West Cork all-female band The Kates are set to launch their debut EP ‘Pictures Here of Dreams’ this month at the Clonakilty International Guitar Festival. A much-loved local band, The Kates were initially set up by folk and country musician Paula K O’Brien. Paula and her family organise a fundraiser for Ovacare each year in memory of her mother who passed away from ovarian cancer. “The second year that we put it on, I had this idea of playing purely songs written or performed by women”, she explains. “And what better way to do that than to put together a band of female musicians.”

She asked fellow singer-songwriters Eve Clague, Míde Houlihan, and Liz Clark if they wanted to take part and everyone came on board. With Paula now on bass duties, Eve and Liz on the guitar, and Míde on the drums, the band called itself ‘The Kates’ in honour of Paula’s mother, Catherine. 

There was no plan to do any more than the one gig, but the girls had so much fun, loved each other’s company, and learned so much from playing together, that they decided to just keep gigging. “There was a bit of interest and people seemed to get behind it”, Paula says. “But it’s really only in the last two years that we’ve begun to gel together as a band”. Though Marybeth O’Mahony wasn’t there at the very start, she joined the band two years ago on keyboard duties. “She shut us all up!”, Paula laughs.

You could call The Kates a ‘super band’ considering each member of the band is a singer and a songwriter in her own right. Guitarist and mandolin player Paula K O’Brien performs with her good friend Archie and with Clonakilty folk and bluegrass trio Wayward Folk, playing a mix of original songs and covers. Baltimore musician Liz Clarke has several albums under her belt, notably the ‘Lonely and The Moose’ concept written with her wife Tessa Perry while they lived apart. In hospital settings, she does community music with the older population as part of the Arts for Health programme and has led the Starling Song Project to preserve their stories and heritage in the form of song. She also runs the community choir in Skibbereen. 

Míde Houlihan studied music at Coláiste Stiofáin Naofa and released her EP ‘Shifting Gears’ in 2019. Her debut album ‘Coloured In’ was released in 2015, winning the IMRO Christie Hennessy Songwriting Award with her song ‘Nuts and Bolts’. Eve Clague and Marybeth O’Mahony got to know each other at the Cork School of Music (now MTU) where they both studied vocal training. Eve released her debut EP ‘Young Naïve Me’ in 2019, and every year picks up her saxophone for the Cork Jazz festival. Marybeth works mostly in collaboration settings, recording with 1000 Beasts producer Cian McSweeney and Eve’s brother Sam Clague.

The Kates’ debut EP will be launched at the Clonakilty International Guitar Festival this September with the official release date set for September 20. The evocative title ‘Pictures Here of Dreams’ was taken from a line in their first single ‘All That Talk’ written by Míde released last June and put on the RTE Radio 1 Recommends playlist two weeks in a row. The EP features five songs, each written by one of the girls. “You’ll get a taste of each of our songwriting, and there’s diversity in all the songs but there’s also a common thread”, shares Liz. 

The tracks were recorded with Brian Casey and Sarah O’Mahony at Wavefield Recordings just outside Clonakilty. Recording was a collaborative process, and together with Brian they argued whether to use a click on some of the songs. “We wanted to get the most natural sound that we could”, Eve says. “Some things needed a click for adding harmonies, and that’s what we did. We just kept adding and songs just kept getting more adaptive. We were huffing and puffing about lots of stuff but in the end, we got there!”, she laughs. “We knew the songs, but we didn’t know them inside out”, Marybeth continues. “It was a good idea to go straight in and record them even if we hadn’t been playing them for years. Now that we’re gigging them and we’ve heard the recordings, we’re way more confident behind the songs and playing them. I think it was a great way to do it”. 

Recording together has also helped the musicians grow their confidence in terms of showing each other what they’ve written. “Even the confidence to say ‘what if we talked about this or change a sentence in this way’, so we’re developing ourselves in that respect”, Paula explains. “One of the biggest things about us is our harmony. We’re very vocally driven and that’s what really comes to the fore when we start working on songs. Marybeth is really strong on working out harmonies, so I think that’s one of our most defining features”.

The girls reveal that developing visual identity around the EP was a lot of fun. Keeping it West Cork, all the photography was done at Warren beach. Celeste Burdon held the reins behind the camera, Megan Clancy designed the EP artwork and the band logo, and up-and-coming fashion and costume designer Faye Clague along with Kez Perry styled the musicians for the photoshoot. “That was really invigorating and collaborative”, Paula enthuses. “We had some great people around us pushing us on and giving us that bit of encouragement”. Despite spending considerable time getting the artwork right, there will be no physical copies of the EP at the launch. “We’re going to be doing limited T-shirts for the Guitar Festival, so you’ll have to be first at the gig to get one!”, Eve declares.

Apart from Pillow Queens, Mongoose, PowPig, and now defunct trio Wyvern Lingo, there isn’t a lot of all-female Irish bands, and female representation is one of the main reasons why The Kates decided to keep playing together after that initial gig for Ovacare. “Obviously we wanted to shine a light on the contribution that women have in music”, Paula shares. “The more that we play, the more other people might start playing, it’s incremental – if a couple of girls pick up a guitar because they see us playing then that’s incredible!”

But being an all-female band is not easy and you consistently have to prove yourself. “From the very beginning, we realised we had to practice that much harder to prove that we weren’t a gimmick, that we’re not trying to be the Spice Girls, we’re actually just musicians in a room like everybody else”, Liz shares. “We realised we can’t mess this up because we walk into a room and there’s an assumption about us already before we even play. There have been a lot of assumptions about if we can play our instruments well, if we know how to use our equipment and our amplifiers and the sound equipment well. People consistently make assumptions about us – if the girls are all fighting and if we’re all trying to be the lead and the star. And that pushes us too, to prove that we’re serious”, she insists.

Over the summer, The Kates played outside of West Cork, performing at the Night and Day festival in Roscommon and at the Clonmel Busking Festival. “It was an amazing experience, and it was great to get our name out there”, Paula says. Initially launching at the Clonakilty Guitar festival on September 20, ‘Pictures Here of Dreams’ will see The Kates partake in Oíche Mná, a charity fundraiser in aid of the West Cork Women Against Violence project at Connolly’s of Leap on September 27, followed by a gig at Coughlan’s the next day in Cork city. At the end of October, the band will leave Rebel County and travel up to Dublin for their first ever headline gig in Whelan’s. The Kates are indeed following their dream.

‘Pictures Here of Dreams’ launches at the Clonakilty International Guitar Festival and releases on all online platforms on September 20

Bob Log III – the helmet-wearing one-man band from Tucson, Arizona returns to one of his favourite places on Earth this month, having been “cooped up” in his house in Melbourne since November. 

Armed with Silvertone archtop guitars, and kick pedals rigged to a set of acoustic drum and cymbals positioned in front of each of his feet, the slide-guitar maverick is set to embark on a tour of the UK and Ireland this May followed by dates across Europe, Australia, and the US to see him through to the end of the summer. The party-loving musician performs around 120 shows a year, playing from freak bar to freak bar in every country and every state. “Everywhere is as fun as everywhere else,” Bob exclaims. “You’d think maybe Nebraska is not so much fun. Well, it’s fun if you go where I go. Come with me to North Dakota, we’ll have a good time!”

For over three decades, Bob Log III has brought his blues-inspired guitar playing across the world. He has been living in Melbourne for almost twenty years but was born in Chicago and grew up in Tucson, Arizona – a “small” city of two to three hundred thousand people where he started playing guitar out of boredom. “Being bored was the best thing that ever happened to me, honestly,” he confesses. “Not that Tucson is boring – it was just that you had to make your own fun. Some people paint, some people play guitar, some people write books. Tucson is the perfect place for that.”

His first band was with the four-piece experimental rock art punk outfit Mondo Guano. Together they recorded and released three 7 inch records on their own independent label Bloat Records. When the band parted ways, Bob set up Doo Rag with his drummer friend Thermos Malling. The two-piece were completely DIY and consisted of Log on vocals playing a homemade dobro guitar – an acoustic guitar with a metallic cone on the sound board that amplifies the sound and gives it a gnarly metallic tone, and Malling on a custom-made drumkit put together with found objects such as beer boxes for the bass drum, a tin bucket for the snare, and old film reels and shopping baskets for the cymbals and hi-hat. When the boys put out their first cassette-tape, the word got out and the release garnered interest outside of Tucson. Soon they were invited to open for mega acts across the US and beyond. “We didn’t have a label, we were just two guys in a van with a girlfriend driving around,” Bob says. “All these big bands wanted us to open for them because they loved us. Whether it was The Cramps, Beck, Coolio, Hole, or Sonic Youth! We just got to do all kinds of crazy stuff and no one could tell us what to do,” he continues. “Occasionally we got in trouble, but it was a great time!” he laughs. 

The pair released three albums and played together for six whole years, until drummer Malling walked out while on tour supporting Ween. Unfazed, Bob Log decided to finish the tour as a one-man band, purchasing a drum machine and using his guitar case as a kick drum and building a homemade kick cymbal.

