Tag: dublin

Dublin calling

I’m in Dublin at the moment, working as a score reader for a small production for the next two weeks. It’ll give me a much needed break from Galway and some time to work on moving to Dublin properly.

I met up with Morgan of Cuckoo Savante (check that band out – they’re awesome) and was chatting about our lives and work. Just catching up really, but he was excited by how many songs I’ve got at the moment. Which made me stop to think how few I’ve demo’d and how badly I’ve done those. I need to stop spending time alone with the songs and start performing them and sharing them with other people so they don’t start to suffocate in my bag.

I’m going through my lyrics at the moment, adding in the edits I’ve made on the fly as I practise and work out the songs. I like a few of them, but I blow hot and cold about my own work quite frequently. I guess I need to let other people judge the work and not be so critical of myself.

Collaborating #1: Anna Lee

I had a visitor for a few days: Anna Lee, who I used to play piano with is back in Ireland for a few weeks, and spent some time here in Galway. Had a little mini session playing songs for each other in Java’s Café, where there’s a beautiful grand piano upstairs. But we’ve not yet managed to get around to having a good music session together.

I spent about two years in total playing with her, gigging around Ireland and a little bit around the UK too, before she headed off to Spain. I’ve known her since university, and we both used to play the singer-songwriter night in uni. She’s got a fantastic voice, and has released one EP so far, but I’m hoping she’ll release a full album. Here’s one of the tracks from that EP:

The video was shot and edited really badly by myself, and I helped her put together the EP for release, including working on the cover design and getting it available for sale. It was definitely a learning experience for me.

We had some great gigs playing together as “Husband | Wife” and just with me accompanying her as a session pianist. We shared a house together for about a year, and would practice and mess around with music at home. Here’s a cover of Portishead’s “Glory Box” that was recorded in our living room one afternoon back in 2006. Just ignore us messing around at the start ;) Read More

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