INTERVIEW: Johnny B on new 2 Johnnies album Small Town Heroes - 'It's 100 per cent Tipp'

It can seem sometimes that the 2 Johnnies have wholesale taken over the Irish entertainment landscape. The duo have dominated Irish screens and radios in recent times, from their self-titled podcast to their wildly-popular 'Drive It' 2FM radio show, from their live shows to their TV appearances, Irish eyes and ears haven't had a chance to miss the Tipperary pair.

The lads, Johnny 'B' O'Brien and Johnny 'Smacks' McMahon, are seemingly on top of the world. How do they keep up with it all? According to Johnny B, one half of the entertainment juggernaut, the duo wouldn't have it any other way.

"We’re busy, but we’re enjoying it," he revealed in a phone call on Thursday, ahead of a television appearance, the penultimate 'Drive It' show and a live performance in Cork that evening to promote the duo's new album 'Small Town Heroes'.

"There’s never a morning where we wake up and we’re not grateful to be working in the creative space that we do, trying to have fun and acting the maggots for a living, it’s brilliant!"

The Tipperary duo, through their immensely busy work schedule, have become household names nationwide. Through it all, the two performers have never forgotten their home roots.

"We do sometimes feel like we represent Tipp a bit when we go places," said Johnny B. "There’s always people from Tipperary whenever we go abroad, they always reach out and we try to meet them."

In a nod to their connection to Cahir, the 2 Johnnies' new album 'Small Town Heroes' is dedicated to those they grew up with in Tipperary.

"We were delighted to be able to make a 100% Tipperary album," Johnny B proudly revealed. "The whole album is recorded in Tipperary, a lot of it in our own studio in Cahir."

"The album is dedicated to the people of Cahir really. They’ve been so good to us. The album is kind of a concept of life in a small town, going through different stages of life. There’s songs about going to an Irish college, going to your first match, there’s a song about finishing school, there’s funny and sad songs. All of it is very much inspired by life in Cahir anyway."

Johnny B also revealed that they managed to get the popular Shamrock Lounge onto the album cover, as it has gotten regular mentions in the duo's podcast.

"Shamrock Lounge is on the cover, there’s a fox on it to represent Pat Fox, there’s a badger, bales of straw, so it’s good representation of us and of Tipp on the artwork!" Johnny B explained. "The artist who drew me and Johnny Smacks on the cover is from Carrick-on-Suir, he’s brilliant. I’m really happy with it, I think it’s going to look great.

"I’ll have one copy to play, and another copy mounted on the wall, up there with the child of Prague! Or on the mantelpiece with my credit union quiz plaque and under-10 Irish dancing award," he laughed.

"I have to add that they’re the loveliest people in the Shamrock Lounge, and you get a great dinner there seven days a week, have to give them the plug!"

Fans across Ireland have been eagerly awaiting their trips to local record stores, as the 2 Johnnies have planned a long list of meet and greets across the country.

Having already performed in Cork thanks to record store Music Zone, the two comedic musicians will be heading to three Golden Discs branches in Dublin, Waterford and Newbridge, as well as Zhivago record store in Galway. The pair will also be performing in Limerick thanks to the Steamboat record store.

Johnny B hasn't got tired of meeting the fans yet, and said that himself and Smacks never will.

"It’s some craic heading around the country. It’s amazing, with the podcast and radio, you’re chatting with people all day, people are listening to you in the best of times and the worst of times. We get such lovely messages from people about how we cheered them up. And then people are excited to see us, they bring gifts to be signed, they make such an effort."

"The listeners also spend their hard-earned money to come to our gigs and buy our music, it would blow you away! I do be floored by the effort people go to. Some of the shows are the whole band, and some will just be me and Johnny acting the maggot!"

The pair recently made headlines with their surprise decision to leave RTÉ airwaves, as they sit atop the throne of the highest listenership on 2FM. As Johnny B explained, the 2 Johnnies were just too busy to continue to balance it alongside their music and podcast. 