It took Bob some time to figure out his one-man band set up but after thirty years of performing solo, he has it down to a T. Along with a kick drum on his right foot and a kick cymbal on his left, he wears a shiny motorcycle helmet fitted at the front with a telephone receiver so his hands are free and he can focus on his fingerpicking and slide guitar playing. Difficult to source nowadays, the telephone handsets were snatched out of payphones around Tucson with just a pair of scissors, and he accepts some kind of responsibility for payphone handset cables eventually being switched to metal. Using a soldering iron, he would poke a circle the size of the receiver into the bubble visor of the helmet, and though it worked for a while, the Eureka moment happened after a trip to the hardware shop when he found a drill bit specifically designed to make doorknob holes. “It’s a perfect fit, you almost don’t even need glue!”, he exclaims. “That was one of the best days of my life when I figured that out. And it sounds good! Telephones are designed for human voice, take out the bass. That’s what you’re supposed to do with it.”

Dressed in a human cannonball suit on stage, Bob Log III and his blues punk guitar bring the party atmosphere to each and every gig. With his feet frantically pounding away on his kick pedals, the open tuning on his wireless guitar, and his voice distorted by the telephone receiver, his act is all about having a good time. Audience participation is of utmost importance through his performances, and he encourages male and female participants to join in the fun by drinking Prosecco from an inflatable boat, stumping on balloons, and sitting on his knees while he plays. Some of Bob Log’s lyrics may raise eyebrows with the younger generation, but he insists the songs are simply good fun and not to be taken seriously. During his song ‘Boob Scotch’, his glass of whiskey is passed around for people to dip their boob into, and for ‘Clap Your Tits’, two willing participants are invited to use their breasts as percussion instruments. “It’s about being ridiculous,” he explains. “The whole idea of both those songs is to have a good time. It’s not like ‘let’s ogle somebody’, it’s like ‘Let’s turn this party up a notch and see how crazy we can get’. When you’re having a good time and you’re smiling so much your face hurts, you don’t care what your hair looks like. You don’t care what your makeup looks like, or if your jacket is on straight. This is about letting go a little bit.” He adds that it is mostly men who put their boob in his drink and sit on his lap, and that in the age of the smartphone, people are wary of their boss seeing the footage online the day after the gig. “What we do now is people have to take a piece of toast and put it in their mouth. They sit on my knee, and I bounce them up and down, and they take a selfie while they have a piece of toast in their mouth. There’s nothing to do with sex about it at all.”

Like every performing musician Bob was unable to tour during the pandemic, and he turned to recording birthday songs for his audience. “I had to come up with some kind of Plan B and I ended up making 500 birthday songs for people”. A room was turned into what he calls his ‘duck’ or his ‘boat’ office because it has a large rubber duck and an inflatable boat in it, and the songs are recorded live straight onto his phone. “I go in there and I just have to make crazy birthday songs for people every day, sometimes eight songs a day”, he says. “Sometimes it’s in Japanese, sometimes it’s in Italian, sometimes it’s in German, French, Spanish. It’s weird how many people are born on August 17, it’s just very strange”, he laughs. These days, Bob Log III will play anything: private parties, rock clubs, festivals, and even weddings. “I get grandma to sit on my knee, and there’s always a crazy aunt showing up all of a sudden!”

Ireland is one of Bob Log’s favourite places. “Everybody says that, but it’s just the funniest shit that people say all the time. One guy in Donegal just said ‘Bob Log, you’re as mad as a bag of spiders’. And they call me ‘Bob Log The Turd’, that’s pretty good!”. Bob will have some merch to sell at the gig in DeBarra’s on May 16, including vinyl, brand new T-shirts, and perhaps even some hot sauce made by “hot sauce genius” Joe Florek of Howl at the Moon. “Everybody loves it,” he says. “In Clonakilty one time, this dude bought the bottle of hot sauce, opened it up and drank the whole bottle, and it was too hot to do that. He was just ‘I gotta go’ and he ran out the door”, he chuckles. “I love Clonakilty. Tell Ray, the owner of DeBarra’s that I want his stew again. He makes delicious stew.”

Bob Log III plays DeBarra’s Folk Club on May 16.

Currently supporting Supergrass frontman Gaz Coombes in England, Oisín Leech is no stranger to the music scene, having toured extensively as one half of Irish folk duo The Lost Brothers, a collaboration with Tyrone songwriter Mark Causland. Together, The Lost Brothers have released seven albums to date, recording with Brendan Benson (The Raconteurs) wearing the producer hat, and opening for the likes of Billy Bragg, Elvis Costello, and even the Arctic Monkeys in Japan.

But after 15 years together, Oisín explains that it feels quite healthy to take a hiatus from The Lost Brothers and focus on his own career. His first solo offering ‘Cold Sea’ was recorded last autumn and came about rather unexpectedly. For a few years now, Leech has been running a folk club – the Joey Procida’s Folk Club in The Lantern pub in Navan. International musicians Willy Mason, Steve Gunn, and Irish musicians Declan O’Rourke and Lisa Hannigan among many others have all left their mark there over the years, with Oisín playing a tune or two before welcoming the first act and spinning vinyl between performances. “I thought it would be nice to start singing original material to introduce the folk club,” he explains. During the pandemic, Leech spent a lot of time in Donegal writing and studying poetry from Seamus Heaney and Patrick Kavanagh and learning to play with open-tuning on his guitar. Inspired by the Donegal landscape and the sound of the ocean, the body of work that he developed for the folk club didn’t feel quite like The Lost Brothers. A friend got hold of his demo material and sent it to a record label in Canada, which promptly responded that they wanted to put a record out. 

And so, the quest for a music producer began, with Leech making a list of people he would love to collaborate with. First on the list was Steve Gunn, the versatile guitarist from Brooklyn who over the years has collaborated with the likes of Bill Nace, David Moore, and Kim Gordon to name a few. Enthusiastic about the idea of producing Oisín, Gunn responded with a resounding ‘yes’. The two musicians had previously met in New York when Oisín recorded in the same studio as Steve for a Lost Brothers album. “I love Steve Gunn’s albums and the way he embraces a certain kind of strangeness,” Leech remarks. A few emails back and forth and it was agreed that they would rent out a house in Donegal for a few days and set up their own recording studio. While scrolling through Airbnb, Oisín’s wife came across an old schoolhouse up for rent near Malin and the deal was done – Steve would fly over from the States and they would hire or borrow the equipment to record there.

Over the course of four days, the tiny schoolhouse became a working studio and the birthplace of ‘Cold Sea’. Gunn and Leech spent most of the first day setting up the equipment in the front room overlooking the ocean, Steve meticulously moving microphones around to catch the perfect sound. The kitchen was aptly renamed ‘Mission Control’, and it is at this large table that Gunn would sit, headphones on, recording on his laptop.

Like a lot of records that they both love, including Bob Dylan’s ‘Freewheelin’, early Joni Mitchell, or Van Morrison’s ‘Veedon Fleece’, it was decided that Gunn’s main creative as the producer was to let the songs breathe. “It was a case of capturing a moment and not overthinking it”, Oisín Leech shares. “Steve is such a brilliant artist that he kind of approached the album like a painter, and he knew what colours we were going to use. He brought a great subtlety to the album.” The minimalist nature and warm tone of the album evokes Nick Drake a lot of the time, and with contributions from both Steve Gunn and M. Ward on the guitar, and stellar musicians Dónal Lunny on bouzouki, Róisín McGrory on the violin, and Tony Garnier on the bass, it is no wonder that ‘Cold Sea’ is a beautiful debut, bringing Oisín Leech the recognition he deserves.

Fresh from playing a gig at Rough Trade and a BBC 6 Music live session with Cerys Matthews at the famous Maida Vale studios in London, Leech was invited to open for Supergrass superstar Gaz Coombes at the end of March. “It’s a big mystery how he booked me,” Oisín confesses. “I think he may have heard a song on the radio and then somebody got in touch. I went to see Supergrass when I lived in Liverpool, and my wife and I went to see Gaz play in Belfast and Dublin. He has a big band and I love his solo records so I can’t wait to hang out and meet them”.

Positive reviews for ‘Cold Sea’ are pouring in since its release in March, but the most surprising of all is the reception the album is getting from French publications. “I’m delighted because I love France, so I could be big in France”, he says jokingly. With one date so far booked in Paris in early May, a support to psychedelic folk English songwriter Vashti Bunyan in London, and a main stage appearance at the Another Love Story festival in his native Meath this summer, one can expect big things shaping up for Oisín Leech over the next year.

A self-taught guitarist, Leech is an avid music geek and will happily talk about music all day long. In fact, he hosts a show on RTÉ Radio 1 called ‘Caravan Radio’ inspired by his childhood holiday trips in a camper van from Navan to Buncrana with his family. Growing up he was surrounded by music: both his parents sang, his grandmother from Donegal played the piano, and his father the violin, so it’s no wonder he himself turned his focus to music. He studied theatre and film at Trinity and spent a lot of time busking as a young man. “I was learning about all these great playwrights like Sean O’Casey and Arthur Miller in the morning, and in the afternoon I’d go sing Waterboys songs on Grafton Street,” he shares. “So, I was kind of learning my performance and my theory at the same time.” 

