Category: Updates

The Bliss Returns – live at Charlie Byrne’s

This is a video that was shot before I even found the studio that I ended up recording the album in. The morning of this shoot the camera assist, Yvonne Ryan, mentioned Charthouse Studios to me, and gave me the contact info of Ian McNulty, who ended up engineering and mixing the record. The band Yvonne is in, Ambience Affair, had recorded at that studio, and she knew that they had recently put a piano in.

The video was shot by Mark Willis of Bluestack Records, who also very kindly did my promo video for my fundit campaign, and my brother Phil Brett was taking care of the sound. The video was intended for a larger project the two guys had in mind, but I’m told there’s been problems with the external hard drive Mark had stored the footage on. I hope they didn’t lose all that work. Hard drive failures are annoying as hell, as I recently was reminded myself.

However, this one long shot take survives, and the guys put it together for me, for which I’m very grateful.

This song is on the album, in a more fleshed out version with drums, bass and cello, but in this video it’s just me and a piano in Charlie Byrne’s Bookshop in Galway.

Album launch nights in Galway and Dublin

I’ve organised two little intimate gigs to launch the album – one here in Galway, which seems only apt, and one in Dublin too. I hope most of the people who helped fund the record over on Fund:it can make it to one of those two nights, and celebrate the end product of a lot of hard work, grit, determination and enjoyment. I’m really so pleased to have been able to do this record and it really has been worth it. I quite like the album itself, and I’m very proud of it. I can only hope at this stage that other people listen to it and that some of those people will like it enough to listen to it some more.

The Galway date is November 30th, upstairs in the Róisín Dubh, and the following day is the date in Dublin on Dec 1st in the Loft space in the Twisted Pepper – which is also home to Elastic Witch record shop, which is one of the retailers here that will be stocking the record. The wonderful Wing Nut record store in the Bell, Book & Candle bookshop will also be stocking it, and I’ll update if any more stores do stock it.

But you will be able to buy it directly from this site too, through my bandcamp page, when the album goes live online. Bandcamp is also the best place to buy the album as a digital download, as quite frankly, more of the money goes to me that way instead of to other middlemen. But the album will be sent to iTunes music store and other digital retailers, which I will post links to when the album is live on those stores.

Post-Jazz Festival review.

I had an absolute blast of a time at the Cork Jazz Festival. Definitely a weekend to spend in Cork – there was so much music everywhere. From buskers on the street, to free gigs in venues around town, to the ticketed gigs each day too. I spent the day times wandering the streets enjoying the food stalls and listening to some great jazz bands playing for free in the outdoor stage set up beside the Opera House. Found some great places for coffee, but none better than Cork Coffee Roasters, which also boasted the hottest barista I saw all weekend too as a special bonus.

Méadhbh was working every day over the weekend, which was a pity, but we got to hang out in the evenings instead. She was singing with me at the gig in the Legends Suite of the Festival club, and we got to the venue early to grab some food and a glass of wine before soundchecking. I don’t think I’ve met nicer people than the folk we had to deal with that evening – everyone from the Guinness contact to the sound guy to the waitress. Despite the fact that it was right in the middle of a weekend of long working days for them, everyone was warm, welcoming, friendly and professional. It made me feel completely relaxed and at ease before the gig.

The piano they had in the venue was a gorgeous Yamaha grand piano – between that and the Yamaha I recorded the album on in the studio, I think my opinion of Yamaha pianos has been completely changed this year. Gorgeous sound from both the upright and the grand piano, and those bass notes on the grand were an absolute thrill.

This is the only photo I have of the gig – which was taken just before we went soundchecking. I think Méadhbh has a few more though. But at least you can see the most important thing – how beautiful that piano looks:

This was our set list:

  • The Bliss Returns
  • Codail Sámh
  • Keep Me Here (new song. not on the album)
  • Romance
  • Phoenix
  • Comfort Of The Keys (non-album track)
  • The Score (Sarah Slean cover sharing lead vocals with Méadhbh)
  • Galway Rain
  • Strive (new song. Not on the album)
  • Glory Box / Wannabe (Portishead / Spice Girls cover. Méadhbh on lead vocals)
  • Helen

It was originally this:

I had a few others lined up that I skipped on the night, as we had just about an hour of a set, and I wanted to try out some of the newer songs as well as singing stuff off the record. “Wet Feet”, “Rerun” and non-album track “House On My Back Door” were all on the list too but got kicked off for time.

