France

Listen to Free My Soul .   This is a song I wrote back in 2000 after I'd taken time out from touring for a while and took a job in a PR company for almost a year .... terrible year.

On the drive home to keep myself hyped up I would sing to myself and this came out - basically talking myself through the turns in the road.

Last year (2013) we had our first trip to France - a busman's holiday - a few cafe gigs and some time off with friends and family ...  Joy.

Le Trefle Irlandais in Le Dorat

The markets

The architecture....

 the wine :) 

and the sunshine ... 

 I've been in love with France since school days when the teacher spoke to us in French on our very first class in grammar school.   I did my degree in French and had always wanted to spend time there.  There are now a lot of expats living in France so it was quite difficult to get speaking the language, but nonetheless I loved our couple of weeks in the sunshine and new landscape.  It truly freed my head and my soul.

Emotions in Singing

Firstly here's my E song - Erin Grá Mo Chroí which means Erin (Ireland) Love of My Heart (from my CD A place of My Own).  


Singing Tips - Getting Emotion into your singing
There are two kinds of singer in my opinion - technical and emotional.   Heartfelt words of songs can bring us all back to a moment in time, a moment of intense joy or extreme sadness.

So the ability of the singer to bring emotion across is key in a good performance.   But how do you do that?

Many young singers believe that they have to put something onto the words in order to express them correctly but in fact all you have to do is mean what you say.

That's your job as a singer - sing the word with the same focus and concentration you have when you're talking to a friend.

For example, when you say the word rose, what comes into your mind?   What colour is the rose?  Is it open or just a bud?  Is it in a vase or on a bush?  etc etc … All that information will be instantly in your mind when you say the word so do the same when you sing the word …. your concentration, if it is totally on what you're saying will bring those same expressions and emotions into play.   And that in turn will allow the audience to see their own images and experience their own emotions.


If you are thinking about the shopping list, or what you're wearing, or worrying about what people think of you while you're performing, then you're not concentrating on the words.   Try changing your focus and you'll find that all your nerves disappear and any of the problems you're having with your voice will start to vanish.

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D is for Dreams

This is D Day, Day 4 of the A to Z Blog Challenge.

I love dreams - I'm not always a great sleeper, but when I do, my dreams are like movies and a lot of them stay with me throughout the next day.    I keep hearing stories about songwriters who get a full song in a dream but unfortunately that has never happened to me.    However this is a song that I wrote from dreams I had back in 1994 in the middle of a tour in Germany and before the ceasefires here at home.

Click here to listen to Dreaming

Things were very bad in Northern Ireland at the time  .... Everytime Tom and I headed away on a tour we both had been feeling that we didn't want to go back again.   But at the same time while we were away I was incredibly homesick.

We were staying in a remote part of East Germany, by the side of a huge forest, where nobody spoke any English, and while I loved the place, I still couldn't settle.   Every morning I woke up feeling a compulsion to get back to Ireland as quickly as possible.

One night I dreamed a very vivid dream and our host suggested I write it down into a song ... The first 5 lines are exactly what I dreamt.

"I saw the devil, he was running after me
Past the Madonna who was happy just to be
In a room that was falling around her with thunder
That was coming from the floor not above as it should be
But when i turned around the door I'd just come running through was gone
And I awoke to find myself in the middle of this song
I'd been dreaming"

On the following two nights I had more dreams - I was very taken by the strength of the East German people who had stood up for themselves and brought about the collapse of the Wall.  We were doing Q&A workshops for school kids studying English and we couldn't answer all their questions about the workings of life here.

Then I saw the women from the Eastern world come walking
'cross the desert from their homeland in the search for something better
And my answers to their questions didn't measure to their strength
And someone murdered someone and the money'd all been spent
And the cause they'd all been working for got swallowed in the greed
And I thought about these women and their struggle to be free
While I'd been dreaming.

Chorus:

  Only dreaming, I'd been dreaming

  Dreaming, only dreaming

  And I thought about these women and their struggle to be free

  While I'd been dreaming.

After all - at home we were all just the same, worshipping different named Gods but otherwise the same.

Then I saw a building with three women in the scene

One threw a bomb and the second one she screamed

As she pulled through the broken body of her child from the chaos

To the third dressed in green in the uniform of order

And as I calmly watched I suddenly could see

That they all looked the same and they all looked like me

But I'd been dreaming

  Chorus:

  Only dreaming, I'd been dreaming

  Dreaming, only dreaming

  And as I calmly watched I suddenly could see

  That they all looked the same and they all looked like me

  But I'd been dreaming

I didn't feel we were able to speak out at home and was feeling the effects of living under the stress of constant fear for so many years.   

Well do you wonder what it means?

All these pictures in my dreams

All the yearning and the fears

And all the terror and the screams

Well I can still feel the devil round the corner of my memory

And he's waiting for a woman who won't stand up and be counted

And I'm sure there's others like me

Afraid to have their say

Simply sitting back and hoping that it all will be ok

But that's just dreaming.

