SJ McArdle - Chin Up - out now on I-Tunes and other digital stores

http://www.facebook.com/search/?q=sj+mcardle&init=quick#/sjmcardlemusic?ref=search&sid=529611215.1961134906..1

http://www.myspace.com/sjmcardle

Those of you who - like myself - like to read the sleevenotes of CDs to see who's on them will have noticed the rather consistent appearance of SJ McArdle on the Asylum Harbour CD of mine which came out last year. I met him in 2001 at a collaborative songwriting workshop. We wrote the first song on Asylum Harbour - Precious Days Indeed - at that workshop and we became good friends. I also met Roesy the same week. It was a good week.

Since then, I've appeared on two of SJ's CDs and we've sat down on numerous occasions and written together. Many of those songs joined the first song to form Asylum Harbour and others will be on the next CD which is due out next year. I've also been playing keys in various SJ McArdle gigs over the last four months and it looks like that will continue too, something I'm greatly enjoying.

Which is all in all a very long way of telling you that SJ is starting into a promotional campaign for a very long-awaited new CD which he's recorded in Nashville with producer Tim Lauer. it is not a country record but the sleeve-watchers I mentioned at the top will be impressed by the fact that it features Bryan Sutton, Dan Dugmore, Richard Bennett and Rodney Crowell on the various tracks. For work reasons, I've heard it and it's great.The first signs of the new work are audible in the super first single - Chin Up - which is available on 7Digital and I-Tunes as well as various other digital stores. The EP also features a cover of Richard Thompson's "I Misunderstood" which is great.

You can hear Chin Up as well as various other SJ tracks by going to either of the two links at the top of this update.

All the best,josh

Ronan Swift - new name, new CD, gig to launch in Dublin Thursday week

Hi there,

In 2002, while I was working with Roesy (Birr singer-songwriter now living in Amsterdam and getting ready to release a new CD next year), I got a call from a singer-songwriter and gardener at St. Columba College in Dublin (in that order, although he possibly thought of it the other way round) called Ronan Swift. He had heard my playing on Roesy’s CD “The Spirit Store” and was wondering if I’d do a few gigs with him. We did lots of gigs at the time, sometimes as a duo and sometimes with his band, a group of long-time schoolfriends of his who had all become professional musicians in the intervening period. We recorded a CD in the chapel of St. Columba’s College with sound engineer Giles Packham and then, at some point, it was all forgotten about as Roesy’s work, and Ronan’s ambitions to leave the garden and become a secondary school teacher caught up with us.

Some things really do stay filed as ‘unfinished business’ in your head and finally, when diaries were free-er, I encouraged Ronan to put the band together and we started to gig together again and look seriously at the idea of putting the CD out. The original band was re-assembled two years ago, many of the musicians playing important roles on my own CD last year (indeed, the track "The Forty Foot" - top of my Myspace player is written and sung by Ronan himsefl) and the album that might not have been - Farewell Future Wives - will be launched on Thursday September 17th 2009 at a concert in the Unitarian Church on Stephens Green.

The band will be -

Ronan Swift – Acoustic Guitar, Vocal
Eoin O’Brien – Electric Guitar, Vocal
Josh Johnston – Piano, Wurlitzer, Vocal
Bill Blackmore – Trumpet
Malachy Robinson – Double Bass

Ronan says that the theme of the album is the “old-fashioned business of courtship”. It uses a variety of settings and approaches – musical, lyrical and contextual – to capture the highs and lows of finding a soul mate (or even something less profound) in the first decade of a new ‘minnellium’. From full band tracks to more intimate solo performances, from a Henry Purcell male voice choir to a 10 minute epic set on New Year’s Eve 1999, variety is the spice of this release.

Using different song styles, spoken anecdotes and Ronan’s naturally inviting storytelling lyrics, the listener is introduced to a colourful troupe of protagonists and onlookers. There’s the “west London fop” of You’re Havin’ A Baby, an Italian sweetheart in European Union, the Awful Man on the Tottenham Court Road, a national school mummy (Adulterous Thoughts) and a herd of Fresian cows (Interrupted By Cattle). Ronan is intuitive and versatile in his lyric writing; once wistful and poetic and then direct and bawdy, but always vivid and honest.

You can go and look for him on Facebook.

Tickets cost €10 and signed CDs are available at a special launch-night price of €10. Wine and refreshments will be served after the concert.

Hope you can make it !!! If you can’t, you can buy the disc by going to Shandon Records and clicking on “Shop”. It will be available on CD Baby and I-Tunes worldwide in due course. Feel free to spread the word to anybody you think might be interested in the disc or the concert.

All the best,




Josh