Tag: covers

annika hammer

Annika Hammer

This is my dear friend Annika Hammer, (Nika), who I was in university with many years back. We don’t see each other very often, but when we do, we invariably end up at a piano at some point. She’s one of the few people I’ll fire off demos of new songs to and be comfortable knowing that I’ll get really constructive feedback from her, and her musical sense is one that I trust.

Although we studied classical piano together, she was very much steeped in Swedish folk music, and has been in a few different Swedish folk groups since, as well as maintaining her classical and solo pop stuff too.

Before Christmas, she uploaded some demos of her own songs and some gorgeous cover versions, which I’ve been completely addicted to ever since. I’d heard her doing a cover of “Love Will Tear Us Apart” the last time she visited me here in Ireland, and I absolutely adored her take on the song, so I was glad to see that she’d posted that on Soundcloud too:

However, perhaps my favourite of the covers is a Swedish song that I didn’t know of before hearing her sing it, but it seems to be quite well known. “Utan dina andetag” written by Joakim Berg, from the band Kent, and seems to have been a B-side, according to what wikipedia tells me. Another Swedish singer Carolina Wallin Pérez did a lovely stripped back version of it in 2010.

But, I’m a complete sucker for Annika’s voice and her piano playing, and I’m loving her version of this song. Even if you don’t understand a word of Swedish, the melody of this song is undeniably gorgeous. Beautifully written.

This one is her own, and she’d previously sent me this and another track to lend an ear to, and this one was my instant favourite and still is:

You can hear more from Annika over on her own Soundcloud page where you’ll find two more original songs, and some gorgeous Swedish folk songs too.
Over on her MySpace page she still has a cover of Joni Mitchell’s “Conversation” up, which was recorded on the piano downstairs here, and she also has a recording of her classical side, playing a Mozart piano sonata. (There’s nothing this woman cannot do.)

The Swedish trad band she is in also, Sheik, are on Soundcloud too (I recommend their youtube too, as the band are all beautiful.) And her gorgeous piano & flute folk duo, JONI are only on Myspace from what I can see, but trust me, you want to hear those tunes. Just flute and piano, and gorgeous.

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.

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:

Updates galore.

It’s been a while since I updated the blog, but I’ve been working away at things – firstly moving webhost and all that entails, which always will make me nervy. I get the fear of messing it all up and losing everything and ending up with two hosting plans that are both charging me… But never fear, I managed it much easier than expected.

Little things that are noticable changes – at the moment I’m using some random wordpress template still but that’s grand. I’m hoping to change around the look of the site a lot now that I’ve got more time on my hands again. Secondly, this hosting service lets me use subdomain pointers, which my previous one didn’t, so now http://music.misterebby.com/ will bring you straight to my bandcamp store. It’s the little things like this that make me happy. Next, I’m gonna set about making the site look a lot prettier and add all the content about the album that I’ve had written up for ages and not had anywhere to put yet.

The youth theatre musical I’d been working as the Musical Director of went on stage last week, which saw me hiding away in the theatre for a week with long day sitting in the orchestra pit playing an awful lot of piano. It was wonderful. Besides, the teenagers were doing Guys & Dolls, which is just so much fun to play.

The day after the show wrapped, I was off to the little hamlet of Ballymoe, Co. Galway to meet up with folk from Golden Plec for their Tea And Toast charity drive across the country. I played a version of my song “Wet Feet” on ukulele for them before they whizzed off to catch the next band on their trail. It was a lot of fun though, and completely worth it for the look on the face of the young girl working in the shop in Ballymoe when she found out that something was making a stop in Ballymoe. Pure shocked that I’d be across the road playing a song that would go up online. There’ll be an accompanying radio show on the 2xm show Fourcast, and I’ll post the podcast link for that when it’s available.

I’m playing a small set here in Galway on Thursday in Kelly’s bar as part of the Noisy Plug sessions, so if you’re knocking around Galway this week, do drop in – it’s free, and there’s a great line up of four different acts on the night: here’s the facebook event for it.


Things have been slow getting the limited edition, hand printed versions of the album out to funders, which is something that has been a bit frustrating all round, but unavoidable unfortunately. However, I did get sent this photo earlier today, along with a message that the prints are almost ready. Which is pretty wonderful:

To top it all off, someone did a cover of one of my songs, and is planning on doing another. It really made me smile yesterday when I was linked to it, as I’ve never heard anyone covering one of my songs before. He had quite a different vocal style, and does his own take on the song, but it makes me happy to know that one of my songs made enough of an impact on someone that they wanted to do a cover of it. So, here’s Jack Mason-Goodall’s version of my song “I Wish You Were Here”, which he has posted on his Soundcloud:

And finally, the two dancers who have been working on a piece to one of my songs got in touch to say they’re nearly ready to show it to me before the film it. I can’t express how excited I am by this. To have someone to use some of my music as the canvas for their own creative work and create a piece in response to the music I’ve recorded is thrilling. Hopefully next we’ll be making a video of the dance piece accompanied by my music as the next step in this collaboration.

It’s a slow process

Later today I’m heading in to watch Grace set up the screen to go and print the handmade covers for the CDs finally. We were waiting for a new screen bed to be installed in the studio, which was yet another unexpected delay that you just can’t plan for I guess. Hopefully Sunday will see us folding endless covers and sticking them into envelopes to finally start posting the limited edition ones off to the wonderful funders. There are still quite a few of those funders who’ve not emailed me in their addresses, but I’ll be going through those one by one and emailing them individually to remind them after I’ve sent out the cds to everyone who has already sent in their addresses.

In the interim I’ve been busying myself with meeting people who are interested in helping put together some videos for my songs. This Sunday just past I met up with two wonderful contemporary dancers who want to work on a piece using one of my songs, so I’m really excited to see how that develops. Hopefully we’ll be filming the dance piece and making it available for people to watch online. But even to have other creative artists collaborating with me and wanting to use my music for their own art is reward enough for me to be honest.

There’s another video piece being worked out at the moment too – I’ve had some ideas for videos for some of the songs, and I’ve been looking for people who are interested in getting involved to help make them happen, and it seems that one of those ideas might come to fruition. Meeting someone tomorrow who might be the very person to perform on the video, I just need to make some more contacts with filmmakers here in the west who are interested in getting involved in low/no-budget video projects using my music. But at the moment, there’s four different video ideas being actively worked on, and at various different stages so far.

Aside from all that, I’ve been continuing to teach myself how to play things on the ukulele – which I picked up a few years ago as an instrument that I don’t have to play for work, or play well, but that I can just noodle with idly at home while waiting for something to load on the computer, for example. Ukulele and knitting were my two de-stressers when I had major computer problems last year. I really enjoy the lightness of the texture from the ukulele – in many ways it’s the complete opposite to piano for me. It’s something I don’t play well, and has this light fragile sound sometimes, but that’s possibly just how I play it.

But, last night I recorded a quick one-take cover of a Fiona Apple song on ukulele just for fun. I’ve had the song running around my head for weeks now, so I figured the best way to deal with it was to learn it somehow and try sing it. Her music has really singable melodies, and they’re such a pleasure to sing too between some of the wordplay and the range that she sings in. Her albums are some of my favourites to stick on a sing along to at the top of my voice while baking, for example.

But here’s that cover if you’re interested in hearing it. I posted it last night on twitter, tumblr and facebook, so you’ve possibly already heard it, but I don’t trust myself to write a blogpost when I’m tired anymore, and this thing was recorded at about half ten last night:

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