And busking did take him all over the world. With his four-piece band The Fluid Druids and a generator through which the boys powered their amp, he spent a lot of time playing the streets of Naples and Liverpool where he lived for some time. They even got invited to back up Neville Staples of The Specials around Europe, playing ‘Ghost Town’, ‘Too Hot’, and ‘Message To You Ruddy’ in packed up bull rings in Spain. “We rehearsed at Barleycove beach in West Cork for that tour, actually,” he recalls. “We rehearsed in the sand dunes through that generator in the middle of the grass. People thought we were nuts!” 

Thankfully, things are a little more composed these days. Oisín plays his songs accompanied live by Graham Healy, and this is who he will be joined by at Levis’ on April 19. “Graham is a great double bass player who also plays with Saint Sister and Fionn Regan,” he says. “The songs work really well with voice, guitar and double bass. It kind of has that Fred Neil feel to it, which I love.”

Ten dates are booked for Oisín Leech’s upcoming Irish tour, his ‘Maiden Voyage Concert Series’, and for three special dates in Dublin, Galway, and Letterkenny, Leech will be backed up by his album collaborators Steve Gunn, Dónal Lunny, Róisín McGrory, and Tony Garnier. The artwork for the album, an oil painting by Inishowen-based Donegal artist Sinéad Smyth will be projected on the stage in Letterkenny. “I loved her painting instantly when I saw it”, Oisin shares. “It captures the darkness of the majestic beauty of the landscape up there where my mother is from. Her beautiful charcoal drawing is at the back of the vinyl too”. There’s no doubt Oisín Leech’s ‘Maiden Voyage’ across Ireland, the UK and beyond this summer will bring a bit of Donegal wherever it stops. Make sure to not miss it.

Oisín Leech plays Levis Corner House on April 19

Gunn grew up in Landsdowne, Pennsylvania, a suburb on the outskirts of Philadelphia. His parents were into music, collecting vinyl and often attending gigs in the city, so there were no questions asked when young Steve expressed wanting to play an instrument. Thanks to a great guitar teacher, playing the instrument became like second nature, and he fell in love with it. “It just fit my personality and into how I wanted to relate to myself and to the world,” he says. “It was like this placeholder for me where I knew that I wanted to travel and be an explorer per se.” His love for playing guitar continued when he moved to Philadelphia to study art history. He found the city to be a deeply rich environment for culture and music, and this is where he bounced off different music communities, meeting people he was able to learn from, such as American primitive guitarist Jack Rose. 

After college he moved to New York with $50 in his pocket and worked in various jobs to sustain his music career, including construction work, and handling artworks for a gallery. New York was only a two hour drive from home, but it almost felt like a different country. Now based in Brooklyn, Steve feels somewhat embedded in the city because he has a community to draw from and a studio that he uses, but he admits that things are changing economically, and he’s unsure if he will stay there forever. “I’m constantly trying to think about where to go and how to cultivate this creative life and not feel like I need to give up,” he explains. “There’s a certain level of decision making and protectivity with being a creative person, particularly in the US and for musicians,” he continues. “It’s a different world now, and most of us make money by playing gigs and it’s hard work, but luckily I’m able to do it, and New York was always a place where I could leave and come back if I needed a break from it.”

And travelling he does, having gigged in Ireland and most of Europe for the last ten years. He is currently on a tour that will see him play festivals in Portugal, Spain, and France with composer David Moore. Together, they collaborated on the ‘Let The Moon Be a Planet’ album which was a project of improvisation, a sort of call and response where Gunn plays a nylon string guitar through some effects and Moore responds on the piano. The album was released in March last year, and a ‘Live in London’ just came out at the end of February. “It’s a different world for me because it’s very open music and it’s really nice to shift a little bit and try different things,” he explains. “Being on the road with David is a different experience too – he plays piano, so he doesn’t travel with any gear, which fascinates me because I have just been lugging my guitar around forever and I’m kind of jealous that he just has a little backpack,” he laughs.

In early April, Steve will travel to Ireland from Brooklyn to perform with Navan musician Oisin Leech for three very special performances in Dublin, Galway, and Letterkenny to mark Leech’s debut Irish headline to promote the release of his album ‘Cold Sea’ produced by Steve. The two musicians first met after Leech contacted Gunn following the release of his rather beautiful 2019 album ‘The Unseen in Between’ written in the wake of his father’s passing. “Oisin ended up recording at the same studio, so I went and said hello and we became friends,” he recalls. “Oisin is such a generous guy that the next time I came to Dublin we hung out and I went up to Navan where he lives, and played at this folk club that he plays at. We’re both busy musicians, so we had a lot of crossover with people we knew.”

Meeting Oisin Leech further strengthened the connection between Steve Gunn and Ireland. Oisin’s innate Irish welcoming is the reason why Steve decided to travel to Ireland and produce his album. “We rented this house in Donegal and built a studio there and really got to sink in and absorb the landscape. And to me, that’s something I’ve been wanting to do forever so I value meeting him and his friendship”, he confesses. The video for ‘October Sun’, the debut track from Leech’s forthcoming album (out March 8) gives us a glimpse into the recording process, where the musicians are seen playing the guitar in the garden of the studio they set-up near Malin. “We went swimming twice a day, it was really cold hence the title ‘Cold Sea’”, he explains. “The way that we worked, we’d wake up and go swimming and then we’d work, and then we go for another swim and then we’d work more. And it was this way to recharge ourselves. It was incredible”. Of the process of producing an album for someone else, he says: “Oisin is a very talented, smart poet and musician so it wasn’t a hard job per say because he did all the work, but it was really rewarding to help somebody make a record that sounds great. And I learned from it too, so it was something that I look forward to doing again.”

A versatile musician and now a music producer, Steve Gunn is a superb guitar player who is more about evoking a feeling than showing off the technique. He was formerly a guitarist in Kurt Vile’s live band The Violators and he collaborated with so many musicians that he sometimes finds it hard to keep track of all the albums he’s worked on. Notable recordings include the many releases he has made with John Truscinski with whom he has collaborated for over a decade and a half, making improvised music and “exploring the fiery conjunctions between experimental drone and rock and roll”. The Gunn Truscinski Nace album entitled ‘Glass Band’ was issued on Three Lobed Recordings in July 2023. Matador Records released his albums ‘Eyes on the Line’ in 2016, ‘The Unseen in Between’ in 2019, as well as the more recent ‘Other You’, recorded during two visits to Los Angeles in late 2020 and early 2021.

Currently touring the Iberian Peninsula and France with David Moore, Steve Gunn will play in Ireland as part of Oisin Leech’s band along with Donal Lunny and fiddle player Roisin McGrory in early April, and then embark on a solo tour of Europe throughout the month of April. He will then be back in Ireland for a co-headline tour with American indie-rocker Cass McCombs that will see the two musicians perform across the island for seven dates from the end of April to early May. “I’m looking forward to going back in April with Cass,” Steve enthuses. “I never really get a chance to take long vacations or holidays, so I sometimes try to fit things in, but I’ve always been wanting to visit Ireland as a somewhat normal person”, he continues. “I think it’s going to be really great. We’re both really excited to travel through Ireland and play these different places that I’ve only heard of.”

Steve Gunn and Cass McCombs play at DeBarra’s on April 26 and Live at St Luke’s on April 27.

‘They Recognised Him’, the first single from his latest EP ‘Hee Haw’ released last October is garnering high praise from DJs and personalities across the airwaves, with several plays from presenters John Kelly on RTÉ, Gideon Coe and Cillian Murphy on BBC 6 Music. Getting regular airplay is helping raise the Mayo musician’s profile and introduce him to new audiences. “I think people are in a different frame of mind when they listen to the radio as opposed to streaming,” he says. “Not that it’s better or worse in terms of the music within, but I guess people have this idea that DJs are gatekeepers and that what they play is worth checking out. Cillian Murphy’s been great to me and lots of Irish artists, hats off and fair play to Cork!” he exclaims.

Fogarty grew up listening to trad and folk music and learned to play the fiddle, the banjo, and the tin whistle from a young age. It wasn’t until his teenage years that he picked up the guitar after his older brother John introduced him to lo-fi American music. His influences were as far-ranging as Johnny Cash, Pavement and Aphex Twin back then, but Fogarty discovered Steve Reich and John Cale in later years which vastly broadened his horizon. 

He studied engineering in Dublin’s DCU, writing songs mostly on his acoustic guitar around that time, and then he moved to Limerick to do a Masters in Music Technology. “I was always into this kind of songwriter stuff,” he says, “but I also had this notion that I wanted to inject some weird electronic stuff into it.” In 2005, he found a foot pedal and was given a cracked version of the Ableton Live software. “I never really looked back after that in terms of how you could play and perform music using the guitar or the banjo, and control accompaniment on a laptop.”

Though his songs are embedded in folk music, they are slightly off-kilter – a strange and hearty stew of traditional structures warped and distorted with layers of electronic dissonance and interference. “Some of the tunes might come across melancholic so I always try and balance stuff out with a bit of zany – balance the heavy with lighter elements just to keep everyone feeling good,” he explains.

