Deep End by Don't Worry

Deep End was the first song Sam and I wrote together for what became Don’t Worry.

Nearly 7 years ago we had both recently started university and were living in different parts of London. We’d visit each other regularly and work on music. This song was recorded around that time in my small bedroom in New Cross using a microphone I’d borrowed from my friend Joe. We did vocals in the “en suite” which was more like a cubicle with a hole in the middle of the floor. My 3rd floor room was next to a London Overground line, if you listen carefully you can hear a train passing my window on the recording - this sound would wake me up every single morning at 5am.

Naturally, the song is about moving on from one stage of your life onto something totally new, and all the uncertainties that come with that - “Don’t be scared of swimming in the deep end, every now and then.” Although those times feel like a lifetime ago, the sentiment and lyrics on Deep End have felt relevant at various points since.

Back then we didn’t have a band. But we wanted people to hear what we’d been working on, so we uploaded the track to my personal SoundCloud page. A few days later it was noticed by Rough Trade New York, who wanted to include it on a LoFi compilation they were planning. We knew we didn’t want to release the song under just our own names. “Don’t Worry” was the best of all the terrible names we could think of at the time, and so the band was born. In the end, Rough Trade cut the funding for the compilation, and our dreams of being the next Pete and Carl were put back on ice (they still are on ice). But the people curating the comp made their own imprint 80N7 and released it anyway, this was available on cassette and Bandcamp only. When we first put an actual band together we’d play a version of Deep End in our live set, but eventually it faded away.

Many moons later, during the 2020 pandemic, our label Specialist Subject asked us to contribute a rare track to a compilation that was only to be available for 24 hours called “Furlough Your Dreams”, and so we dug out this song again. Despite it being on 2 different compilations over the years, we realised that maybe Deep End has never been as available as it could have been. So we thought why not release it as a single?

The photo of Sam and me was taken by our friend Heather in the silent disco tent at Reading festival in 2012, and the collage is made from various bits and pieces we’ve accumulated since then. If you’re a day 1 follower or you bought that 24 hour compilation recently, you may have already heard this song. But if not, you probably haven’t. We hope you like it!

- Ronan

Tracklist

1.	Deep End	4:47

Credits

released September 8, 2020

Music and Lyrics by Ronan Van Kehoe and Samuel J. Watson.
Recorded and mixed in Ronan's university bedroom, New Cross, London by Ronan and Sam.
Mastered by Pete Maher.

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