Wednesday, December 21, 2011

Recording with Michelle

This afternoon I met Michelle Kinney to record her playing cello on a number of songs for the new album at Ross Bonadonna's Wombat Studios in Brooklyn. Michelle flew in yesterday from her home in Minneapolis. When we met at the studio door I remembered that it's been 17 years since we began recording 'Bones'. It's been a decade since I recorded 'Prophecy' and most of the songs on this album were written since then. There are also two songs from before then that for some reason I'm only getting around to putting on an album now. In all, I know I have too many songs for the album so at some stage I'll have to figure out which ones end up on it.
On Sunday evening I was at the studio with Erik Della Penna, Lindsey Horner and Alli Miller rehearsing three songs that have yet to be recorded. While I still have to finish the lyrics, musically they're mostly there, and I performed one of them, 'Down By The Liffeyside', in New Mexico and Arizona a couple of weeks ago with Ryan McGiver and Jason Sypher.
I'm working on a couple of new songs which may make it on to the album yet, tentatively titled 'Star' and 'Patience'.

Sunday, December 4, 2011

My Favourite State


When Ryan McGiver and I flew into Dallas on Thursday our connecting flight to Albuquerque was delayed. Then we got on one which took us half way until the pilot had to turn back because of high winds. So we were delighted to get there on Friday in time for our performance at The Outpost Performance Space. We had a brilliant time there a year ago with Jason Sypher on the end of our tour for ‘Singing in the Dark’ and we hadn't performed together since so we were excited to play some of the new songs from the forthcoming album I've been working on. Tentatively titled ‘Belong’, it consists of songs I’ve written over the past decade and is the kind of album that follows on from ‘Prophecy’ (2002) and ‘Bones’ (1995), with some musical guests who previously appeared on either or both of those albums.

I've played in Albuquerque for many years so it was an audience familiar with the different kinds of music I've done in recent years and a good place to perform some of the new songs.

Then it was on to the lovely Flagstaff on Saturday. We had never been there but heard great things and our experience of it was wonderful. The interstate had been closed and there was heavy snow in the morning so we weren't sure we'd get in until our flight landed and the highway reopened and we made it just in time for soundcheck. We really got to know a lot of the audience in hanging out after the show and we have to go back there!

Currently post-sound check at the amazing Musical Instrument Museum in Phoenix and RYan made the comment that you could love in the dressing room here. What a beautiful venue and a great home for an incredible collection of musical instruments from all over the world.

Sunday, November 6, 2011

United Nations and Poetry Society of America

I received two lovely commissions to write and perform new work in October. Cristina Diez of FTD Fourth World in New York invited me to write a song based on texts from people living in poverty in Ireland to perform at an event to commemorate International Day for the Eradication of Poverty. Irish singer songwriter Michael Brunnock worked with me on the song we called 'Be Change' and we performed it at the United Nations on October 17.



Alice Quinn of the Poetry Society of America invited me to perform at the launch of the Penguin Anthology of 20th Century American Poetry, which took place at Poet's House on October 25. Two of the songs on my album 'Singing in the Dark' are in the Anthology as poems - Theodore Roethke's 'In A Dark Time' and Anne Sexton's 'A Woman Like That', and Alice asked if I would write music for another poem from the Anthology. I chose Paul Laurence Dunbar's 'Life's Tragedy':

It may be misery not to sing at all,
And to go silent through the brimming day;
It may be misery never to be loved,
But deeper griefs than these beset the way.

To sing the perfect song,
And by a half-tone lost the key,
There the potent sorrow, there the grief,
The pale, sad staring of Life's Tragedy.

To have come near to the perfect love,
Not the hot passion of untempered youth,
But that which lies aside its vanity,
And gives, for thy trusting worship, truth.

This, this indeed is to be accursed,
For if we mortals love, or if we sing,
We count our joys not by what we have,
But by what kept us from that perfect thing.


It was wonderful to debut the song in front of a room packed with poetry lovers and to be performing with Erik Della Penna and Jason Sypher once again.
.

Monday, October 3, 2011

Autumn in New York

Folks, thanks for stopping by my blog. It’s been a very creative twelve months since I released Singing in the Dark. After touring in the winter and spring, during this summer I did some travelling in the northwest of the U.S. and visited the beautiful town of Nelson, B.C. In Ireland I had some wonderful experiences performing at festivals in Kilkenny, Bantry and in Cavan at the wonderful Fleadh they had there this year.