From his very first album ‘God Damn You Mountain’ released on Scottish independent label Fence Records in 2012, Seamus was encouraged by label director Johnny Lynch to do his best to make it a full package, especially if he was to release music under his own name. “Fife was an amazing learning experience and place, with all different kinds of people involved, and there was really a DIY ethic and aesthetic.” He drew and painted the cover art for that album and maintained this principle for most of his later releases, designing a T-shirt to sell at gigs and putting out a calendar with his drawings the last two years. 

The only release that doesn’t feature his own artwork is his latest album ‘Bag of Eyes’, released in November 2020 on British label Domino Records. It features a doodle by Billy Steinberg, the American songwriter behind ‘Like A Virgin’ and ‘Eternal Flame’. Seamus explains that he came across the doodle in Margate where he was recording. “I thought it was some random band that had stayed there that had done it – it kind of reminded me of something I might try and do myself.” Contacts were made in the US to ask for permission to use the artwork. “Billy was just delighted that anyone actually wanted to use some of his artwork for something!” he declares.

Because of the pandemic Fogarty never got around to touring his last album, but supporting Lisa O’Neill was a great boost for his career. “It was exactly what I needed – to knuckle down again, and on the back of those shows I wrote and recorded a new EP. And that was purely to have something else to sell at those shows.”

And so the five track EP ‘Hee Haw’ came out – an assortment of playful tunes dreamed up during the pandemic and his first release in three years. Once again, Fogarty embraced the weird and never strayed far from his Irish heritage, turning an old sean-nós tune into his very own, a seemingly slowed-down version of Suicide’s ‘Ghost Rider’. “My Irish isn’t perfect,” he admits “but I love how it allows you to communicate from somewhere completely different”.

With three albums and three EPs under his belt – all extremely well-received, things are already afoot for another release. The time frame for the next album is for a release within the next year. So far, 80 per cent of the album is done and Fogarty has been testing his new songs at his recent live shows. “It’s a total pleasure to be able to play the tunes live and I’m still working on them a little bit,” he says. As usually happens for Seamus, recording has been taking place in various locations. “I recorded some of it in Margate with Mike Lindsay, some of it at home, and some with Leo Abrahams, who’s an amazing producer and engineer,” he explains. “I recorded some of it in Hastings, where my drummer has a studio. What takes time then as well as finishing the songs, is trying to make them fit together into one glorious body of work.’ 

Fogarty enjoys the challenge of figuring out how to get gigs and making them work. Though he loves going out on the road, he admits that it can be a gruelling experience driving all over the place, especially when playing solo. He moved to London to join his partner Emma, who he met at a music festival in Scotland. A musician in her own right, Emma Smith plays the guitar and violin with British acts Pulp and Jarvis Cocker, and the bass with post-punk trio Bas Jan. With Nora, their five year old daughter and no other family over in England, touring and a busy life schedule can be difficult. “It’s definitely tricky, and there’s been a few overlaps,” he confesses “but Nora has started coming to shows”.

The tour will take Seamus Fogarty through some of Ireland’s loveliest venues, starting in West Cork and passing through Galway, Waterford, Belfast and Dublin. “I just can’t believe it,” he exclaims. “I’m just so looking forward to going back and doing such a lovely run of shows. I’ll be playing tunes off the EP and then just tunes off the other albums and then some off the next album, whenever that’s going to come out.” Improvising is a big element in Fogarty’s live shows, and he embraces the fact that he doesn’t really know what’s going to happen in the performance. “I used to feel like such a failure when stuff went wrong, but now it’s part of the show. Not that it goes wrong all the time, but I like to not be afraid to see where stuff can go.”

For his gig in Levis’, Fogarty will play as a three-piece. “We’re bringing the laptop, a couple of synths, and drum machines,” he reveals. “It’ll be me on the guitar and electronics, my amazing drummer Aram Zarikian, and John, my brother, who sings and plays the accordion. John’s got a beautiful instrument so he can add these lovely deep textures,” he continues. “I’ll do a few songs of my own, and it can get quite noisy but there’s nice quiet bits in there as well.”

Seamus Fogarty plays Levis’ Corner House, Ballydehob on March 2.

At the end of January, folk singer-songwriter Niamh Regan will embark on a solo tour that will see her perform across Ireland, stopping off in Ballydehob for an intimate gig at Levis’ Corner House on February 10. The Galway musician is no stranger to Levis’, having performed at their Secret Song festival a couple of years ago and playing a handful of gigs there to promote the release of her album ‘Hemet’ and her EP ‘In the Meantime’. She is now gearing up to release her second album in May, having spent much of 2023 in the studio working on it. 

Niamh Regan’s first album ‘Hemet’ was released in the middle of the pandemic and announced her arrival as one of the most distinctive songwriters in Ireland today. The 2020 release earned ‘Album of the Year’ nominations for both the RTE Folk award and the Choice Music Prize and led to performances on The Late Late Show and at Other Voices. The following year, Regan released a four track EP entitled ‘In the Meantime’ which was written while confined in rural Galway. 

The name for Regan’s upcoming album has not yet been disclosed. What can be revealed however is that, like a lot of musicians who have had a successful debut, writing a second album has been quite a challenging journey, one that was almost three years in the making. It took the songwriter some time to figure it all out, but she kept pushing until she got to a place where she felt comfortable and confident in what she was doing. “It’s funny how you can kind of have a lull year of waiting, overthinking, and tripping yourself up,” she confesses. 

Whereas Niamh’s first album was centred around piano songs, with her vocals and songwriting at the fore and a subtle instrumentation arranged by New Zealand producer Alex Borwick, the upcoming album was recorded in Donegal with producer Tommy McLaughlin of Attica Studios, and will have a bigger ‘band’ sound. “I was really lucky to work with Tommy and I feel like he helped me get over myself, as well as figure out what I wanted to do and what I wanted to sound,” she explains. “Thematically, this album is quite different and is more about self-acceptance and coming to grips with yourself.” 

Regan cites Julia Jacklin, Alex G, Andy Shauf and Wilco as inspirations for this record, and while there’s more of a ‘band’ energy to the album, the first single to come out will be a stripped-back acoustic song called ‘Madonna’. “It’s kind of fitting to have that as the first single, even though it’s not exactly what the rest of the album is going to be bringing,” she reveals.

Niamh studied Traditional Irish Music at University of Limerick, where she specialised in the flute and the guitar. Though she hasn’t played the flute since she graduated, traditional music is part of her heritage. Her parents were big music lovers, and she attended the Fleadh, sessions with ceili bands and grupa cheoil from a young age. “Either consciously or subconsciously, Trad music is very much in my songwriting because it’s what I grew up with and what I was surrounded by. The formats, the ballads, and even the drama in songwriting comes from ballads that have been there for centuries before,” she continues. “I have a lot to thank that world and that community of music for, giving me the confidence to keep going with what I wanted to do. It was a good foundation for sure.”

Lyrically, Niamh gets a lot of her inspiration from reading, watching films and just chatting with friends. “One thing for sure about lyrics, they’re important to me, but I also like the notion that it’s just a conversation as well. It’s just a few words and a few intentions behind it, and I think the work that I enjoy most that I put out, is when I’m not overthinking it, and I think I’m way more honest when I’m not trying.”

Songwriting doesn’t always come easily, and she had to get a bit of a regiment going for her second album. “I’d set aside a time and it didn’t matter if I just played scales on the guitar for 45 minutes”, she explains. “As long as I sat down and wrote a line or two and just practised, I was happy.” In the end, she decided she would be better off doing some co-writing sessions to get the juices flowing. Producer Tommy McLaughlin came onboard. “Even if they’re not songs I would use on the album, it was kind of getting me to not take songwriting too seriously. Like, just do lots of co-writes and throw lots of rubbish out there and have fun. And that’s when it started coming together and I started writing a little bit better.”

Collaborations are now a central part of Regan’s songwriting process, even if the resulting songs do not necessarily get released. “I write with as many people as I can just for fun,” she explains. “I think a lot of songwriters spend a lot of time trying to get out of their own heads and the best way to do that is writing with others. It’s really good for the brain.”

In recent months Niamh Regan has popped up on stages at home and overseas supporting American songwriters John Grant and Sam Amidon and Irish pop singer CMAT, amongst others. Playing live is her favourite thing to do, and the support slots are where she’s sneakily been testing her new songs to gauge reactions from the audience. For her forthcoming solo tour next month, there will be plenty of the old material, and four or five new songs introduced each night. “I’m excited to share some new songs,” she enthuses. “I just love playing live and I think that’s the main thing I’d like to focus on. And you know, if people come to the gigs, that means you’re doing something right!”.

Niamh Regan plays Levi’s Corner House on February 10. Her forthcoming single ‘Madonna’ comes out on February 7.

At only 30 years of age, Rachael Lavelle started her music career relatively late. Though she went to piano lessons as a child, it was her grandfather who had the most influence on her. A pianist and the composer behind Ireland’s 1967 Eurovision entry ‘If I Could Choose’, Michael Coffey wrote the musical comedy ‘Carrie’ which was quite popular in Ireland. A reserved child, Lavelle loved singing along to Disney movies, and so her parents sent her to dance and drama classes. She became obsessed with the Italian language, and so studied for a degree in Sociology and Italian at Trinity College Dublin. Although music would have been a big part of her life, it wasn’t until a stay in Italy as part of an Erasmus programme that she realised she wanted to write her own songs. And write she did, putting a band together and recording her four-track EP ‘Superman’ at her cousin Damian Moloney’s house. The result was a self-released debut that gathered interest on the Irish music scene and landed her high profile gigs around Dublin.