"The lighter workloads may make it a little easier to leave tomorrow. We’ll be sad to finish the show because we absolutely love working with our team, they’re brilliant," Johnny B revealed.

"We even had a good Tipp man on our team, Andrew de Poar, he’s from Carrick-on-Suir. We found him in RTÉ and said “we need to work with him”.

"We’ve loved the listeners, people have been so good ringing in and telling their stories. But as well as it being sad, it’s also definitely the right move, we’ll have more time to put into the podcast and more time to prepare for our live shows, and they’ll all get better as a result."

Clarifying the decision to leave, Johnny B added that "we are very ambitious and we wanted to drive on the radio show, and I don’t think 2FM shared the same ambition as us. It’s hard to keep everything going, so we said we’d put our energy into our own universe."

For over a year in their late-afternoon RTÉ 2FM slot, Johnny B and Johnny Smacks have provided comedy, raucous observations and random references, all filtered through the prism of two Tipperary natives for whom there’s no such thing as too much craic. A welcome difference from what many listeners describe as a Dublin-focused radio station.

"When we started, the weekday lineup was Doireann Garrihy, Jennifer Zamparelli, then Tracy Clifford, then us, Tara Kumar, and then Jenny Greene. All presenters from Dublin, and then there was us in the middle. So I suppose that we were something that was a bit different," O'Brien admitted.

With time to focus on live shows, Johnny B is excited for fans to welcome the new songs from their album. 

"The album, people are coming out in their droves so far, we’re hopefully on track to go to number 1 in the charts which would be amazing. I don’t know when the last time an Irish artist, or rather a Tipperary artist got the number one spot!" he joked.

"We’ve gotten a great reaction to our new songs, we’ve seen lots of TikToks of people using our sound. That’s the way it’s gone nowadays, you know. We make a big effort on the music videos aswell, so we’d be roping in everybody we know to be in them. We have great friends and great support around the town of Cahir, people are always willing to lend a hand or make a cameo in a video."

Explaining the process of working on the new album, Johnny B spoke of a lot of "late nights, early mornings and weekends".

"We just horsed into it. A lot of the album was produced in January. A lot of the band are friends of ours, some of them used to be in a wedding band with me. We used to play around Tipperary, in spots in Clonmel, and them boys were with me in the cover band. So we know each other really well, it was quick work recording the album.

A new album, upcoming concerts across three countries and a top-rated podcast to keep up? It's a far cry from the duo's humble beginnings.

"The first thing we did together was presenting Cahir GAA 'Strictly Come Dancing', and working funny songs into our act was something we loved doing right from the start," said Johnny B.

"We didn't quite know what we were gonna be, we didn’t have a manager at the time, and everyone said it would be hard to do music and be comedians at the same time. Our reply was always “we know”! We’ve been walking that line ever since, and this year we're finally taking the plunge. It's exciting!"

Discussing his busy schedule, Johnny said that the pair are eagerly awaiting their now-iconic show in Dublin in June, 'Pints in a Field'. Previously described by Johnny Smacks as "if the christening and the ploughing had sex, mixed with a bit of rag week", Johnny B said the stellar line-up is keeping him excited for the big day.

"I'm so excited to see Five, when their songs comes on, whether it’s in O’Keefes in Clonmel or Coppers in Dublin it’s always great craic. Craig David delivers everywhere he plays too, looking forward to seeing him again."

Leaving one of Ireland's most popular radio stations would surely stall the career momentum of most musicians or comedians, but that doesn't seem to be the case for the 2 Johnnies, whose fans eagerly await the 14 new songs on their album.

"Hopefully this year and next year, people will know the new songs soon. There’s no better feeling than some song that you wrote in your kitchen in your shorts on a Sunday morning taking off. You’re in the tent at Electric Picnic, or at Pints in a Field, and everyone is singing along, it’s an unbelievable feeling."

Pining for home, Johnny B promised to fit Tipperary fans in as soon as possible.

"Me and Smacks were saying that we have to organise a meet up and show in Tipperary as well, that’s the next job!"