88 is a magic number

88 folded and waiting.

88 handmade covers specially for the fundit funders finally finished tonight. In the morning they’ll be double checked for flaws or disasters, then editioned and signed and I’ll start putting together the packages to be posted out to funders very soon. There’s a bunch of you who’ve not contacted me with an email address. You’ll be getting an email reminder, and you’ll be getting yours later than everyone else because I can’t post it to you if I don’t have an address to post it to. It would make me sad if the cd didn’t get to its home.

I have a paper cut – of course it was just with the last handful that I managed to get a bad paper cut on my index finger. Damnit. I’m having a glass of wine to celebrate.

I’ve a bunch of shows coming up this summer, but the first two confirmed so far are for two different fringe festivals here in Galway. (apparently we’ve gone from no Fringes to two! Excellent stuff.)

So, July 6th I’ll be playing on the bill with three other male solo performers for an event called “Solitary Men” for the Colours Fringe. I’m very tempted to learn Loudon Wainwright’s “One Man Guy” for that gig, as that would make me chuckle. That will be in the gorgeous upstairs venue in Kelly’s on Bridge St and so far I know that Willow Sea is headlining and Matteo is also performing. I’ve not found out who the last performer is, but I’ll be sure to edit this post when I do. Seems like it’ll be a diverse evening of music, and I’m really looking forward to it. There is a door charge of €3, and it is in a licensed venue, so it’s over 18’s unfortunately.

I’m doing a full solo show for the Galway Fringe on the 22nd at 3pm in Rouge restaurant. They have a grand piano there. I’m pretty darn excited about that fact. It’s also a nice afternoon show that’s open to all ages, and it’s free! They do have pretty delicious wine there too, just saying. It’s the day of the Macnas parade for the Galway Arts Festival, so you should really be in Galway that weekend to experience the height of the summer festival season here.

I’m looking at having some singers with me as well as some string players, and I’m open to people who want to come and play with me on a song or two at that performance. Just get in touch. I’m going to be asking some of my fellow string orchestra members as well as some of the singers I had for the launch. I quite like a crowdsourced bunch of talented folk making the musical experience even richer.

Off Beaten Path producions is the dance company set up by Genevieve Ryan and Katarzyna Voetter, and they’ll be doing three dance shows as part of the Fringe festival too. One of the two pieces they’ll be presenting will be the dance they’ve choreographed to my song Codail Sámh. I’m so excited to see this being performed live, as what I’ve seen of it in workshop form has been so beautiful. We’re looking at incorporating some live music into their show too, but I’ll fill you in on exactly what’s happening closer to the time.

There’s a few other live gigs being organised at the moment too, and as soon as details are confirmed I’ll update on all those plans. As ever, I’m completely open to doing a house concert anywhere there’s a piano or where one can be set up. So, if you’ve ever fancied having an evening of live music in your home for yourself and whoever else you like, then get in touch by email or on twitter, and ask me about it.

Glue, dancers, strings, and radio.

The week has been spent folding album covers whenever I’m not at work or away from the house. My desk is slowly becoming a graveyard of empty tubes of glue sticks. It’s quite sad really – perhaps I’ll make them into a little mini graveyard and use it for something or other. Which reminds me, I need to buy some more glue. The full funders’ edition is nearly done. When it is, I’ll be emailing those people who’ve still not sent in a postal address to get the CD sent to. If you’re not sure if you’ve sent me your address, you can always send it a second time just to be sure. But all things going to plan, the first lot will be getting posted quite soon.

I’ve been told the dancers are ready with their piece, which is quite exciting, and we’ve been talking about doing live performances of it somewhere too, but there’ll be more updates on that one when get to scheduling the video shoot. I’m really looking forward to seeing how this turns out, as it’s something completely new for me.

Coming up next for me though is an in-studio session with Flirt FM, and a concert with the string orchestra I play with too. The orchestra concert is free, so if you’re around Galway on Friday evening, drop into St. Mary’s school for a 7pm concert. It’s a very social event and the orchestra members are all bringing food, and doors open at 6pm for people looking for some pre-concert food, coffee, and chat. There’s some fierce baking competition amongst the orchestra members, so I’m confident that the food on offer will be as wonderful as the music. Although it’s something I do purely for leisure, I somehow have ended up with some little solo bits, though I’m a terrible violin player.

I’ll have more details about the in-studio session for Flirt FM after this Tuesday, but it should be available as a podcast or download after it airs, so I’ll update with a link to that as soon as it goes live. It’ll be just myself and piano in the studio, so it’ll be quite stripped down and intimate.

Behind the scenes: screenprinting the covers

The very lovely Grace Mitchell was in Lorg Fine Art Printmakers last Friday finishing off the screenprints for the handmade limited edition covers I’m sending out to the wonderful folk who funded my album. I tagged along, pretended to be helpful, but really just made coffee and shot some video footage and took some photos of the work in progress.

So, if you’ve ever been curious as to what a fine art print studio was like, here’s a little bit of a look inside the studio at Lorg. We were just screenprinting that day, but there was another artist in the studio doing some etching at the same time, which was interesting for me to watch as well, but I didn’t shoot any footage of that.

I’d done a little bit of screenprinting when I was studying art in secondary school myself, but this is on a whole other level by comparison, and was quite interesting to watch. I now have another batch of about 60 covers to assemble – which will take me a little while. But once they’re all made, editioned (numbered), and signed, they’ll be getting sent out. Nearly there at this stage. This is the home stretch of the CD making side of things.

The music I used in the video is bits of the piano instrumental “Bewerunge” that is up on my soundcloud too:

Checking out my music for the first time?

I put together a few tracks that are some of my own favourites, and give a good cross section of the different kinds of music I’ve explored so far. Some songs from my debut album Wires, (check out the web album liner notes version of that album too) and some of the instrumental piano work too.

I’m heading back into the print studio tomorrow with Grace, to finish screen printing the last batch of the funder’s edition of the album covers. Once that batch is printed and assembled, then I’ll be starting to post them out to the folk who helped fund the album recording last summer.

There’s a few more video recording shoots coming up in the next few weeks, all going to plan, and I can’t wait to see how those turn out. For these next two, I’m working closely with Galway based dancer Genevieve Ryan, who has been helping turn my ideas into actual video shoots. She’ll be dancing in one of the videos herself too. The next two songs that I hope to be shooting videos for are Phoenix and Codail Sámh, but I’ve been working on treatments for a few other songs off the record too, and hopefully will get around to shooting those videos this summer too. For one of those in particular, we might be looking to crowdsource some extras for the shoot, so keep an eye on this blog, and my twitter, facebook, or google+ page if you might be interested.

The videos are all being done with pretty much no budget, and just the time, energy and talent of people who want to come together to create something. It’s absolutely humbling that such talented people are giving their talent and time to these little projects of mine. I’m really looking forward to seeing how the next two videos turn out, but I’ll be doing updates about those shoots when they happen later this month.

Speaking of camera work, some bright-eyed fans of Ros Na Rún spotted that I had a tiny little part in an episode of the show last week. I’d almost forgotten about it myself, and missed it airing, but some people saw it, recognised me, and got in touch to tell me so. Sweet – thanks a million.