Back There

Ta Da!!!   Big Drum Roll !!

It is here - at last.   Our new CD has been born.

It is entitled Back There and features 11 songs - some that we have written, and the rest from some of my favourite songwriters.

We are currently in the process of getting the album out into the wide world - radio and folk magazines and updating websites and so on.

To all our wonderful supporters from the Kickstarter campaign way back last Autumn I give you hearty thanks - by now you should have had your CDs or they're in the post to you if they haven't arrived yet.  I hope you enjoy it.

We played a set at the festival last month featuring the new songs and allowing Tom to get over his total panic at having his voice featured on record for the first time!  I swear he was hoping no-one would buy it!   But we're getting good feedback so far so the panic is over :)

Here's a video taken from the audience of the title track, Back There.  The song was written by an old friend of mine, Tony Kerr from Derry, who's now living and working in Nashville.  It's a gentle theme of looking back to childhood days and I love the sentiment in it.

I have been missing my visits to everyone's blogs in the past weeks - still haven't got my head into some sort of sane place, but it'll happen soon I know and I'm looking forward to catching up with what's going on in your lives.

I've been having fun playing with Lisa Sonora's Dreaming on Paper online workshop over the past few weeks - taking 10 minutes here and there to just splash paint about.   It has always been a secret dream of mine to play with paint, not necessarily to paint pictures but just to mess about with colour and this course is perfect. # lisasonora.com

Have a great weekend and I hope you're all enjoying the start of the turning seasons.

Fiddlers Green Festival 2015

Photo by Pete Heywood, Living Tradition Magazine

We've come to the end of a wonderful Fiddlers Green Festival here in Rostrevor - the 29th festival.  Tom and I had our main performance on Friday night and it was really nice gig - we did the first part of the main concert where Seamus Begley received an award for services to traditional music.  The photo above is from it - we didn't get a good one of the two of us unfortunately but I love this one.  Guest performances at festivals are always a bit more nerve inducing than going out and playing our regular full night gigs in folk clubs... But they're also very rewarding and I love being a part of the bigger picture.  We had a really enjoyable set and it was great to see lots of friends in the audience - our folk family from Germany, Scotland, England and Luxembourg.   With that out of the way and all my other gigs sorted from earlier in the week, the rest of the weekend was for playing and catching up with friends and visitors - in fact the last of them only left yesterday morning.

A few personal favourites from the week 

For me as an audient the highlight has been seeing a young Dublin songwriter called Declan O'Rourke.  I'm not sure that his recordings really capture what he's about - this is a video from the Transatlantic Sessions back in 2011.  I love this song "Time Machine" ..  we can never have enough friends.

His voice is superb - you can easily imagine it on a film sound track and he has a wonderful stage presence.  His most well known song is Galileo which has been covered by quite a few singers already.

On Wednesday night Kila were top of the bill - they have recently performed the soundtrack for the new children's animated movie - Song of the Sea - which everyone here is raving about …  Here's the trailer for the US launch of it.

Kila are essentially a folk rock band - mixing African, Indian and Celtic rhythms and tunes.  They're utterly brilliant in my opinion but they were far too loud for our small hall - my ears were still ringing two days later.
Here they are live at Dublin venue several years ago - this is one of their quieter numbers :)  But I'd love to see them at a big outdoor event - I think they show up regularly at Glastonbury.

Fiddlers Green is a wonderful mixture of outdoor ceilidhs, pub sessions, events up the mountain and on the water, a Duck Derby of course :), lots of childrens' events, art exhibitions - this year featuring Kingerlee and the photographer Minihan as well as many amateur art events, pop up cafes, 3 concerts a day, poetry readings and barely time to sit down and have a chat with all the visitors that come in - old friends from around the world and new friends waiting to be made... It's a wonderful event - I thoroughly enjoyed it and now it's time for a rest :)

Walking around Bundoran

I made 3 attempts to capture the sunset tonight and my silly husband kept photo bombing me so I've left him in!!! 😀

It's been ages since I've been here to write a post - but thankfully all the busyness has calmed down for now and we're getting a chance to step back a bit.

We've been down at my homeplace for the weekend and the car broke down.  This, only two days after we decided to change it.  It must have heard us and taken offence.  Anyway we've had to stay another night to get it repaired, hopefully tomorrow, or else borrow my mum's car to get us back.  But it was a lovely gift of extra time - not having to do that 100 mile return journey.  So instead we went for a stroll around Bundoran, ate ice-cream and watched a couple strolling on the beach.  

Bundoran used to be the height of holiday chic when I was young.  It was packed with amusement arcades, swing boats, dance halls, bars and chip shops. It is just across the border, in the very south of Co. Donegal, only a few miles from where I grew up, and traditionally this fortnight was its heyday.  People poured out of the North to get away from the 12th July mayhem.  

Now, it's cheaper to go abroad if you want to get out and besides there's very little trouble around the 12th any more.  The Orangemen get to Parade, there's a Bank Holiday and places like Bundoran have to work very hard to attract visitors. Tonight the place was very quiet - a few people like ourselves wandering around.   Perhaps next weekend will be busier.  

But all that aside it still has a magnificent beach and has lots of surfers around and in Winter the wild Atlantic can be seen in all its glory.   

Did you have a favourite childhood spot? Has it changed much?  

