Month: July 2020

John Spillane has continued his now legendary DeBarra’s residency, playing the first Thursday of every month, for nearly 20 years – he has performed through snowstorms, through floods, through health scares, and most recently through lockdown and the all-encompassing COVID-19 pandemic – albeit virtually!

On Thursday 6th August, John performs once again from behind closed doors on the DeBarra’s stage, with his band. He will perform two very special shows on the night which will be livestreamed and ticketed.

The shows, titled ‘Reeling in the years with John Spillane’, will see John and band play songs old and new from the Gaelic Hit Factory’s back catalogue, spanning the last 30 years. Each show will be live and invariably different with the early show starting at 9pm (GMT+1) to cater for John’s Irish and European fans, and a second show going out live for his North American fanbase at 5pm CT / 6pm ET – (11pm GMT+1).

This is a live streamed ticketed event only. It will not be available via Facebook or other social media platforms. Once a ticket is purchased, the show can be exclusively viewed via a private Youtube link.

How it works:
Purchase a ticket from DeBarra’s or John’s website, and on the evening of the show you will be emailed a private link to watch the gig. The link will be sent out 15 minutes before the performance to your email address. Please ensure that you enter a valid email address to the purchase page so that you can receive the link. If you purchase a ticket with PayPal, you will receive the gig link via the email address listed on that PayPal account.

Tickets are €12 and €10 (Students, OAP’s, unwaged), there is also a group rate of €20 for people watching together in their social bubbles.

Be sure to post song requests into the events page in the build-up to the show and get ready to reel back the years with the mighty John Spillane!

Event page: https://www.facebook.com/events/316700999518070/

Ticket link: http://debarra.ie/listings/john-spillane-12/

Joe Chester releases the fourth single, Nothing At The End’ on Friday August 21st, from his widely acclaimed album ‘Jupiter’s Wife’. Joe gives us some background insight in to the singles tracks.

‘Nothing At The End’

‘Along With Staying Together For The Children’, ‘Nothing At The End’ came along in a kind of trance in the summer of 2017. I feel very grateful for these mysterious letters from the ether, as who knows where they come from, somewhere suspended in the space between understanding and recrimination. In all my years as a student of song, perhaps the greatest thing I’ve learnt is that in art, unlike in politics, you can be “truthful but not honest”. I wanted the song to have something of the feel of Doc Pomus’s Save The Last Dance For Me, a rock and roll masterpiece with such generosity of spirit (and such a bittersweet backstory).

‘Down In The Willow Garden’

During the recording of ‘Jupiter’s Wife’ sometimes I would record a quick cover version while the tapes were rolling. This is one, a nineteenth century Irish murder ballad originally called Rose Connolly that crossed the Atlantic, changed its name and wound up in Kentucky where Phil and Don Everly learned it and put it on their 1958 LP, Songs Our Daddy Taught Us. Those guys are like Mozart to me.

Singer/songwriter Fly the Nest (Stephen Cooper)has just a new epic single, ‘Borrowed Time’. This song is a journey through someone’s life and finding their purpose. The pop-rock anthem is about giving life everything you have while you are on this earth, appreciating what you have, and embracing every opportunity.

The song starts with seeing life through a ‘kaleidoscope’, riding the waves as they come before you ‘fly away’.  When you get knocked down, it’s important to get back up like a ‘Rocket ’or a ‘Spaceman.’ 

The climax of the song brings listeners to the end of a lifespan: the realization that your time is running out, but knowing you gave it your all and left your mark on the world, and knowing that nothing in life is guaranteed. 

Dublin native Fly the Nest (Stephen Cooper) started playing music at a young age, performing in various bands. Last year he started solo project Fly the Nest, under which he writes and releases his own music. Stephen also writes for sync, and says that writing for film and TV has opened up another facet of his creativity. It’s helped him find his sound, which he calls “cinematic rock.” The project also encompasses Stephen’s time spent on the pub circuit in Scandinavia. Stephen now spends his time between Ireland and Denmark. The name Fly the Nest came from travelling and moving on from a previous musical journey to the one he’s currently on. 