  We're just dreaming, only dreaming

  Dreaming, only dreaming

  And I'm sure there's others like me

  Afraid to have their say

  Simply sitting back and hoping that it all will be ok

  But that's just dreaming.

We've been back to Germany many times since and I still love the country.  I've never been homesick again, but I've never had another song that came in a dream.

I hope you like the song .... I'd be very interested to hear your comments.  How have dreams affected your work?   Do you get any inspiration from them?   How do you remember them?

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Connemara Cradle Song

Cradle Songs or Lullabies have a great history in Ireland .. and this is one of my favourites. 
Here's my recording of The Connemara Cradle Song  

I was brought up about 4 miles inland from the Atlantic Ocean and I used to imagine that if I was really quiet, on windy nights, I could hear the waves.   

Nowadays, we spend a lot of time in Connemara and I've always loved that part of the country.  Here are the lyrics of the song along with some pics from our last trip down in Ballyconneely.

The Connemara Cradle Song (trad) lyrics

The Wild Atlantic Shore

On wings of the wind o'er the dark rolling deep

Angels are coming to watch o'er thy sleep

Angels are coming to watch over thee

So list to the wind coming over the sea

Hear the wind blow dear, hear the wind blow

Lean your head over and hear the wind blow

The Sky Road outside Clifden

 Oh, winds of the night, may your fury be crossed

May no one who's dear to our island be lost

Blow the winds gently, calm be the foam

Shine the light brightly and guide them back home

Hear the wind blow love, hear the wind blow

Lean your head over and hear the wind blow

The sun on the water makes my heart skip a beat

The currachs are sailing way out on the blue
Laden with herring of silvery hue
Silver the herring and silver the sea
And soon there'll be silver for baby and me
Hear the wind blow love, hear the wind blow
Lean your head over and hear the wind blow

Omie Strand

The currachs tomorrow will stand on the shore
And daddy goes sailing, a sailing no more
The nets will be drying, the nets heaven blessed
And safe in my arms dear, contented he'll rest
Hear the wind blow love, hear the wind blow
Lean your head over and hear the wind blow

Low tide

I was really surprised when I was playing over in America that people knew the song and could sing along easily with it - then I found out that it very closely resembles the American song "Down in the Valley"!

It was written by Frances Waller who also wrote the Spinning Wheel ….

And was first recorded by Delia Murphy in 1936.

B is for the Beach

A couple of Bs for you today ....

First a song - Baby Mine from my second album Dreaming many moons ago.

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I am very fortunate to live beside the sea - we open the gate at the bottom of our garden and we're on the beach.   It's not a very pretty beach ... stony and all the rubbish from the mussel boats gets swept up onto it ... but it's ours and I love it.  It was a childhood dream of mine to live by the water and here we are.

We're on the shores of Carlingford Lough which opens out onto the Irish Sea .... Carlingford Lough incidentally is one of only a couple of fjords in Ireland - (a fjord is an inlet where the mountains run down to the sea) and in our case songs have been written about it for centuries.

The Irish Sea from the top of CloughMor behind our house looking across the water to the Cooley Mountains.

B is also for Border - At night time we see the lights of Carlingford across the water.  Carlingford is in the south of Ireland and we're in Northern Ireland .... Can you see the border running up the middle of the water there!!  The border has been a part of our lives constantly here - no customs now and no checkpoints any more, but if we have to send a letter to those lights over there, we have to send it airmail!!!  go figure!!

During the bad storms earlier over Christmas the tide came right up to the gate ... never seen that before .

But low tide is equally spectacular 

Are you near water?   Does the water inspire you?  Were you affected badly by the weather this Christmas?   And what about borders?   

This is day to of the A to Z Blogging Challenge - read loads of interesting blogs yesterday ... 

A is for April Songs

I'm taking part in a month of blogging from the A to Z blog challenge  for the month of April and as I've done several blogs about songs on a theme I thought it would be good place to start.

So A is for April songs  -  and they're surprisingly few and far between.   I guess there's a gap in the market :)


So here's some mellow listening for you to start the new month...  And I should point out that these are my choices ... so I'm leaving out songs that don't do it for me..

There's one or two obvious ones ....

First always is April Come she Will from one of my hero's Paul Simon

And a close second - the wonderful Ella Fitzgerald singing April in Paris - with a special guest appearance by Louis Armstrong.   Ella's voice turns me to jelly every time I hear her ...

Sometimes it Snows in April from Prince is a fantastic piece, although I'm guessing that some of you reading this in America are well fed up with snow by now.

I found April from Deep Purple (1969) doing a random search on the inter web thingy ....

The über talented Rufus Wainwright got the idea for - April Fool's -  in the bath!

and for something a bit more classic here's Al Jolson overdubbing to Larry Parks on screen singing April Showers

And Dionne Warwick singing The April Fools from 1969.

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There you go .... all l have time for now .... I'd love to hear from you if you know any more April songs ... and I hope that no-one plays any April Fool's pranks on you today :)

Silent sunday 2nd March 2014