A short chat with Ian O Doherty

Kerry Man Ian O Doherty took time out of his busy schedule to answer a few questions for us this week ahead of his superb EP launch. (which we will be reviewing closer to its release May 10th)  

Have a gander below.

What song would you like played at your funeral?

"Sliding Down", an instrumental piece from a fantastic collaboration album by Bela Fleck called "Heartland - An Appalachian Anthology".

Name 3 records that sends a shiver down your spine?

"Continuum" by John Mayer, "Bon Iver" by Bon Iver and "The Hollow Of Morning" by Gemma Hayes.

What is your most treasured possession?

Has to be my iPhone, it's my mini-me!

What makes you angry?

Ignorance, narrow-mindedness and complacency. 

What book influenced you most?

The Steve Jobs biography by Walter Isaacson

Can you tell me a joke?

What do you call a fish without an eye? A fsh. Well, you did ask!

What’s the best advice you’ve ever been given?

Back every horse!

What do you see when you look in the mirror?

Crumbs. (In my beard).

What is your favourite film and why?

Anything with Denzel Washington, simply because he is boss!

What is your passion?

Music is the all too obvious answer but more specifically the creating of something real and tangible from raw emotion and thought. And golf. I like playing golf too.

What was your most formative experience?

I guess it was leaving the lovely college bubble in 2007 and taking those first steps in to real adult life with taxes and bills to pay and dreams to fulfill. I found it such a confusing and uncertain period but managed to find my footing after a while.

What do you believe in?

I believe in people (most but not all) and I believe in the human spirit.

What is the funniest thing you’ve ever seen or heard when on the road?

There are far too many stories to pick just one but flailing cougars and wild, unbridled men tearing up the dance floor were always a reliable source of entertainment from the stage in my cover band days!

What is your favourite word one-liner or retort?

"You're a word, one-liner or retort"!

What would your motto be?

Keep in by the ditch!

-- 

Ian's EP is out May 10th! Listen below.

Lets make Friends with a new Irish band on the rise.

Friends of Emmet have been around the block for a while...in some guise or another. Some industry folk may have an age limit to new bands on the 'Indie' scene that they choose to support or not support. FOE are not Indie though. They are not new, they are veterans with a rare musicality and calibre that few up and coming bands possess. Their vast array of songs speak or in this case sing for itself. Look at Ray Lamontagne, Seasick Steve etc. Their music knew no limitations to age. I reckon FOE will surprise a few and gravitate in the right direction and carve a nice niche for themselves here and abroad. The audience on the night really enjoyed it as did I.

I arrived in late to a rather crammed Sugar Club last Thursday night, missing the support bands who apparently everyone was raving about. I waved at a good looking red head who is now managing the said band and found a place by the wall, because there were no free seats! Well done to the band on that one, not so good for my feet. First Irish Gig and a packed venue.

They arrived on stage albeit very nervous to start with; but armed with an impressive set list which showcased their stunning album 'State Of Mind' which the band revealed the artwork for this month via their FACEBOOK page. It is due out in Sept of this year. From the set list the stand out tracks were 13th Floor, Coming Apart an the Springsteen like Headlines (my personal fav). 

Mark Leddy, the lead vocalist, is superb. He could be Bonos double mind you. Switching from Guitar to Piano and dropping from falsetto to full on rock n' roll vocals effortlessly on the night enabled the listeners and spectators to get a real grasp of how good a front man he was. It was interesting to find out that Mark established a 60's retro James Bond styled and inspired nightclub with his friend Glenn Quinn (an Irish actor who played Mark Healy in the American sitcom 'Roseanne' and the half demon Doyle in 'Angel' a spin off of the hit series 'Buffy the Vampire Slayer') named 'Goldfingers. It quickly became the Epicenter of an amazing music and artistic scene in Hollywood. With regulars like...Marylyn Manson, The Cult, Brad Pitt, Tom Hanks, Robert De Niro, Heather Graham, Elijah Wood, Lisa Marie Presley, John Goodman etc... they all spent time there, playing live, as Djs or just hanging out. Mark went on to set up other successful bars in Los Angeles and New York but never lost his love for music and songwriting. Thankfully as Friends of Emmet are here to stay. And what a fine return to their homeland last Thursday night. I, and I am sure I am not the only one, am well impressed and they have won over a new fan right here.

Lead Single, ‘Coming Apart’, was recently featured in UK Hit TV dramas Eastenders and HollyOaks. Another track from the album; ‘Hero’, is featured in the independent movie ‘The Saving’ and all 12 tracks from the album are now licensed to MTV.

Downfall on the night: Nothing; a great performance that left the crowd wanting more, all was top notch except for slightly bogie sound here and there. 

Check out their recent performance on Canada AM here:

JOHN SHEAHAN: A DUBLINER : MONDAY APRIL 15th RTE ONE 9.35PM

JOHN SHEAHAN: A DUBLINER  : MONDAY APRIL 15^th RTE ONE 9.35PM

The documentary film John Sheahan: A Dubliner is a revealing and beautifully made portrait of a man who was an integral part of the national institution that is The Dubliners. As Barney McKenna once said, John is the ‘memory chip’, the part of the band who never forgets, ‘the mortar between the bricks’ that kept the band together.