Interested in film music and electronic music, Rachael enrolled in a Masters in Music and Media Technology the same year, and studying with Kinsale composer Linda Buckley became a revelation. “She’s incredible and completely changed my life,” Lavelle reveals. ‘I wanted to use my voice in a different way with technology, and the composition classes kind of fed into my songwriting and more into the technology, so I was blending composition, technology and my voice in that way.”

Rachael’s voice is indeed quite unique. Her friend once remarked that she “spoke in the same register as people yawn”, a dusky vocal tone that is delivered sparsely in song, and with a haunting quality. This is perhaps why she feels at home singing for funerals, which she gets through word of mouth or via undertakers. “It sounds depressing, but it’s actually very life-affirming,” she explains. “I like listening to eulogies and hearing a lot of people’s emotions.”

In 2017, an impulsive trip to Lisbon following a break-up started the process of what would become her debut album. Serendipity brought her to an artist residency which she would end up travelling to every day on a boat. “It was a really peaceful place overlooking the river,” she says. “There wasn’t really anyone around and this is where I wrote a lot of the melodies and made a lot of drum samples.”

Several years in the making, ‘Big Dreams’ is a musical landscape that takes you on a journey into Rachael Lavelle’s psyche. The album was recorded mostly on the computer in her bedroom except for the vocals which were recorded with Alex Barwick in his Dublin studio. Her observations on life are conveyed with a dry sense of humour and achieved through the manipulation of her voice, enveloped with rich synthesisers and a cinematic sound design. She admits not really enjoying spending time in the studio, preferring the experiment at home where she can try things out and not feel under any pressure. Multi-instrumentalist and long-time collaborator Ryan Hargadon, who also performs with Wicklow folk singer-songwriter Anna Mieke and Dublin rapper Kojaque, played saxophone and clarinet on the album. “Ryan has been in my band since the beginning. Me and Ryan will have very similar tastes in synths, and he really understood the sound world that I was trying to make. His collaboration was very big.”

Rachael reveals that she was inspired by the familiar things but that she tried to make them dream-like or confusing in some weird way. “Whether that’s being on Instagram, or hearing someone talk, or reading something, I’m always looking for things that are very familiar in my life, and I love trying to reinterpret them in a really dramatic musical context’, she explains. ‘A lot of the lyrics on the album are inspired by YouTube videos or something my friend said. Simple things that are very ordinary, but I like re-contextualising them.’

There’s an inner monologue that runs through the album. If you’ve ever travelled by tram in Dublin, you may recognise the voice of broadcaster Doireann Ní Bhriain – the Luas lady that announces all the stops. Rachael approached Ní Bhriain to become the narrator of that inner voice. “I loved the idea of her being a familiar voice that’s telling you where you’re going during the day, but I liked imagining that she was telling us something else, and that she was getting into our heads.”

Since the release of ‘Perpetual Party’ in 2019 – the song that would become the title track for the album, Lavelle has participated in many collaborative projects. During Covid, she presented her repertoire of songs as part of a collaboration with Glasshouse, a contemporary music ensemble that presents collaborative interpretations of contemporary albums. She also performed with Dulciana Vocal Ensemble, a chamber choir committed to promoting the music of female composers. Last year, she appeared on Villagers’ Connor O’Brien album ‘Fever Dreams’ as well as Crash Ensemble’s latest album, and she took part in Cumasc, a music programme on TG4 that paired her up with American composer Peter Broderick for the day. Rachael has also composed music for film, notably she wrote the soundtrack for Laura Quirke’s short film ‘Devotion’. She also played the voice of Mother Nature in Laragh McCann’s film ‘Where Is She?’. “It’s a really beautiful film about the environment and being a woman,” she remarks.

Rachael Lavelle’s album artwork and accompanying music videos are very compelling. Award-winning film director Bob Gallagher, under Sarah Flanagan’s art direction, produced the videos for ‘Let Me Unlock Your Full Potential’ and ‘Big Dreams’. Inspired by the 1980 performance art piece ‘Rest Energy’ by artistic duo Marina Abramović and Ulay, the video for ‘Let Me Unlock Your Full Potential’ sees Lavelle transformed into William Tell’s wife, reclaiming the power she once held. In the video for ‘Travel Size’, film director Anna Heisterkamp turns Lavelle into an air hostess. “I’ve worked with really amazing people for this album release,” Rachael says. “They’re just all legends, and it’s been so fun to do the visual things because it’s not really a world I’m in at all, so it’s just been fun to work with people on that aspect of things.” For the album artwork, art director Sarah Flanagan came up with the idea of a giant pillow. “Originally there was meant to be press shots of me on the pillow,” Rachael explains. “We tried a few different things, but then it felt like the album was either in the air or in water, something between the two. It made sense that I’d be sleeping or lazying around on a pillow in an imaginary sea.”

Reports of Lavelle’s performances at festivals such as Other Voices in Dingle and Another Love Story in Co. Meath include words such as ‘spellbinding’ and ‘captivating’. A quick online search of her name will confirm that this is indeed the case. For her show at Connolly’s, Rachael Lavelle will be accompanied by Ryan Hargadon on saxophone and clarinet, and Hannah Hiemstra on bass and drums. “I’m super excited to play in Leap,” she exclaims. “I played there opening for Saint Sister in 2019 and I just love the energy there, Sam and everyone, they’re so welcoming and it’s such a special place, and I’m so excited to return!” No doubt everyone in the audience will witness something very special that night.

Rachael Lavelle with support from Ellie O’Neill plays Prim’s Bookshop in Kinsale on December 6, and Connolly’s of Leap on December 8.

Brian Dillon AKA ‘The Line’ is set to perform at Connolly’s of Leap on November 19 to promote the release of his brand new album ‘Red Blood Cells and Righteousness’ – a collaborative project with various Irish musicians. Lauren Guillery meets with the Tipperary musician to find out how the album came about.

A classically-trained pianist, Brian Dillon pursued a Music and Arts degree at Maynooth University followed by a Masters in Sound Art at Queen’s University Belfast, and now teaches audio production at the British and Irish Modern Music Institute (BIMM) Dublin. No stranger to the Irish music scene, Dillon is part of the five-piece experimental electronic outfit ‘Meltybrains?’ and plays keyboards in Talos’s live shows. A sound artist and designer, Dillon has composed for dance and theatre shows and is an integral part of the Dublin Laptop Orchestra – a collective of musicians that presents site-specific performances to art galleries where it brings ‘theatricality and physical presence into electronic music performance’. Brian also produces records, having worked on the debut album for contemporary folk harpist BR​Í​D​Í​N last year, and currently putting the final touches to Loah’s debut album.

In February 2020, Brian released his own album ‘Matter’ under moniker ‘The Line’, and though there were plans afoot for gigs, the untimely world pandemic put a stop to everything the musician had in the works. “It was a project close to my heart and my first solo release, and I felt like I didn’t get enough out of it.” And so ‘Anti-Matter’ was re-released the following year accompanied with beautiful greyscale artwork in the form of an A3-size ‘album map’ and an A5 booklet or ‘listening guide’. Brian explains that he wanted to explore an alternative way of engaging with music. “I really find the passive engagement that streaming encourages people to have with music has a lot of downsides. Releasing some kind of engaging object with the album forces you to connect with it, so you’re not scrolling on Instagram with your headphones on.”

The collaborative project for the upcoming release ‘Red Blood Cells and Righteousness’ isn’t as straightforward as one would expect. Originally, Brian had composed a 35-40 minute sound art piece entitled ‘White Blood Cells’ inspired by Irish writer Julian Gough’s novel ‘Connect’, which led him to explore ideas of postmodernism, the Gaia Hypothesis, and Hegel’s philosophical writings. “Gough discussed the idea that human beings are like blood cells, moving autonomously through a much larger ecosystem, serving a much larger power without ever realising that’s what they are doing”, he explains. “‘White Blood Cells’ discusses concepts from a geopolitical standpoint: the importance of global supply chains and the lack of respect shown towards them by the average Westerner,” he goes on. “‘Red Blood Cells and Righteousness’ is kind of exploring the same themes, but it’s a more personal record – the songs came from personal discussions and personal relationships with the collaborators.”

Brian Dillon approached his favourite Irish musicians to work on the upcoming release. Hence artists like Limerick rapper God Knows and MC MuRli, Sarah Corcoran from indie-rock girl band Pillow Queens, Caoi deBarra of Wyvern Lingo, Daniel Fox from noise rock outfit Gilla Band, Eoin French of Talos, Dublin singer-songwriter Sorcha Richardson, soulful singer Loah, and a few more all took part in the project. The intention for the record was for the creative process to reflect the themes of community, collaboration, and connection. “Communal values are the most important things that we have in this life, and ‘the myth of the individual’ and the pursuit of personal gain and adulation has caused us to forget this,” he explains. Social media too, plays a huge part in glorifying the individual. “Initially Facebook was community-based but Instagram is all about individuals. You don’t have friends anymore, you have followers,” he clarifies. “All the language around it and the format of it is really competitive and I think it’s pretty negative ultimately, the way it makes you think about the world. I was thinking about how best to combat that with music, and I thought I’d make an album that’s about things which are important and positive and good, like community, family, and faith.”

