Episode 60
Patrick Freyne on NPB and El Diablo
“Sadder Day Blues” (7” Single, 2001, Catchy Go Go Records). Photograph by Paul McDermott.
On this episode I’m joined by journalist and author Patrick Freyne for a deep dive into NPB and El Diablo, his two late 90s early 00s Dublin bands. NPB were a garage rock band and El Diablo were an alt-country band. Freyne's debut novel, Experts in a Dying Field has just been published. It tells the story of Dublin band The Heathens, the self-described 1000th best band of all time. Their tour van crashes and one of their members dies. It’s a witty novel about friendship, memory, grief and of losing your 20s in the back of van with your buddies. It’s inspired by the Dublin music scene of the early 00s and it describes a time before the Celtic Tiger, gentrification, IT hubs and out of control rents changed Dublin for ever.
“Feeding Frenzy” (CD Promo - 1999), The Sociables Prefer Pop Music (CD Album - 2000), “Sadder Day Blues” (CD Single, 2001) and “Plastic Love” feat. Angeline Morrison (7” Single - 2001). All released on Catchy Go Go Records.
NPB, or as they were originally named, National Prayer Breakfast, were a scuzzy, garage rock n’ roll band.
Reviewing the band’s second album, 2001’s THIS IS MY HAPPENING AND IT XXXXX ME UP, Kerrang! magazine wrote, “NPB deal in intimate, low-key reflections on love, loss and the lust for revenge, and there are traces of skewed rock eccentrics like Frank Black and Steve Earle in their droll, lo-fi musings.”
THIS IS MY HAPPENING AND IT XXXXX ME UP (CD ALbum, 2001, Catchy Go Go Records). Photograph by Paul McDermott.
If NPB were primitive rock band, El Diablo were a sophisticated alternative country band in awe of Gram and Emmylou, The Byrds and the Flying Burritos. Their album, 23rd Psalm Café was described by The Irish Independent as “the finest Irish debut of 2001”.
The common denominator between the two bands was Patrick Freyne.
23rd Psalm Cafe (CD Album, 2001) and “The Wandering One” (CD Single, 2001). Both on released on Catchy Go Go Records. Photograph by Paul McDermott.
Alongside Freyne in NPB were Darragh Keogh and Paul Clancy and his bandmates in El Diablo were Anna Carey and Pól Ó Conghaile and they were later joined by Kevin Connolly and Bryan O’Connell.
By the mid 00s both bands had petered out and the various members went off and got real jobs. The members of El Diablo all ended up becoming fulltime writers. Or as Freyne describes it spending, “most his 20s trying to be a rock star before turning to the much more stable and secure world of journalism.” Freyne and Carey also married.
Ó Conghaile is a travel writer with the Irish Independent, Freyne is a features writer with The Irish Times and Carey is an author whose latest novel Love Scene (2026, Hachette Books Ireland), was published in May.
Back in 2014 Freyne revisited those band years when he wrote an essay for The Irish Times titled, “How to make music and influence nobody”. It describes how he lost his 20s to a band and contains this lovely paragraph:
“Being on tour with your friends is like running away with the circus. And, like running away with the circus, I thoroughly recommend it. We played to five people in Cardiff, three in Manchester and a full house in Dublin Castle, a pub in Camden. We watched the sun set over cornfields from a trailer in Oxford. In a moonlit bay in Cornwall we swam in a phosphorescent sea. We sang karaoke with a Roy Orbison lookalike in Penryn. We marvelled at Britain's many motorway service stations. In Camden, Daragh and Paul spent the tour budget on designer trousers that looked like chaps. “They go with the cowboy hat,” Paul explained. Back home I ordered an impractical tailor-made white suit. Several sweaty gigs later it could walk from car to venue by itself.”
That essay also detailed how Paul Clancy, Freyne’s NPB bandmate died suddenly in 2010, a sudden cardiac death.
Clancy - Road To The Heart (CD Album, 2010, Catchy Go Go Records). Photograph by Paul McDermott.
Freyne’s essay about his former bandmate and their band NPB was included in his first book, Ok Let’s Do Your Stupid Idea (2020, Sandycove/Penguin Random House).
His debut novel, Experts in a Dying Field (2026, Sandycove/Penguin Random House), has just been published. It tells the story of Dublin band The Heathens, the self-described 1000th best band of all time. Their tour van crashes and one of their members dies. It’s a witty novel about friendship, memory, grief and of losing your 20s in the back of van with your buddies. It’s inspired by the Dublin music scene of the early 00s and it describes a time before the Celtic Tiger, gentrification, IT hubs and out of control rents changed Dublin for ever. If you’ve enjoyed any of the previous 59 episodes, and indeed the 10 bonus episodes of this podcast, I think you’ll love Freyne’s novel too.
We talk about all this and much more.