Tomorrow is my solo show as part of the Galway Fringe festival. There is an awful lot of brilliant events going on around Galway this week between the Fringe events and the Galway Arts Festival itself, but if you drop in to Rouge on Saturday afternoon you will be treated to some songs from my album, and some newer material. They have a lovely grand piano in the venue, which I’m looking forward to trying out.
The string players I’d been hoping to use have an event that clashes with my gig, which is a pity, but there will be some beautiful additional vocals from some of the singers who sang with me at the launch nights, including the very talented Deirbhile Ni Bhrolchain, who sings with Cois Claddaigh as well as being a sean nóssolo performer herself too.
My brother Kevin Brett will also be singing, and adding guitar to some of the songs. You’ll be able to catch the Athenry Guitar Orchestra he co-directs performing as part of the Fringe programme too in a lunchtime recital on Friday 27th in St. Nick’s. I’m interested to hear how well the string parts I had in mind will adapt for classical guitar instead, even if it’s just for a few of the songs.
The Galway Fringe festival had its inaugural programme launch last Friday, which I was very pleased to have been asked to perform at. The festival itself runs alongside the Galway Arts festival from the 12th to the 30th of July. I have a solo show in the Fringe programme, which has been moved to Saturday the 21st of July in Rouge at 3pm, instead of the 22nd as I’d previously posted. There’s a small discrepancy between the printed programme and the programme on the website at the moment, but that’ll be sorted pretty soon.
Unfortunately, the date change means some of the string players I’d hoped to use are no longer available, but I will work something out, and the show will go ahead as planned regardless. I’m quite looking forward to playing the grand piano in Rouge, to be honest. So often I’m playing my live gigs standing behind my trusty Roland stage piano, but this gig will be a lot different from my usual gigs as I get to really be much more expressive with a proper acoustic piano. I’m really looking forward to it. It’s free! Come along. [facebook event]
The wonderful Off Beaten Path dancers have their own show running for three days from the 25th of July also as part of the Fringe festival. They’re presenting two dance pieces, one of which uses my song Codail Sámh, and I will be doing some additional music as part of their show too, but the main focus are their two dance pieces. I’m quite excited to see their work, as I was lucky enough to sit in one some of their rehearsals, and it looks like it’ll be a really beautiful piece. Their other piece is using a track by The Chromatics, which will be a great contrast to the piece using my music. Definitely a show to try and catch, and their show is free too!
If you’re not going to be in Galway during July (honestly though, where else would you be but here for this month? Galway is amazing in July) then keep an eye out for other gigs around the country later in the year. If you don’t catch the dance show, we will be shooting a video of the dance piece itself, so you’ll be able to see their work in a slightly different format, but it will be even more thrilling to see in person.
Tune into RTE Radio 1 tomorrow from 7:30pm GMT, as I’ll be playing a song live in studio as part of the Arena arts & culture programme. You can stream it online from the website or you should be able to listen back to the show later as well if you miss it live.
I’m playing along with a few other performers who are going to be involved with the Trash Culture Revue diy festival in Cork the following weekend. I’m playing as part of the Mutant Cabaret night on Friday 25th.
So, tune into the radio/stream tomorrow evening, and if you’re in Cork, come along on Friday week to the Mutant Cabaret.
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:
This was the highlight of my summer. The Sunday morning of Electric Picnic, myself and three of the guys I was performing with as part of Werk at thisispopbaby headed off to get coffee and food. The Dublin Gospel Choir were on stage in the main arena, singing wonderful music. We sat and finished our food and coffee and enjoyed the music. Then they started a Stevie Wonder medley, which got us up to dance. During the course of the medley, myself and Tom started doing bits of one of the routines we were doing later that night, and the other two guys joined in.
Some girls came over to us after those songs and asked if they could dance along with us, as we “looked like a lot of craic”, and we’re never ones to refuse to dance. So we all started dancing together calling out simples moves to each other. Over the course of the next few songs, more and more people behind and beside us started to follow along too, and people came up from the crowd ahead of us to dance behind us too. People took photos, smiled, and watched. Some people we dragged up to join us too and at some point we looked around to see a crowd of people all following our moves behind us.
When the set finished, we held Tom (who was doing most of the leading dance-wise) up on our shoulders as the dancers behind us applauded us and the Gospel choir both. So many people came over to say thank you, and saying it was the best moment of the festival for them, but we were just happy to dance along to the fantastic music and thrilled when other people saw fit to follow what we were doing and dance along with us.
It was a beautiful afternoon. I’ve only discovered two youtube videos of it so far, but you’d never know, more might surface.
Firstly, a short one, where you can see myself, Chris and Tom in front, and Stephen in the red vest behind us.
Secondly, a video shot from the side, showing more of the people who were dancing along behind us.
edit: here’s a 3rd video, this time from the front, and you can clearly see myself and the other three guys who started it all:
edit again: here’s a 4th video, also from the front and a bit short too.
Thanks to everyone who came out and supported us at Electric Picnic yesterday. Great day and LOVED the flash mob! If you have any pix or videos send them on, we’d love to see them!!!
Flash Mob…. it’s not often that you get to watch a show from the stage but this made our day!! Think poor Kerry-Anne nearly forgot the words when she saw them!! It’s what the Picnic is all about!!! Thanks guys!
The whole weekend was fantastic, and the rain on Sunday/Monday didn’t marr it at all, just made things a little more challenging. I had another random beautiful moment where I was having some chips between catching UNKLE and Fever Ray, and sat down at one of the upright pianos in the wood sculpture areas near the electric arena. Of course it was delightfully out of tune and honky tonk, so I started playing some Ray Charles and Tom Waits covers on it, and ended up playing in the rain to a few people who were crossing the area to catch The National or Foals. But it was wet, and when my chips were gone, I headed off to catch Fever Ray instead, but it was rather lovely too. I’m sure those pianos suffered through a lot of “Chopsticks” and the like, so a bit of jazzier stuff was a nice respite I imagine.