While The Line’s previous release ‘Matter’/’Anti-Matter’ was very much a prototypical bedroom producer approach, where Dillon sat in a room on his own for days on end, “a lonely and isolated affair” as he puts it, the plan for ‘Red Blood Cells and Righteousness’ was entirely different. Armed with monitors, an audio interface, a couple of microphones, headphones, and a laptop all tightly packed in a flight case, Dillon brought his portable studio to the other musicians’ house or studio, and together they started the process for the album. “Every track was kind of written in a day”, he shares. “We’d start with one to two hours long conversation about the kind of themes I was interested in exploring. I thought that was a nice ice breaker and a nice way to set us up to make music”, he continues. “We did that for an hour and then we’d write a track for between three and six hours. Then I’d take it away to my own studio and clean it up. The process was about going in and trusting myself and the other person, and being happy with what was made in that time.”

The album is about to be released on the Strange Brew label and consists of thirteen tracks, which are all very different from one another and unlike anything Brian Dillon previously released. The collaborations really elevate his work, as is evident in the first single ‘Patience of Saints’ with hip-hop artists God Knows and MuRli and the second single ‘Communion’, which stars Loah and her sister Fehdah on vocals. Dillon hopes listeners will get the message he and the artists on the album are trying to come across – merely that values sometimes considered old-fashioned are positive things, and that they have more merit than individualism, competition, and endless consumption. “This album is dedicated to playing a small but significant role as a part of a world so much bigger than any of us are willing to admit,” he reveals. “After all, maybe we’re all just blood cells, swimming through the veins of the Earth, serving a much higher function.”

Brian has mixed feelings about releasing his music on vinyl, but the artwork, consisting of notebooks and prints of old family photos, will be up for sale along with T-shirts at gigs and on his Bandcamp platform. There are so far four gigs confirmed for the upcoming tour, including the Roisin Dubh in Galway on November 18 and Dublin’s Sugar Club on November 25. For The Line’s appearance at Connolly’s of Leap, it will be a pared back version of the release. “I’ve got a bunch of keyboards and a drum machine, which would be the brain of it. Certainly, for the Dublin show I’m going to have quite a few guests from the record, hopefully I will have one or two for Connolly’s. But some of it, I’m just going to be rearranging the tracks without the heavy production and singing them myself. I haven’t gigged much as The Line except for the support tour with Talos”, he admits “so it will be good to push myself to have a live identity and establish my name a bit more”.

And though it’s unclear if the sound art piece for sister recording ‘White Blood Cells’ will be released to the public, there will be an exhibition with photographer Mark McGuinness in February in a yet undisclosed location in Dublin.

The Line plays Connolly’s of Leap on November 19. ‘Red Blood Cells and Righteousness’ comes out November 1 on Strange Brew

Having emigrated to Malmö in Sweden over a decade ago, Richard ‘Richie’ Egan initially formed Jape as a side project from his main duties as the bassist with The Redneck Manifesto. The last twenty years, the post-punk band has earned a cult-like following among Irish music fans, who travel huge distances to attend rather rare live appearances. In 2016, the band performed at the Clonakilty International Guitar Festival, but has now been on a hiatus since the release of their last album ‘The How’.

No longer a side-project but rather an established musical act in their own right, Richie Egan’s Jape have released countless albums to date and received awards and critical acclaim from many of these releases. ‘Floating’ – the catchy debut single from their second album ‘The Monkeys In The Zoo Have More Fun Than Me’ was released in 2004 and receives significant airplay on late night Irish radio programmes. Jape’s third album ‘Ritual’ won Richie the prestigious Choice Music Prize for Irish Album of the year 2008 and features songs like ‘I Was A Man’, ‘Phil Lynott’, and ‘Strike Me Down’. Jape’s fourth album ‘Ocean of Frequency’ released in 2011 earned them another Irish Album of the Year at the Choice Music Prize, making them the only Irish act to date to receive the esteemed award twice.

Since then Jape released ‘This Chemical Sea’, a rather dancey album recorded in Egan’s basement studio in Malmö that features vocals by longtime friend Conor O’Brien from indie-folk outfit Villagers. The album ‘Sentinel’ that came out in 2019 was more subdued and intimate, and then in 2022 Richie released ‘9k HI Vol 1’ – an electronic “half album” as he calls it, which he recorded primarily using an 80’s Casio FZ-1 sampler keyboard.

Whether the 2023 release ‘Endless Thread’ is indeed Jape’s seventh or eighth album is up for debate, but it’s undeniable that this accomplished musician’s body of work is manifold. Having received no formal music education but simply messing around with music and technology, the self-confessed music geek worked as an audio visual technician and taught himself to play, record, edit, and produce music, as well as making music videos. Oftentimes, his songs integrate samples of ‘field recordings’ – recordings he does on the go with a tape machine, and more recently using an Apple watch.

Despite using field recordings for the upcoming album, including the sound of an alarm which he edited to sound like a saxophone at the very start of ‘Lashing Through The Minutes’, the second single from the album, Richie explains he wanted to do something a little different than in his previous releases. “I really wanted to have those textures in an accessible way. I didn’t want it to be an experimental pop music album, so if I was using those textures I was using them in quite a defined parameter, which for me was an actual song. Basically it’s my love letter to song, I just love songs so much. In the past few albums, I drifted away from them a bit, and I wanted to come back to that joyful nature of listening to and making music.’

In terms of inspiration for the album, Richie confesses he wanted to get back to the childlike joy that music used to give him when he was a kid. “I had lost that completely for a few years,” he admits. “I realised music was not the only medicine that could heal me, and that I actually had to do some work outside of music in order to have any joy in my life. So I stopped drinking alcohol, I started to exercise a lot more, I started to do yoga and I started to try and create joy in my life that wasn’t fake joy, not like quick dopamine from drinking alcohol or scrolling on social media.” 

Though he produced all the album himself in his basement studio, Egan asked David Odlum, a former member of Kila and The Frames to mix the album. “I worked with him before and I just felt like it would be nice to have a second set of ears for the mix and he did an amazing job. I really love that Lisa O’Neill album ‘All Of This Is Chance’, which he mixed. I just loved it sonically.” Richie is happy in his own skin creating music in his basement but travels home to Dublin regularly. “I miss the creative community of which I was a very active part of, and all my friends are basically Irish musicians, so I really look forward to playing with them when I’m doing these gigs coming up, and I always pay close attention to Irish music that’s happening.”

A number of solo ‘instore’ gigs booked early this month will see Jape play in the intimate settings of shops and cafés to promote the new release, including Prim’s Bookshop in Kinsale on October 1 and Plugd Records in Cork city on October 6. “It was important to me on this record to be able to play the songs live both at the piano and on the guitar with no sort of trickery involved,” he confesses. “I’ve done a lot of stuff in the past where I’ve backing tracks on the go and I just really wanted to get away from that.”

A six-date tour of Ireland with band will start on October 20 in Dublin, passing through Clonakilty on November 3, and finishing at the Roisin Dubh in Galway on November 5. “What’s important to me on this one is to expose myself, be vulnerable with the songs and see if they come across. Because I felt like I had got into a spot where I was using backing tracks as a kind of a safety net. They work for sure, but they’re boring and they become like a straight-jacket if you have to do any amount of gigs in a row.”

Working as a musician is not an easy career. To put food on the table, Egan did some commercial work writing songs for cartoons. “I got the job to write children’s songs and it was amazing,” he reveals. “It’s brilliant as a songwriter because it takes you out your comfort zone. I had to write a Broadway song about how to ride a bicycle!” Nevertheless, releasing an album in the current climate of no easy feat. “I was speaking to someone about the music industry nowadays and I think the idea is – have low expectations and be willing to fail and be willing to continue to work after you’ve failed. And I think if you can do that joyfully, then you can continue. You need to be a romantic fool to even consider attempting anything, and I love that, I love the underdog,” he continues. “I am a working class man and I feel like a working class musician in the sense that now I’ve worked to make that record. I’ve worked to do this tour. When the tour is over, I’ll work to make another record. I’ll just keep working and working and that’s the key to it.”

Human connection is really important to Richie. For the tour, he wants to engage his audience in a joyful way. Last month, he asked his followers on Twitter to come up with a name for an interactive ’gig enhancement’ whereby willing punters would take part in a quiz to win a prize, three of which would be picked at random and become contestants to test their musical knowledge and general smartness. And so ‘Japeardy’ came to be. “I wanted to sort of break it down a little bit. If people want to be in the quiz, they can give their name when they come in to the venue. We’re going to have three rounds. If you win your round, you come back at the end to play in the final round. It’s going to be fun, we’ll just have a laugh, and someone wins a prize at the end.”

