Ham Sandwich to light up The Lantern

Hotly tipped and toasted, the Kells-based band Ham Sandwich have been compared to the Pixies and American indie darlings Joyzipper, thanks to the compelling guy-girl vocals. Ham Sandwich is made up of John Moore, from Kells, Podge McNamee and Ollie Murphy, also from Kells, Niamh Farrell from Glasgow and Dublin, and Darcy, from Navan. Moore first met Scottish Farrell when they were both working on the information booths for the St Patrick"s Festival in Dublin. He knew Darcy from their days at St Patrick"s Classical School in Navan, and had been in a band with him before, The Association for the Mangles Operators. Ollie Murphy he met at Navan Fire Station one day after Murphy welded his thumb ring to a fire engine when working on it, and McNamee he knew since childhood. Ham Sandwich, founded in 2003, originally had Martin Gallagher and Trigger in the line-up. Recording a demo album began in December of that year. Their work is styled by U2 and Smashing Pumpkins influences. A friend of Moore"s, Dermot Lambert from Blink, got them a gig in Isaac Butts and this led to one in Voodoo. The band has been compared to the Pixies and American indie darlings Joyzipper, thanks to the compelling guy-girl vocals. On the strength of their demo, Sad Songs, they"ve toured with My Morning Jacket, Whitesnake, Joyzipper and others, declined a very lucrative deal to have a song used in world-wide ad campaign for a leading MP3 manufacturer and had Bono urge them to change their name. They have endured a certain amount of slagging about their choice of name. Niamh Farrell explained the thinking: 'We called ourselves Ham Sandwich, not because we like sandwiches or because of the sexual innuendo or to get away from the ubiquitous-prefix-followed-by-esoteric-noun formula that most bands follow but because we couldn"t give a f... what our gang is called, the stupider the better. It"s a bit of a blessing I guess, no-one ever forgets the name and it makes us work harder. It is always going to be next to impossible to market a band called Ham Sandwich because the name"s not cool, sexy or arty which means we"ve got to produce really good pop songs, play really good live and kick our own arses to get any success. 'Then it"s funny when we"re reading things about us or being played on the radio cause we know that the DJ or reviewer saw the name probably laughed expecting a novelty record, played it, liked it and gave us a good review or aired our record. Ham Sandwich play in The Backroom Sessions at The Lantern, Navan, on Friday 26th September. Doors - 9pm, Over 18s event. Supporting acts are Vesta Varro and Ruairi Coogan. All tickets are €12 and on sale from E2 Music, Navan.