Through the Bitter Frost & Snow

At last it's snowing in New York. On our way to her drama class my daughter didn't even want to take a bus or cab today but to skip in the snow and throw snowballs. When I was seven months pregnant and on tour in Ireland I remember finding it difficult to play guitar and then I more or less put it away. I took it up again a few weeks ago and have been playing regularly. About time as the child is now nine. Years.
Last week I had another recording session for 'Belong' at Excello Studios in Brooklyn with Ryan McGiver, Lindsey Horner, Erik Della Penna and Allison Miller. We recorded the basic tracks for two songs "Down By The Liffeyside" (not the traditional song but my own) and "I Could Be Happy". The chorus of the latter song still needs completion but music is there. There's another song that's been hanging around that I call "Bring Back the Dead" but I'm not sure that's what it ultimately wants to be called, and satisfactory lyrics beyond the one verse are not forthcoming, though it has withstood a few rewrites over the past decade.
I also had a recording session for 'Smarty Girl' the audiobook of my friend Honor Molloy's beautiful novel, her story of growing up in Dublin in the 1960s with her mother (an American writer), father (a well known actor) and siblings. Honor invited me to compose and arrange music for the audiobook which will be released by Simon & Schuster in the spring.
For that project Brendan O'Shea and Donie Ryan played guitar and banjo beautifully on melodies I wrote for Honor's lyrics of two songs "Dartinne" and "Goosetown". Brendan also laid down some harmonica. Next week Shahzad Ismaily is going to record some appropriate musical weirdness and Marta Cook will be recording harp.
In the meantime, I have a few songs to finish so that I can start into the home strait of recording "Belong".

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'.

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.

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.
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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.

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.

NYC

We arrived back in New York last week.