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Fresh off hitting #7 on Youtube’s viral charts with ‘Face Reveal’, Offica drops a track for everyone living their best life. Featuring drill royalty in the form of Harlem Spartans founder (and multi-million streamed rapper) Blanco, alongside fast-rising Irish driller Reggie, ‘Where’s The Motive’ sees the trio trade bars on how they’re planning on partying the night away as soon as quarantine is done. Heavyweight drill production comes from CZR (who has earned credit on records for Pop Smoke & DigDat) to make an instant classic as viral as the events that inspired it…

Ireland’s most successful rapper in a generation, in the space of a year, since his breakthrough hit ‘Naruto Drillings’, Offica has amassed millions of streams across a handful of tracks. With a commitment to quality over quantity, he’s notched up 15 million+ streams across a mere 5 tunes, with his anime-influenced breakthrough track Naruto Drillings (along with the remix from international Youtube star KSI) now ranking as a true drill classic. Elsewhere, he’s gone bar for bar with drill pioneers Skengdo x AM, & brought through new talent in the form of the-much-tipped new
MC Fizzler — all of this while wearing his distinctive naruto mask. His last track, ‘Face Reveal’, saw Offica remove the mask for the first time, giving him a viral moment that saw the video saw to #7 on Youtube’s chart – an unheard of event for most drill rappers, let alone one from the outskirts of Dublin.

His secret is a previously unheard of fusion of influences – born in Nigeria and raised between the UK and Ireland, he folds all three cultures into his verses, switching between Yoruba, Gaelic and London street slang to create a unique, utterly fresh lyricism. With his bars veering from the rap staples of beef, ambition, girls and partying, to more unusual concepts such as the notion of home, immigration, race, religion and belonging, he has successfully used the bass-heavy, cutting edge sounds of drill as a vehicle to vocalise the hopes and dreams of a generation…

OFFICA: Instagram – @a9offica Twitter – @a9offica 
REGGIE: Instagram – @reggi3_b Twitter – @Reggi3_ 
BLANCO: Instagram – @blanc0b0urne 

Galway musician Me Auld Flower today releases the single ‘Get Out Of California’ with an accompanying video. It coincides with a limited edition CD release of his highly-regarded album ‘The Vaults Of Consciousness’, available through Bandcamp.

Me Auld Flower wrote the song after coming home to Ireland from the US, having lived there on and off for a number of years. 

“The time I spent in California was really chaotic and that is mirrored in the song and video, but the title is more of a comment on my personal relationships at the time rather than a comment on the place,” he says. 

“I sometimes found the really big cities would wear on me but the outdoors are staggeringly beautiful and vast, and some of the wilderness I found there in the deserts, forests, and mountains, changed me forever.“

The song is one of 9 original folk songs on ‘The Vaults Of Consciousness’, a collection of dreamlike arrangements, poignant storytelling, and enduring melodies.

Me Auld Flower can be followed on Spotify, Bandcamp, Instagram, Facebook, and his own website. 

Since Uly’s last release in March, he has been hard at work. Utilising the time at home as best he can, Uly is back with another single – ‘I don’t need to understand’.

Light, short and sweet – this is quintessential Uly. It’s playful, summery, and lush. We have the usual suspects – a tight rhythm section, lyrical guitars – and of course some brass for good measure.

‘I don’t need to understand’ is a nod to and interpretation of the mixed feelings one gets at the start of something new – in particular, a new romantic relationship.

‘I think I want to hold your hand – I don’t understand this. When did I want to become your man?
This wasn’t a part of my plan.’

“[…] Normally, the lyrical content and song’s ‘meaning (I hate talking about a song’s meaning – it doesn’t do anything for me) comes after, at the very end of the process when the bulk of the harmony and melody has fleshed out.

This time around however, it started off with that little vocal hook/line at the start. After that, all the melodic parts and lyrics started coming to me pretty much simultaneously, except for the brass. I had to work on that a good bit. For example, I’d be tweaking some guitar parts but then lyrics and a vocal melody would pop out, so I’d record both at the same time just to make sure I didn’t lose anything.

It was a bit of a scramble, I wanted to get this down quick before I lost my mojo and was left with nothing (it happens far too often) – so the bulk of the song was done in a day or so, and hasn’t changed all that much since then, which I love.“

This is the only single that will be released of Uly’s upcoming EP, ‘if you were a day, you’d be Sunday – songs to go walking to’, which is due out on Friday the 24th on Faction Records.

Photo: Clare Lyons

Exactly 20 years after the release of his self-titled, debut solo (& No.1) album, one of the best-loved singers of our generation, Ronan Keating, returns with an album that encapsulates his many musical achievements since the millennium.

Entitled ‘Twenty Twenty’, and set for release on Decca Records on July 24th, Ronan describes his new record as “a greatest hits of brand new music”. To help him celebrate, Keating made two inspired choices: to dive into his back catalogue and revisit three of his biggest hits and, for some of the new tracks, call in some friends.