Tread softly because you tread on my dreams

He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven

Had I the heavens' embroidered cloths,

Unwrought with golden and silver light,

the blue and the dim and dark cloths

Of night and light and the half-light,

I would spread the cloths under your feet:

But I , being poor, have only my dreams;

I have spread my dreams under your feet;

Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.

W.B.Yeats     

Today marks the 150th anniversary of the birth of one of Ireland's greatest poets ... William Butler  Yeats.

The poem above is one of my very favourite pieces of writing - it moves me to tears every time I read it.

We learned some of Yeats' poems at primary school and although I feel very uneducated in my knowledge of poetry, the words I learned by rote back then still have a beauty that resonates with me. The Lake Isle of Innisfree was one of those.

The Lake Isle of Innisfree

I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,

And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made:

Nine bean-rows will I have there, a hive for the honey-bee,

And live alone in the bee-loud glade.

And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,

Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings;

There midnight's all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow,

And evening full of the linnet's wings.

I will arise and go now, for always night and day

I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;

While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements grey,

I hear it in the deep heart's core.

W.B.Yeats

Happy Birthday WB - thank you for all the beautiful words.

A week offline

Our neighbour who keeps the bees and grows Christmas trees in the field beside our house is now building a new house.  And in the first throes of clearing the site, the guy with the digger cut our telephone lines - woohoo!   Not!   One whole week we've been offline and out of contact.  No phone, no internet, no mobile, no cable tv.   (Our mobile phones are boosted through wifi cos we're so close to the border and have a terrible signal).

For the first day or two it was weird - driving into the village to sit outside the pub where there's a good global wifi signal - then for the next few days we realised we were getting loads done around the house and offline, but after the 5th day it turned to utter frustration having to go to a cafe in town to get a good enough signal to collect emails and check bank and do any work.

It was an interesting experiment.  Hopefully as this house progresses it doesn't become a repeat occurrence.  With a bit of care, the red tape he's put up to mark out the phone line will keep that digger in its place.

Full Moon and a new choir

Last night the last of my new projects for this year got off to a flying start. Another community choir for a regeneration project that's been happening in the Mourne Mountains.   We met at Tory Bush Cottages - if you're ever looking for a self catering place to stay in this area this is beautiful.

27 people showed up on a freezing cold night (it was 5C last night! What is going on? 1st June) and they made a really good sound.   I had gathered together lots of mountain themed songs with simple harmonies and my favourite of all - rounds.  Lots of African pieces have made their way into my repertoire in the years since I started leading groups for singing and they make a fabulous instant harmony that makes all the singers feel good.  

Community choirs are wonderful.   They're informal and the repertoire is often more folk based and taught by ear.  There's no audition process as the ethos is that they should be all inclusive so they're a great place for building strength in your voice.  And while there are high and low parts, the focus is not on soprano, alto, tenor, bass, and for this one anyway, which isn't performance based, it's relaxing for people to sing for an evening, enjoy a cup of tea and a chat and go home again without worrying about practicing, learning words, or dressing up (for them anyway).   The age group last night ranged between 35 and 75 and it looks like it'll be a fun group.   We're running for the four Mondays of June and possibly another four weeks later in the Autumn.

Driving home through the mountains the moon was full and spectacular.   I tried a couple of quick photos on my phone.  Will definitely remember to bring my camera with me next week - I"m still not much past pointing and clicking but it is such fun.

What is it about the full moon?  It's so awe inspiring, or just plain inspiring.   I cannot look at it without thinking about the people who would have lived here 1000 or more years ago - I wonder were they scared of the moon?  No wonder they worshipped her.   I would like to learn to take good moon pictures.

Where were you watching the full moon this month?  Actually just thinking about it, will we have a blue moon this month?  We may well do.  

Remotely Bass

The recording process has changed a lot in recent times for all but the top  rock and pop acts.

In the old days we used to book a studio usually for 3 consecutive days on 4 consecutive weeks and completed an album in that time.   It was costly but exhilarating to be so immersed in the recording process.

Nowadays, because CD sales have dropped dramatically and online sales are negligible, recording budgets need to be controlled more tightly.   It's relatively easy to have a small studio in your own house if you know what you're doing and have good microphones and equipment.   We've had Ballyneddan Studio for nearly 10 years now - it's perfect for acoustic projects and for spoken word recordings.  Tom's a great engineer and our house is in a really quiet setting.  It's only one room but we sometimes use all the other rooms in the house to separate the instruments.

It's lovely being able to record at home, but there is a downside - everything else that you're doing takes precedence over your own creative process or practice.  Everyone else's needs take priority - teaching, recording, promotion, editing, family etc.

The plus side though is that the recording process is totally in your own control.  So if you complete one session with a musician and something needs to be changed on your own tracks then you can go and fix it.

I know there are some young singers and musicians who read here from time to time, so for you here's a bit of clarification.

A session is where one instrumentalist comes in and records that instrument on multiple tracks.   Sometimes, like with guitar for example, that instrument may be on almost every track on the album so the session may last as much as 3 days.

James, adding bass to our songs

But with bass, we are only using it on 4 songs on this recording.   So with the wonders of modern technology we were able to send the tracks by email to our bass player, he plays and records his parts on to those tracks and then sends them back digitally.  Wonderful:)  All of sudden the songs are taking shape and it's a delight.