Though he’s as yet undecided about getting T-shirts printed to sell at the gigs, Richie will have a vinyl pressing of the new Jape release for sale. His wish for this album is that people give it a listen. “Even a little message saying that the song meant something to you or something like that, that kind of stuff is gold,” he says. “I feel a little bit like last days of Rome where I’m just going to do my best and see what happens. If I can get to make another record, I’ll be happy.”

No doubt Endless Thread will be a mighty success. We can’t wait to see Jape unfold the new set of songs.

Jape’s album ‘Endless Thread’ came out on Faction Records on September 29. He will perform at DeBarra’s Folk Club on November 3 with support from Rob Cunningham.

The Drimoleague Singing Festival returns to various venues across the West Cork village this September to celebrate the human voice in all its forms. The festival will feature an array of events over four days to delight the Drimoleague community and visitors. Singing sessions, singing and songwriting workshops, informal pop-up choirs, and even a singing competition are on the cards, and big names such as sean-nós singer Iarla Ó Lionáird (The Gloaming, Afro Celt Sound System), aboriginal Australian singer Jessie Lloyd, folk songwriter John Blek, and Jack L will complete the line-up. Lauren Guillery turns her attention to Kenmare harpist Aisling Urwin, who will support Susan O’Neill (also known as SON) at St Matthew’s Church on the Saturday evening.

Originally from Bonane, a small village between Kenmare and Glengarriff, Aisling Urwin picked up the harp at the tender age of nine. She comes from a traditional Irish music background with both parents playing the mandolin and singing – her father’s instrument of choice is the bouzouki and her mother’s the bodhrán – so it’s no wonder Aisling is keeping the family tradition alive. When her parents asked her if she wanted to learn to play an instrument, she chose the harp after seeing someone play it on the Late Late Show on RTE. As there weren’t any harp teachers nearby, the dedicated couple drove their daughter to Castleconnell in County Limerick once a fortnight so she could attend classes.

Aisling started playing in trad sessions from about age 12. Though she’s had many great harp teachers over the years, her favourite has been the trad session itself. “I learned trad backing by listening to my dad on the bouzouki at sessions, listening out for chord progressions, and getting excited about all the chord possibilities for one melody. Trad backing is a type of improv,” she clarifies. “You get to learn many new songs at sessions, some may have a different name or a different version. I love the stories behind tunes or the total mystery behind an unnamed one.”

The harp has been a huge part of Aisling’s life for already two decades. Though she played the guitar and piano when she was younger and learned the sitar as part of her degree in music at UCC, the harp remains her number one love because of its deep roots in the history, culture and folklore of Ireland. “There is an eternal magic to the instrument that can be felt as the wind blows through the strings, in the swell of a slow air and in the pulse of a polka,” she says. Her instrument, which she affectionately calls her “baibín”, is a lever harp as opposed to a pedal harp. The lever harp, also called the Celtic or folk harp, is smaller in size than the pedal harp, and has levers along the top to allow raising the pitch of the strings as they are played. “People always underestimate how big a harp is,” she laughs. “It’s difficult to travel with it and it’s pretty much always an issue every time I travel. My harp did get lost once, on a connecting flight. It turned up the next day and I managed to get it back ten minutes before our concert started.”

The wildness of the Beara peninsula and majesty of the Iveragh are no doubt inspirations for Urwin, who feels deeply rooted there between mountains, woodlands, and sea. The gentle strumming on the harp combined with her angelic melodies do wonders to remind us of the beauty of the land and the natural world, and through her music Aisling strives to challenge traditional views of what a harp should sound like, painting it in new colours and taking it into new sonic spaces.

Though still a young musician, the south-Kerry harpist already has an impressive collection of albums under her belt. Her very first album ‘Awakening’ was recorded by her musician neighbour Chris Liddle when Aisling was only 17. Her second album was done while in college and is a live recording with singer-songwriter, fiddler, and composer Clare Sands entitled ‘Live at Charlie’s’. Fresh out of college, she recorded an album of Irish fusion music with saxophonist Andre Van Der Hoff called ‘Resonance’, and in 2019 she released ‘The Dragonfly Jig’, a collection of versions of some of her favourite trad and folk songs.

Aisling speaks fondly of her time spent in studio, which she really enjoys. “I love the feeling of a song coming to life, becoming immortalised in the form of a recording, I love the playfulness of creatively experimenting with sound. If I could spend every day in a studio, I would,” she enthuses. Thankfully, her partner Seán O’Sullivan is a recording engineer at Tunnel Road Studios in Bonane, so she can freely record in her pyjamas!

Her good friend Siobhán Moore, with whom she performs as part of the duo Woven Kin is also a music producer. Together they recorded ‘Hibernate’ in 2020 during the pandemic lockdown. “It was partly recorded in Ireland, partly in the US,” she explains. “We asked a few musicians we love to play on the album, so we had files coming to us from Mexico, Puerto Rico, Texas, California, New York, not to mention Bandon.” A project very close to her heart, Aisling confesses that she really loves what they have created together. The album features Liam Ó Maonlaí (Hothouse Flowers) and Leah Song (Rising Appalachia) among others. ‘We spent a lot of time sending things back and forth to each other, I was especially grateful for the internet that year and what it allowed us to achieve with an ocean between us.”

Aisling first met Siobhán Moore, who performs as the world music outfit Ajeet, at her own album launch at Crowley’s Bar in Kenmare in 2018. The musician approached Aisling to record harp on her next Ajeet album, and a few days later invited her to join the band on tour. “Being able to travel the world playing music with Ajeet and the wonderful band has been such an opportunity, I am very grateful,” Aisling confesses. “There are so many places I would’ve never seen otherwise, if it wasn’t for music and meeting in the pub that night.”

Apart from writing, performing, recording, and touring the world with Ajeet, Urwin teaches the harp online. “I noticed a trend of people coming to me wanting to learn to sing with the harp. When Covid hit, everything moved online so I decided to use the time I had to put an online course platform together.” With The School of Harp running courses for beginners and more advanced players, Aisling admits to loving teaching and sharing the magic of the harp with others. “It’s so satisfying to see the growth of a student, to see them grow in confidence and explore their own creativity.”

Though she has an album in the works, she is particularly excited about a concert that will take place at the Ionad Cultúrtha in Ballyvourney on November 18 with fellow harper Niamh O’Brien as part of a Music Network ‘Resonate’ residency. “We’re going to be composing new pieces and making contemporary arrangements of old Irish harp music. We’re also going to be collaborating with visual artist Colm O’Neill and bringing in an element of place to the concert in an audiovisual format.”

For the Drimoleague Singing festival this month, Aisling will be joined with her dear friend Andy Yelen, a guitarist from Sneem. “I’ve been playing with Andy for years and it’s really wonderful to be able to make music with someone who feels like they can read your mind when you play. He has a tremendous ear and a really beautiful touch to his playing.” No doubt the acoustics at St Matthew’s Church will complement the duo’s performance on September 23.

The Drimoleague Singing Festival takes place from September 21-24. Aisling Urwin will support Susan O’Neill at St Matthew’s Church, Drimoleague on Saturday, September 23.. More info at www.drimoleaguesingingfestival.ie

A familiar fixture on the Cork music scene, indie-folk musician and event facilitator Caoilian Sherlock, returns to DeBarra’s Folk Club in Clonakilty on June 25. With a debut album, ‘Teenage Jesus’ set for release on May 26 and an upcoming tour that will see him perform across the country with some UK dates to boot, Lauren Guillery meets with Caoilian to find out more about the album.

Having played in bands since the tender age of fifteen, Caoilian Sherlock is a self-taught musician and the front man in Cork alternative rock outfit The Shaker Hymn, who he has been playing with for years. Sherlock also plays covers with The Tan Jackets, performing takes on 60s psychedelia with songs by the likes of MC5, Van Morrison’s original band Them, and The Sonics. For his solo project, Caoilian’s compositions are a lot more introspective and folky, and despite being accompanied by a full band he explains how different an experience it is to work as a solo artist. “With previous bands, I edit a lot because I want to impress the people I’m in the band with, as if I’m writing music for them and I want them to be happy with what they’re playing. Whereas with a solo thing, I think about it a little bit less, I edit a bit less. So it comes out a little bit more emotional and sometimes a little bit more clumsy as well, which I think is kind of cool.”

In 2017, he released his debut EP ‘The Faraway’ under the moniker Saint Caoilian. But what started as a pure folk approach to songwriting in his early recordings morphed over the following years into a blend of indie and folk music, with lo-fi pop tracks and catchy choruses thrown into the mix, and a more experimental approach. With influences as varied as Nick Lowe, Stereolab, and John Prine, Sherlock cites the lyrics and storytelling in country music and hip hop as well as electronic music as having an impact on his songwriting. “I’d like to get as weird as it can get,” he confesses. 

Caoilian has always been involved in music one way or another. He currently works with The Good Room, an events company that puts on shows in Cork city in venues such as St Luke’s and the Opera House. He also runs Quarter Block Party, a DIY arts and music festival which, after a Covid hiatus, will be coming back with a bang this summer. The collective has put on many events around the city this last decade, including plays, art exhibitions, dance and music performances, and art and craft markets. Sherlock explains he loves to get involved in whatever takes place in the city and county, especially artistic projects. “I love meeting people, and the best thing about art and music is that you get to trade perspectives with each other. And if you want to be an artist, you need to fully lean into other people’s perspectives.”