With production assistance from his longstanding wingman Steve Lipson (Annie Lennox, The Rolling Stones, Simple Minds, Whitney Houston, Paul McCartney), as well as stand-out solo tracks, Ronan has collaborated with some of his closest musical (and chart-topping) friends for ‘Twenty Twenty’,  featuring duets with Alison Krauss, Robbie Williams, Emile Sande, Shania Twain, Nina Nesbitt and Clare Bowen.

So to the classics: Ronan Keating has released some of the defining pop songs of the past two decades which simply had to be featured – cornerstone tracks, ‘Life is a Rollercoaster’, ‘Lovin’ Each Day’ and his debut solo single ‘When You Say Nothing At All’ (originally recorded for the soundtrack to the blockbuster film Notting Hill), are here brilliantly reworked, bringing back memories but with a celebratory 2020 twist.

Since the original break-up of Boyzone, one of the most successful British bands of the Nineties, Keating has forged a soaraway solo career: two back-to-back No.1 singles straight out of the gate, 30 consecutive Top 10 singles, 10 studio albums, multiple tours, 20 million records sold on top of the 25 million sold with Boyzone. In other areas, too, he’s happily stretched his wings: judging on both the X Factor and The Voice in Australia, acting for both television drama and film, a highly acclaimed stint on London’s West End and, now, bringing breakfast show entertainment to the nation with his morning radio show on Magic FM with Harriet Scott – accumulating the highest ratings ever in Magic Radio history.

Over the past 12 months Ronan has been tirelessly working on an album that celebrates an incredible solo career spanning two decades. He wants to acknowledge that he certainly doesn’t take this for granted: “There’s not a lot of artists that have been lucky enough to do 20 years and still be here.” There are even fewer who have matched a successful band career with a successful solo career. He adds, “I’m very honoured to have had that, so I wanted to mark it with an album like this.”

So this is ‘Twenty Twenty’. The album eagerly awaited by Keating’s fans, who have grown up with him over the past 20 years. The album of Keating’s adult life.

At a time of great uncertainty for the music industry, particularly crew and session musicians, veteran singer-songwriter Mick Flannery releases his seventh album ‘Alive – Cork Opera House 2019’, in support and gratitude to those who play an integral part in his career. The album, which is out now, is a fully independent release, with all proceeds being distributed to Mick’s band and crew.

Mick says: “I’m very glad to have the opportunity to share this album during these uncertain times. I feel it showcases the talents of the people I’m lucky to share stages with. I’ve been playing music with this band for quite a while now and this was a particularly nice night to capture on a recording. Things happen in live gigs that don’t happen so easily in studio settings, the atmosphere of the room and the audience plays in, perhaps a home-crowd helped also. I think this album captures the in-the-moment spontaneity of the musicians, and that’s a special thing to hear.”

Mick’s band, who take centre stage with this release, are: Yvonne Daly (vocals), Mick’s aunt and backing singer since his debut release ‘Evening Train’ in 2005; Karen O’Doherty (violins, synthesiser, vocals) who has been performing with Mick for 17 years; Christian Best (drums) an award-winning music producer, drummer, mixer and owner of Monique Studios in Cork, who has been performing with Mick since 2007; and more recent members: Alan Comerford (electric guitar, vocals) member of the RTE Choice Award winning band O Emperor; Mike O’Connell (bass, vocals) who has worked with many Irish artists, such as Jack O’Rourke, Niall McCabe, The Hard Ground and Tiz McNamara; Phil Christie (keyboards, vocals) member of the RTE Choice Award winning band O Emperor, and now The Bonk; and Matthew Berrill (saxophone, clarinet) who has worked with numerous acclaimed Irish artists including John Blek, Pauline Scanlon, Anna Mullarkey and The Whileaways.

Also included in the profit share are Mick’s engineers, who work tirelessly behind the scenes, Chloe Nagle, John Fitzgerald, and Sandra O’Mahony.

The 17-track live album, recorded in front of a sold-out audience in 2019, features stand out songs ‘There Must Be More’ and ‘In the Gutter’, and witty interludes ‘Brad Pitt from the Neck Down’ and ‘Dead Thing Missing’, written by Mick’s friend Andrew House for their “Side Project” Christy Skulls.

The release of ‘Alive – Cork Opera House 2019’ further solidifies Mick Flannery as one of Ireland’s hardest working touring musicians. Since the release of his last record in July 2019, Mick has performed over 100 shows in Ireland, the UK, USA, and Canada. This Saturday 25th July at 9pm, ten Irish music venues will all be participating in a live streamed show, performed with the full band, coming from Dolan’s Warehouse in Limerick. 

All venues/promoters participating will receive 50% of ticket sales from this show via their own ticket link. Mick’s team explains: “This is a small gesture of solidarity to these independent music venues which make up an integral part of the tapestry of the Irish music industry.  We need to support them now, and even more so when they are allowed to re-open.”