I’m back in Galway now, and back working on the last little things I need to sort to get a physical Cd into my hands, and then into your hands, and I’ll let you know how you can do that in a later update, but it will be available in some of the wonderful new indie record shops that have been popping up around the country.

Mastering, gigging and a free download

Mastering is an interesting art. I was able to attend the mastering session for my record at Wav Mastering in Limerick, and experienced the recordings gaining more definition and going from being a bunch of tracks that I’d recorded to being an album that made sense to listen to. I find it hard to explain exactly what it’s like without resorting to a bread analogy – so imagine you’ve made 12 loaves but baked them just as a round of dough on a tray. Now, imagine all those 12 loaves were baked in the same loaf tin instead. They still will taste the same, but they’ll look more uniform as a result. I guess that’s how I see mastering. I don’t know if that even makes sense – but it works in my head and I hope in yours too.

I was due to play at Song Cycle in Whelan’s last monday, as a sort of prep for myself to road-test some of the really new songs I’ve never played to an audience before. However, the mental floods in Dublin that evening meant that the evening didn’t go ahead at all, so apologies to anyone who may have braved the weather to make it in.

I wanted to play those songs live before playing them at the Jazz Festival gig tomorrow, but alas, they’ll just get their first outing at that gig instead. So, if you’re around Cork for the weekend, drop into the Festival Club on Sunday evening, and I’m playing in the Legends Suite.

I’d been hoping to have the record ready and out there before the Jazz gig, but various things always seem to crop up to add to the delay. But that’s really helped and added to the whole learning process. These last 6 months have been one big learning curve for me, and comparing the demos I was doing at home before going into the studio with the finished album I have now is mindblowing to me at times. But I wanted to be able to start sharing some of it with people, so here’s a track called “Helen” which you can listen to and download for free via Bandcamp. I hope you enjoy it, and spread it around. The full album will be available in November, all things going to my now re-adjusted plan:

A little piano track, mastering and some gigs.

fund:it, the crowdfunding service I used to raise cash for my album recording has been going now for over 6 months, and they’ve released a video about what was achieved over their first 6 months. They asked me if I had any music that they might be able to use for the video, and as it happens I had recorded one of my piano instrumental pieces on the last day of the piano & vocal tracking in the studio recording sessions. I’d an hour or two to spare and ended up knocking out a live version of “I Wish You Were Here” as well as the piano instrumental piece.

The song has ended up on the tracklisting for the album, and the instrumental is planned as a bonus track for the digital version of the record going out to those people who funded my project. But, now you can hear an edit of that track used in the video about Fund:it’s first 6 months, which they have entered into the “Better Together” competition in the hope of winning some money towards helping to develop and improve the service they provide. Please click on the link and consider voting for their entry, which will help enable other creative projects happen through the use of crowdfunding.

Here’s the video:

I’m heading off to get the record mastered later this week, having gotten to the point where I have final mixes that I’m happy with, and a record that I’m quite proud of. The artwork is still being developed with print artist Grace Mitchell, and I’m excited to see the work she has been doing all coming together to result in the final packaging for the record. We are planning to hand print and make the packaging for a limited number of the records, and everyone who bought the cd through fund:it will be getting one of those copies. I’m looking forward to having a finished product and I really hope that people who hear the record like it as much as I do.

Later this month, I also have a little gig on the 24th at the “Song Cycle” showcase night Upstairs in Whelan’s in Dublin, and the Cork Jazz Festival on the 30th. So, if you are knocking around either city around those days, drop in and you’ll get to hear some of the songs from the record before it is out, as well as some of the material I’ve held over for the next one, and newer songs I’ve been writing more recently.

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