Rouge. 3pm. July 21st.

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 nós solo 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.

I’ve a bunch of gigs in July

mister ebby performing at the programme launch of the 1st Galway Fringe

I’ve a few shows coming up here in Galway in the next month if you find yourself in this part of the world.

If you’re here for the Volvo Ocean race, I’m playing a gig on the 6th of July in the live venue upstairs in Kelly’s with some other acts, as a part of the Colours festival which is running at the same time as the Ocean Race festival. I’m looking forward to sharing a stage with Willow Sea, Matteo Priante, and Michael O’Connor.

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.

Willow Sea

Matteo

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.

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.

Today my album went live on iTunes

I’m not gonna lie – that brought a big smile to my face. It’s about €1 more expensive than it is to buy it direct from Bandcamp, but iPhone users can download it direct to their phones through the iTunes store, if that’s something that you wanna do, whereas with Bandcamp, you do really need to be at your computer, and not on your phone, to download it.

If you are enjoying the record, and use iTunes, then please consider rating the album and writing a little review that people can read on the iTunes store page. That would make me very happy indeed.

There are delays with the physical CD, and it’s looking more and more like it won’t be ready for the actual launch days. But sure, I’ll still play the gigs and celebrate this album going out into the world. If you’re around Galway or Dublin next week, drop in and listen to me playing songs from this record live.

At each of the gigs, there’ll be a small little choir group singing with me for a few of the songs. It’s different people in each city, and they’re basically friends and acquaintances, and strangers and twitter followers, who all said yes when I asked if they’d like to sing with me. I’m really looking forward to getting them up on stage with me. It should be a lot of fun.

I’ll also be playing some songs that aren’t on the new album, which I held over for the next one, or which have been written since this summer. And I’ve reworked some of my favourite covers too.

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