The live stream album launch is held in association with: Dolan’s Warehouse, Roisin Dubh, Whelan’s, Turning Pirate, Spirit Store, Coughlan’s Live, De Barra’s Folk Club, Connolly’s of Leap, Lantern, and The Duncairn. Support will come from Limerick singer-songwriter Emma Langford.

Tickets €15 are available to buy on Mick Flannery’s Bandcamp:

https://mickflannery.bandcamp.com/merch/alive-full-band-streamed-show-july-25th-2020-eu-timezones

Mick Flannery’s seventh album ‘Alive – Cork Opera House 2019’ is out now.

Buy/stream at: https://smarturl.it/AliveMickFlannery

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One of Ireland’s greatest soulful jazz and blues singers Mary Coughlan has released her brand-new single ‘Two Breaking Into One’ today.

“It’s a song about betrayal.. it took me 15 years to feel comfortable with writing this song.” Mary Coughlan

Mary Coughlan is arguably the greatest female singer to have emerged from Ireland in recent times.

Whether you’re into folk, blues or jazz, you can’t fail to be moved by the emotional depth, expression and power in her voice, forged from an extraordinary life.

Mary has carved out a timeless and highly regarded career, with a legion of devoted fans worldwide. To hear Mary sing is truly to be at the core of the human heart.

Since her first album ‘Tired and Emotional’ rocketed her to overnight fame in 1985, she has recorded 15 further solo albums. Coughlan has sold out some of the UK’s most prestigious venues and has toured the US, Australia, New Zealand, Europe and Scandinavia.

Throughout 30 years of her quite extraordinary life and recording career, Mary has drawn heavily from her legendary heroes: the grievous, teary outpourings of Billie Holiday (to whom she devoted a double album of her songs), the husky flirtations of Peggy Lee, Van Morrison’s soulful wails and the defiant chanteusery of Edith Piaf.

In June 2020, in recognition of Mary’s achievements and immense impact on the culture and arts community in Galway City, the Mayor, Mike Cubbard presented her with a 2020 lifetime achievement award.

The new album ‘Life Stories’ was mostly written and recorded by Pete Glenister and Mary Coughlan at No Name Studio. The album will be released on 4th September 2020.

Having kicked off this year featuring on a host of 2020 hot lists (2FM ‘Rising Artist of 2020’, Goldenplec ‘Plec Pics’ for 2020 and named as one of Her.ie’s ‘Ones To Watch’ for 2020 amongst them), Moncrieff is set to release his brand new single ‘PLAYLOUD’ on the 24 July 2020.

His debut body of work ‘The Early Hurts’ EP featured lead track ‘Like I Do’, this debut radio single (released in Sept 2019) received extensive airplay across national radio racking up nearly 12 million audience impressions and 5 million streams. The success of the single and EP led to Moncrieff selling out his first headline show in Dublin in less than 3 hours. Moncrieff’s growing reputation also landed support slots touring with headline Irish acts Picture This and Walking on Cars. 

Having spent most of early 2020 in the solitude of his friend and co-producer Toby Scott’s home studio in Brighton, what has resulted is a collection of songs free and unconfined by genre that capture the zeitgeist of an ever changing musical and cultural landscape. With the current state of world affairs in turmoil, this new chapter sees Moncrieff explore his role and place as a young person transitioning into adulthood in a world that seems to be getting crazier by the day, the first chapter in this new story is ‘PLAYLOUD’.

Speaking about the song, Moncrieff says: “‘PLAYLOUD’ was written as a reaction to a world that seems to be getting more messed up each day.  It was written as a call to arms to young people and any one who feels frustrated and alienated by the world they live in. A world where greed, consumption and the desire to make money trumps over all.  With Global leaders not doing enough to tackle (and some outright denying) the threats of climate change, and the growing gap between the rich and the poor. Since it was written in January we’ve seen how the world’s two biggest leaders fumble through a world pandemic, with countless thousands of lives needlessly lost as well as the continued systemic racism and police brutality inflicted upon the black community in the states and the UK.”

“‘PLAYLOUD’ stands as an act of defiance and social disobedience by the youth to not allow the failings of those in power to stand in the way of their pursuit of happiness and self expression. Life is too short to waste time being concerned with other people’s opinions, and the youth want to be free to determine their own destiny as individuals. To live life to the fullest as the truest and most unapologetic version of yourself you can be no matter if the world feels like it could end tomorrow.” says Moncrieff.

‘PLAYLOUD’, the brand new single from Moncrieff will be released across all streaming platforms on the 24 July 2020.

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