Now I’m back in New York and heading toward completion of a new album which I intend to release in the spring and which has the working title of ‘Belong’. On Saturday night last the new video of a song from that album ‘No Jericho’, directed by Niall McKay, was screened at NYU’s Cantor Film Center as part of Irish Film NY, a screening festival for new Irish films.

I’ve been commissioned to write a song for International Day for the Eradication of Poverty on October 17 when I will perform the song at an event at the UN. The event will run from 1:15 until 2:30pm at the ECOSOC Chamber in the United Nations North Lawn Building. Admission is free and open to the public but you must RSVP, and it is requested that you do so before October by sending an e-mail to un.ny@atd-fourthworld.org or calling 212-228-1339.

Interestingly, this Day for the Eradication of World Poverty will coincide with the month anniversary of Occupy Wall Street. I’m watching the events unfolding there with great interest. My neighbor Ryan stopped by on his way to visit the protesters this morning and is going to pick up some sweaters and jackets from me this week as they’re going to need lots of layers as the temperatures drop.

Monday, April 11, 2011

The Irish and The Jews of Evanston & Chicago

I'm recovering from a great weekend. On Saturday I flew to Chicago to perform with Mick Moloney in his concert 'If It Wasn't for the Irish & the Jews' at the Pick-Staigler Hall at Northwestern University in Evanston. On the flight I met with Dana Lyn, Brendan Dolan and Vince Giordano and the Nighthawks, whom I last saw when I did this show with Mick at Symphony Space in 2009. When we arrived for rehearsal and sound check the dancer Niall O'Leary was already there and he and I slipped away to see what was on at the Block Museum across the way. There was an interesting show by Kiki Smith, but it was such a beautiful day we were inclined to stay outside and so followed the map of the sculpture park. They have a couple of lovely pieces by Joan Miro (the title of the first was 'Monument Erected in the Middle of the Ocean to the Glory of the Wind') and a Henry Moore which it was hard not to touch. Then we strolled over and just took in the vastness of the lake and the trees on the beautiful sunny afternoon.
The performance itself was great - Mick always puts together an interesting show - with those I mentioned above all onstage along with Jimmy Keane and Liz Hanley and special guests Arik Luck & Sari Greenberg, who did a wonderfully entertaining set of songs from Moishe Oysher.
Jimmy Keane told us the Midwest Fleadh was on at the Irish Heritage Center and so after the concert a buch of us piled into Jimmy;s car and headed to Chicago. I'd never been to the center and it's in a former public school. There's a bar on the ground floor and there were sessions everywhere, including one with two cellists. I was very glad to run into my old friends Theo Paige, Dave Cory and Brian O'Halloran, had a brief chat with Oisín MacDiarmada at the bar, and then the good fortune to finally meet Con Ó Drisceoil. We chatted in the warm Chicago night as we waited on our respective modes of transport back to our hotels and the tunes raged inside the Heritage Center.

Monday, April 4, 2011

NYC

We arrived back in New York last week.

Wednesday, March 16, 2011

Graz, Austria

We flew from Hannover to Vienna today and took a train to Graz. This is my third time to play in Die Brücke where Doris always makes us most welcome and we get to sample her homemade Schnapps. It’s such a pleasure to do these tours by train and not be tied to a vehicle – we’ve barely seen an autobahn. Each journey is relaxing and you don’t arrive at the gig exhausted from the road. Today while we waited for the train to Graz, Róisín and I took a walk in the graveyard beside the train station at Friedhof Meidling.

When the train arrived Róisín and I got a compartment to ourselves in the first class car and so we pulled all the Pullman seats fully forward and flat to make a bed and dozed all the way to Graz. It was a sunny day and occasionally we could see the tops of trees or a church spire.

I noticed, that in his review in The Guardian of Faber’s New Irish Stories Collection edited by Joseph O’Connor, Nicholas Lezard gives this beautiful quote from O’Connor’s introduction: “Ireland is still a country, for all its innumerable shames, where the empathies involved in the sharing of a story are valued for their possibilities of hope and healing.”

Saints & Tzadiks European Tour


Almost a week into the Saints & Tzadiks German/Danish/Austrian/French tour with Lorin Sklamberg, Aidan Brennan and Róisín…the news about the earthquake in Japan has been unsettling and it’s been difficult to get updates as we’ve been traveling almost every day. At the railway station in Copenhagen I picked up an English newspaper to read the recent reports, and have seen some shocking footage on FaceBook. It’s hard to fathom, hard to imagine how life is for the survivors in the devastated towns on the other side of the world in the aftermath of the earthquake and with the appalling threat of the deteriorating situation regarding the nuclear power plants.