Talking about his upcoming album ‘Teenage Jesus’, he explains that all the love songs were collected over a decade of writing, and the reflective elements are about becoming more experienced as a person, learning more about the world, and trying to view that in a healthier way. The recording started in 2019 with Brendan Fennessy of O Emperor, and by March 2020 when the first Covid lockdown hit, 80 percent of the album was done. “Some of the songs might not have been finished, but they had drums and bass and all the instruments on them.” With the pandemic putting a stop to the project, Sherlock saw that time as a way of experimenting with production, and he set up a little studio in his spare room. He started playing around with keyboards, synthesisers and a drum machine and sent his home recordings to various musician friends so they could record better versions than he could ever do. “There’s a lot of different musicians on the album that I’ve never played live with. I just knew they had recording facilities and they’re really good players.”

The song ‘Teenage Jesus’ was written during the very first few weeks of lockdown, and he immediately knew that the album should be called the same name. He explains that the song weirdly tied the whole thing together sonically and thematically, as if it put a full stop to the rest of the songs. The inspiration for the name ‘Teenage Jesus’ came from watching Friday Night Lights, a TV show about American teenagers who play for the local sports team. ‘They were all kind of heralded as heroes of their town. I thought about that in reflection of all of us being locked in our house, that we were all sort of heroes of our own story.”

But Covid lockdown also proved a positive experience for Caoilian, who started studying for a Master’s Degree in Music Technology at the School of Music in Cork. During these uncertain times, a lot of musicians had a moment where they could kind of opt-in or opt-out of being a musician for the rest of their lives. “It’s not like you’re making tonnes of money all the time, you’ve got to do it for the love of it, so there was definitely an opportunity, and for a brief moment I started looking around at different universities, different courses that I could do, maybe that could be a change of career, but in the end I ended up coming back to music and it probably focused my mind and convinced me more than ever, that this is what I love doing.”

In 2021, he released his second EP ‘Big Child’ with four songs that were part of the same recording sessions as the album. Lockdown boredom, and a sense that these songs had a different atmosphere to the rest of the recordings encouraged him to release them as their own separate entity. He explains that the choice for the title ‘Big Child’ was about not wanting to grow up – the Peter Pan Syndrome and the idea that musicians never want to get a ‘real’ job. ‘For the launch of the EP, I called the band The Big Children, which I don’t know if they liked immediately,” he laughs.

The album will be released on vinyl with a cover art illustration by Annie Forrester. “I just gave all the bands their test pressings last night,” he says excitedly. “It feels much more real when you have it in your hands than when it’s on digital. I play records at home all the time, and it felt so tangible to have it sound just the same as anyone else’s album.”

Caoilian has played around Ireland with just an acoustic guitar and sometimes a drum machine, but for the upcoming tour he will be joined with Paul Leonard on drums, Ruairi Dale on bass, Peter O’Sullivan on keyboard, and Leah Hearne on backing vocals, flute and percussions. It will be their first full live band show since the last EP launch. He explains that before the pandemic they were really hitting a stride as a band and that everyone was really excited about where they were about to go. “The very last gig we had before lockdown was in the Green Room of the Cork Opera House for the Right Here Right Now festival. We had some festivals lined up and it all fell apart. We’re getting back to that place right now, so I’m looking forward to our first show.”

With eight dates booked for the tour, starting in the lovely Prim’s Bookshop in Kinsale and ending at the Green Room in Cork, Sherlock admits he loves to perform live and that there’s something quite special about meeting people first hand. “These days you’re not just up against the band that’s playing down the road, you’re also up against Netflix and PlayStation and TikTok, and I’m personally on a one-man mission to get everybody out of their houses. And you might come and see me, but really I just wanted you to come and hang out’.

Caoilian Sherlock, with support from Andy Wilson, plays DeBarra’s Folk Club on June 

On May 14, Phil Christie will grace one of West Cork’s most intimate venues to promote the release of his second LP ‘Greater Than, Or Equal To The Bonk’. If you’re into left of field genre-bending performances and jazz improv, Levis Corner House will be the place to hang out that evening.

Originally from Waterford but now based in Dublin, Phil Christie was for many years the keyboard player and backing singer for O Emperor – the alternative rock band that announced in 2018 its break-up with the release of its farewell album ‘Jason’, only to win the prestigious RTÉ Choice Music Prize for Irish Album of the Year a few months later. The Bonk emerged from the ashes of O Emperor, seemingly fully formed with its blend of garage rock and experimental pop with jazzy undertones, and although influences are hard to pinpoint, the band wouldn’t seem out of place alongside the likes of 70s experimental rockers CAN, New York synth duo Suicide, and idiosyncratic rocker Captain Beefheart.

It won’t be Christie’s first visit to Ballydehob – the songwriter and multi-instrumentalist performed there at last year’s Jazz Festival, playing synths with Cork experimental group Fixity. Asked if he’s planning to bring the whole band set-up for The Bonk’s upcoming tour, he responds “We will have the full line-up in levels, but not in all the venues. I think some places are just too small to accommodate us all, and while most of the gigs are with a full band, there’ll be a couple that we might do as a trio or quartet, it’s kind of malleable in that way,” he explains. With a core band of six musicians where Phil sings, plays guitar, keyboards, percussions and sometimes theremin alongside his brother Jimmy on drums, Patrick Freeman on bass, his cousin Phil O’Gorman on guitar, Fixity’s Dan Walsh on saxophone and flute, and Robert Grant on trumpet, it will be pretty amazing to see them all fit behind Levis’ shop counter.

The Bonk has so far released three digital EP’s, including two volumes of ‘Songs for the Mean Time’ in 2020 and 2022, and ‘Chore Loops’ in 2021, all only available as downloads on the online streaming platform Bandcamp. The first album, ‘The Bonk Seems To Be A Verb’ was released in 2017 on cassette and digital format, with only a selection of tracks available for streaming. Phil explains that he wasn’t interested in paying an online aggregator to have his music placed on streaming sites. Spotify and other mainstream online platforms pay ‘peanuts’ per stream (an average of €0.004 per play and sometimes less), which means independent musicians and more obscure acts have very little chances of ever receiving a payment for having their music streamed there. The ethos of Bandcamp are different: musicians earn more money per sale since they decide their own prices, and they have a lot more freedom on the platform. Though he’s excited to have his upcoming album released on vinyl, Phil confesses he’ll probably make the album available on Spotify too. “I’m aware that it’s the only access some people have to listening to music, so there’s kind of a balance to strike.” 

While The Bonk’s first album was a collection of one-off live studio takes, Phil explains that despite seeming improvisational in nature, most of the songs on the forthcoming album were initially demoed using rhythms and form as a basis for writing them. A couple of other pieces started in the practice room as a jam session with the band, which he later cut up, edited, and made into songs. For this project, he was particularly interested in rhythms, exploring swing rhythms and early blues as a starting point, and how to incorporate these structures within songs. The formal structures of language too, inform how he delves into using words and word play as rhythm and sounds in his compositions. “I kind of gather things as I go along, I don’t really think of it as a genre specific thing, but more digging into those interests myself and seeing where that goes,” he reveals.

The Bonk have teamed up with Drogheda-based independent label thirty-three45 for the release of ‘Greater Than, Or Equal To The Bonk’. The album was self-produced and recorded over two sessions. The first one in 2017, was recorded with long-time collaborator Brendan Fennessy in his Cork studio Big Skin with whom Phil had worked previously on O Emperor albums. The second recording session took place at Ailfionn studios in Dublin at the end of 2018. While these seem like quite a long time ago Phil explains that by the time the album would have been released, Covid and subsequent lockdowns put a stop to any touring plan. “It will be nice to have them out in the world and feel like there’s a line drawn under those”, he enthuses. Naturally, during lockdown he ended up recording and releasing his two three-track EP’s “to keep going in between the larger projects that were on hold”.

The album cover was designed by Dublin visual artist Barry Gibbons. “It comes from a video that we made for one of the songs on the album, where he created geometric shapes inspired by tangram puzzles,” he says. The video was for the song Future 87, one of the leading singles for the album, and is a rotoscope animation of choreographer and dancer Aoibhinn O’Dea. “She had the tangram shapes fastened to her limbs and did a dance with the shapes, and so the video is the animation of those movements. We took some of the stills and used them for the album cover; the geometric nature of it all seemed to tie in with some of the other elements we were thinking about.”

With a total of eleven dates around the island of Ireland this May to promote the album, The Bonk’s tour will start in Manorhamilton and conclude at Dublin’s Sugar Club, with Galway folk singer/songwriter Maija Sophia as the main support act on many of the tour dates. Phil had previously shared the stage with Sophia at festivals but ended up on a residency as part of an Arts Council programme at the Tyrone Guthrie Centre in Cavan, where both had received the prestigious Next Generation Artists award. The bursary was designed to support emerging artists in creative disciplines with an opportunity to develop their skill and produce new work, and West Cork is very lucky to have venues like Levis’ that bring us the most interesting and innovative music from around the country. Make sure not to miss it! 

The Bonk, with support from Maija Sophia, play Levis Corner House on May 14.