I was obsessed with kd lang for a while as a teenager. I was blown away by her voice and the songwriting on Ingenue. She knocks this Roy Orbison song out of the park every time she sings. She’s one of the greatest singers ever. No contest. Brilliant control, tone, pitch, and power, all used with great musicality. She knows when to pull back, and when to let rip. I prefer the arrangement in the MTV Unplugged session she did in ’93, but her vocal from the induction of Roy Orbison into the The Songwriters Hall of Fame is stunning.
Speaking of that Unplugged session, this performance from it of the song “Barefoot”, is one of my very favourite performances of hers. The song is from the movie Salmonberries, which also kd lang also starred in, is one of those songs that will randomly pop into my head for no apparent reason. The melody of is utterly divine:
I remember completely enjoying the movie Midnight In The Garden Of Good And Evil, but having it open with kd lang singing “Skylark”, a capella, was an absolute gem. Just her voice, unadorned.
Whether cowpunk, or pop, powerballads, or country tinged folk, her vocals are always golden. This song, from the album Invincible Summer is always one of my happy summer driving songs:
I wrote this way back when I was sharing a house with Anna and playing piano with her a lot in gigs and the like. At the time I was focusing more on other people’s music than on my own, but the house was a very music filled house, which was inspiring. I was working on music arrangements for a musical at the time too, which had me working on 4, 5 and 6 part vocal harmonies. We were also practising regularly, as well as just messing about with musical experiments. We were a tv-less house too, and evenings that weren’t musical evenings, were often spent reading, listening to music, drinking tea and or off out in one of the local pubs having a pint or three.
It was during this period that I really started back writing my own songs again after a few sporadic bursts of songwriting. There’s a cliché that heartbreak is what inspires songwriting, but for me, it was being in a relationship that gave me the inspiration to start writing again.
At one point, I got hooked on waltzes, and kept showing people how everything can be turned into a waltz, and it’s instantly cheese-tastic. We turned a regular cover that we used to perform, into a waltz half way through the song, just to play around with it. In the midst of this, I ended up writing two songs that were waltzes. Musically, this song draws inspiration from two specific songs that I reference musically in a quite vague sort of way. It doesn’t really matter what those two songs are, as the musical allusions are something that I’ll get but not many other people would even notice. Even if I pointed out the songs, you’d more than likely go “huh?” than anything else, as it’s filtered through my own musical language. I know what I’m referring to, but it might not make sense to you.
Anyways, lyrically, it was inspired by a book I read that was recommended to me by a friend online. I was a bit wary initially, but I got completely hooked on it, and it’s probably one of my favourite reading experiences of the last few years, as I got completely wrapped up in this book and somehow related so much to one of the characters that I ended up writing this song and borrowing that character for my own story inspired by that novel.
Musically, the two different sections came quite naturally from each other, but are quite unrelated. I liked the chromatic bass movement in the verses, and that was something I deliberately set out to achieve. The other section has a chord progression that is sorta similar to something else, but I wanted the chromatic bass movement to be the musical link between the two sections. I also decided that although the sections were in different keys, that I wouldn’t try and modulate neatly between them, but rather have an abrupt change to reflect the different states of mind and change in the song lyrically.
When I perform this song live in intimate venues, I try to get the audience to do the backing vocal lines in the “chorus” as whispers while I sing and play over it. I’m a fan of audience participation, and it’s something that makes me very happy when it works. Generally, it has worked better than expected, and audiences seem quite willing to humour a silly piano playing songwriter in his silly little whims. But it keeps me entertained, and that’s a good thing.
The demo is just that – a demo. I tried a few times to demo this song, and just kept fucking it up, to be honest. And while I certainly don’t ace the song in this recording either, it’s at least close enough to be a half decent reflection of what the song is supposed to be like. Just without the strings that I’ve written in my head, or the female vocal parts that I’ve used in live performances a few times, or really, anything other than just the piano line and my own vocals. Helen (don’t make a sound) [demo] by misterebby
Alex Hahn is an Australian jazz singer, who spent a few years in Galway, initially singing with the band Electrogecko, before we got together to form a jazz duo.
When we first started performing together, it was along with two other singers, Sarah Elaine and Meadhbh Sullivan, doing jazz/60’s girl-group numbers as the opening act for the Cuckoo’s Nest weekly cabaret night, as well as solo jazz standards from Alex.
This developed into a weekend residency playing jazz standards, and our own jazz-influenced takes on pop and rock songs such as Gossip’s Standing In The Way Of Control, Jason Mraz’s You And I Both and Mr. Zebra by Tori Amos. Read More
Brad Walsh is a multi talented creative force. A singer/songwriter, producer and photographer. I remember hearing his music quite a few years back and liking his electro influenced sound. Yet he has developed a really signature sound that is totally identifiably his own. His cover of Stacey Q’s Two Of Hearts created a major buzz online, and his remixes of Britney’s Womanizer and Ashlee Simpson’s Out Of My Head are absolutely fantastic.
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