On Sunday we performed at the Court Theatre in the Christianborg Palace, an amazing and well-preserved theatre which dates from the 1700s and which was frequented by Hans Christian Andersen. Mozart and Chopin also played there. Róisín has started to do a solo on 'River' and so she got to perform there too. We stayed in Copenhagen for our day off yesterday to explore the city and do our own Hans Christian Andersen trail. At noon we witnessed the changing of the guard at the Amalienborg Palace, and standing on the cobbled stones we talked about how soldiers in these pale blue uniforms had inspired many of Andersen’s stories. Suddenly I remembered that John Dowland had been court lutenist here and thought of him making himself at home here long ago. We had lunch at Nyhavn where Andersen lived on a few occasions, and then dropped into the Royal Theatre box office to pick up tickets for the ballet. The production, Et Folkesagn, is a modern version of a work by the renowned Danish ballet dancer and choreographer Bournonville and weaves a romantic tale set between the human and the otherworld. When we got back to the hotel room Róisín danced around for about an hour before climbing into bed and quickly falling asleep.

So Róisín and I return to Germany to join up with Lorin and Aidan for a performance in Hamburg tonight. Last week we performed in Augsburg, Kassel and at the wonderful Festival of Fürth where we were well looked after and enjoyed day-long workshops on Saturday with enthusiastic students.

Sunday, March 6, 2011

Singing in the Dark in Ireland


We just finished a tour of Ireland – the Irish release tour for Singing in the Dark.
As the album focuses on the topic of mental health, I collaborated for some of the events with people who work in the area of mental health, and I am grateful to the American Fund for Ireland, The South Lee HSE and Brendan McDonagh for their help in bringing the work to Ireland.

I arrived into Dublin on Tuesday 22 February and the following day had a rehearsal with Seamie O’Dowd and James Blennerhassett in James’ beautiful studio overlooking the south Leitrim Hills. The following morning we met up with Eamon O’Leary, over from New York, to record our first performance on the show Today with Pat Kenny on RTE 1 national radio which was broadcast the following day, the day of the general election in Ireland. We performed James Clarence Mangan’s The Nameless One and Leonard Cohen’s Anthem, and in between Pat talked with me about the link between madness and creativity.

Ireland seems very different than it was during my last trip here last summer. Everywhere there are signs that businesses have ceased operations. Almost everyone I talked with is exasperated with the handling of the financial crisis and feeling the pinch of reduced pay packets and strained finances. On the other hand there is less traffic on the roads and in the train stations, and people seem less rushed.

On Saturday afternoon Eamon and I did our first Irish in-store performance at a shop called The Celtic Note on Nassau Street. Some old friends were there to meet us as well as some new faces, some tourists, and new friends from the Irish Network of Critical Voices in Mental Health who were going on to attend Bob Whitaker’s lecture at the Edmund Burke Hall of Trinity College. We enjoyed giving some of the songs their first Irish outing and singing The Nameless One steps from where James Clarence Mangan had worked at Trinity College.

After the in-store I stepped across the road to attend Bob’s talk in the Arts Building at TCD. It was a packed auditorium where he spoke about the research he explored for his recent book Anatomy of an Epidemic. Bob’s book examines the effects of long-term use of medications such as anti-psychotics and anti-depressants within the United States in recent decades and gives evidence of research that suggests that long term use is having a disastrous effect on the mental health of American society in general. Since their introduction the percentage of people who have been diagnosed as chronically mentally ill and requiring of long term medications has increased dramatically.

Of course medications can save lives, lift people out of suicidal, psychotic and depressive states and help them rediscover enough stability in their lives to move forward on their own. But this is not the case for everyone. Too often people are prescribed medication as the first and sometimes the only treatment, when I believe what people need is to be presented with a range of options of which medication is a part.

Will Hall flew in from Portland on Sunday 27 to join us for the first gig at Whelan’s in Dublin. Will is a mental health counselor who runs Portland Hearing Voices and is the host of madnessradio.net. During each of the performances he talked about his life and work. At the performance in the West Cork Hotel in Skibbereen we participated in a workshop on the topic of Creativity & Trauma with Irish psychiatrist Dr. Pat Bracken and from the non-profit Music Alive, which brings music to mental health care settings, Kevin O’Shanahan & Caoimhe Conlon. The following day we gave a lunchtime concert at The Glucksman Gallery at University College Cork before a performance that evening at The Pavilion in Cork. Finally we concluded with a concert at the Aula Maxima of NUI Galway as part of their Arts & Medicine Series.

There has been great feedback from all of the events and I’m looking forward to doing more work like this in Ireland later this year.