed their London gig, it wasn’t without its share of mishaps, “We got there maybe around doors, because our flight had been delayed,” Tom recalls. “And the only people at the venue were about 50 people dressed like Where's Wally with party hats on,” Oliver laughs, “We asked them and they were like, it's an inside joke.”
“It was all really weird and in only a good way. It was so much fun,” says Fionn.
The group made a bit of a holiday out of the London date, with their significant others travelling along with them - all of them booked into the same hostel dorm. All the members seem incredibly thankful for their relationships, both romantic and the bonds formed between the band. “I think [our partners] are all in the one WAGs group chat,” Ruby says. “I suppose it's nice for us after a gig, if some or all of them come along and we just hang out. They're a great support network, helping us carry gear and stuff.”
The release of their latest EP, Teething, is a huge source of pride for the band.
“We've come up to Dublin and we don't really know anybody up here except each other. And as a result, we've kind of just become each other's support network and family,” says Oliver. “And then we have our girlfriends, and it just genuinely feels like a family going around. And you know, there's all these different dynamics, but everyone gets on really well. And we have so much fun.”
The release of their latest EP, Teething, is a huge source of pride for the band. “I was so happy,” says Oliver. “I think for the first [EP], we were kind of finding our footing, and with this one, we were like, ‘we're happy with these, these are good songs.’” They’re quick to credit the EP’s producer, Tristus Boyd, another local Galway musician.
“The fact that we've managed to get it out at all is an achievement,” Tom adds. “The second one came out, and to be honest with you, I think we weren't happy with aspects of it. But I think we really learned from that. So, I think these new songs are really good recorded, and they're really good live, which is more than we can say about our other records . . . Our current set at the moment is basically just the entirety of the new EP and, maybe one old song.”
Ruby on the other hand thinks their selling point is “girl drummer”, with Oliver agreeing “it is a marketable trade.”
“We give it socks,” Daragh states. The rest of the band are in agreement. “Even if we're playing to ten people in Workmans Cellar, we will try and give it everything we have, and we will try and, I don't know, just go mental,” says Tom. “I think our selling point is that we work really hard, both on stage and off stage, so we'll always give the best show that we can,” adds Fionn. Ruby on the other hand thinks their selling point is “girl drummer”, with Oliver agreeing “it is a marketable trade.”
And if you’re reading this thinking to yourself, well, I have to see this, you’re in luck - Bees and Sawdust have a few gigs lined up in the upcoming weeks. They’re playing in Belfast on October 3rd, as well as playing in the Grand Social on October 17th, and in the Roisin Dubh in Galway on the 24th. Find them on Instagram (@beesandsawdust) for the most up-to-date information - and see what all the buzz is about.