John Sheahan was perhaps the most unlikely member ofThe Dubliners. His quiet nature and classical music training set him apart from his fellow group members. Now at the age of 73 he has reached a major turning point in his life. All of his friends that he once shared the band with in the early days, Luke, Ronnie, Ciarán and Barney are now sadly dead and he has finally decided to close the book on the life of The Dubliners after fifty years of recording and touring.

Sheahan is a deep thinker, a quality musician, composer and a poet with a passion for words.  At the age of 25 he was set up for life with a pensionable job as an ESB draftsman. He worked by day and played music by night. In 1964, to the dismay of his father who was a member of An Garda Síochána, he packed in the day job to go full time with The Dubliners.

Now fifty years later it’s a new dawn for John.  He has all of the memories neatly packed away into different compartments and is ready to tell his side of The Dubliners story. John Sheahan is an eyewitness to a colourful chapter in Irish history that has formed a large part of our national identity. He has taken a road less travelled and thankfully has survived to tell the tale.

Produced by the award winning Scratch Films and directed by five time IFTA winning director Maurice Sweeney, John Sheahan: A Dubliner is a treasure trove of rare Dublinersarchive some of which has never been broadcast in Ireland before and contemporary performances with Damien Dempsey, Declan O’Rourke, Charlie McGettigan, Máire Breatnach, Seán Keane and Neil Martin.

Great news for Irish Music Scene as new label is announced for 2014

We just heard that music industry guru Linda Coogan Byrne who sits at the helm of one of Ireland's most successful Music PR & Marketing companies - Good Seed PR- has announced that she will be launching a Record Label in 2014. 

Coogan Byrne said she got into working in the industry to "break new Irish acts, and will follow through on that by launching the record label early next year". Already the 29 year old has established one of the leading PR companys in the country and started out in a box room of her Mothers house when she was 22 from the top of a bunk bed! Since then she has worked with Irish household names to Worldwide mega bands and acts such as Marilyn Manson, REM, Duran Duran, Ron Sexsmith, Suzanne Vega, Dropkick Murphys, The Saw Doctors, The Dubliners, Imelda May, Lisa Hannigan, Nina Hynes, Madness, Friends of Emmet, Dire Straits, Frank & Walters, Eleanor McEvoy, Groove Armada, Underworld, Cyndi Lauper, Heavens Basement, The Cult, Amanda Palmer, City & Colour... the list goes on...and on. 

Bands and Artists can send demos starting now - HERE. We have always supported GSPR with their new music and hearing this rather epic news, we feel that things are looking up in the Irish Music Scene! 

Amanda Palmer Gets Standing Ovation for TED Talk At TED2013

Amanda Palmer Gets

Standing Ovation for TED Talk

At TED2013

Compares Crowd-Funding to Crowd-Surfing

“When You Connect With People, They Want to Help You...

Maybe instead of asking ourselves how we can make people pay for music, we should ask ourselves how to LET them.”

Watch Amanda’s TED Talk, “The Art of Asking”, HERE.

Amanda Palmer has made an art out of crowd-sourcing and crowd-funding, making headlines last year for raising $1.2 million on Kickstarter to fund her latest album. Amanda says they are simply the modern day versions of the street-performing she did to support herself for many years as the 8ft Bride, and the couch-surfing she’s done throughout her years of touring.

“Couch-surfing and crowd-surfing are essentially the same thing. You’re falling into the audience, and asking your fans to catch you,” she notes. “So when it came time to put out my new album, I turned to crowd-funding, and I ‘fell’ into those thousands of connections I’d made and I asked my crowd to catch me.”

Moreover, she believes that the meaningful human relationships that develop from these acts --and the vulnerability they require – are as old as art itself. “For most of human history musicians and artists have been part of the community – connectors and openers, not untouchable stars. Celebrity is about a lot of people loving you from a distance. But the internet and the content we’re able to share on it is taking us back, and it’s about a few people loving you up close, and those people being enough.”

Lastly, she feels that the lessons she learned as a street performer might just solve the music biz’s current dilemma around trying to get people to pay for music: “Maybe instead of asking ourselves how we can make people pay for music, we should ask ourselves how to LET them.”

Read more about Amanda’s TED experience and the reaction to her TED Talk in Long Beach this week HERE on the TED blog.

Amanda’s self-released album, Theatre Is Evil, debut in the Billboard Top 10 last September, and is available for a “pay-what-you-want” price (including free) in her web store HERE.

"…one of the year’s best rock records…" – Rolling Stone

"… exactly the kind of record that makes people love music in the first place" – SPIN

“Theatre of Evil is genius, savvy pop” – NPR

"She juggles bravado and compassion... " – The New York Times

Monkeeman

There is no monkeying around with this stellar new EP from Monkeeman. For those of you with an affinity towards The Smiths and Sex Pistols, Monkeeman's EP 'Pressure' will appeal to the MOD in you. Check it out below:

Heavens Basement

Red Bull Records are currently reigning rather majestically on the epic awesomeness of AWOLNATION and their more than relative success on the label. Needless to say we can see who will be following their footsteps; Heavens Basement. With their electrifying rock bass driven guitar laden contagious as fuck soaring chorus in every song on this album, Filthy Empire is about as awesome as a debut album from an aspiring rock band can get.

The albums visceral rawness is what stands to this band as it captures the essence of true rock n roll is, which is the ability to just rock out with great musicianship equipped with an effortless front man. Its no wonder They already have song placements in hit Computer game Need For Speed.

Tracks to check out: Fire Fire & Nothing left to loose.