New Year's Revolutions

My goodness it's been a long time. September 24th of last year and such a lot has happened.

Since then, we've had a lot of various types of weathers, both literal and metaphorical. The country is in a bad way and the whole world knows about it but I do my very best not to listen to the news and that way I can pretend it's all grand most of the time.

I put my CD out in September and got around to thinking about publicising it last week. At the time, I did a few gigs and they went down very well to anyone who was there who was kind enough to give me some feedback. I-Tunes never picked up on CD Baby's nice offer to let them sell it for us but there you go - their loss. You can still get it - a few copies left - from my website or CD Baby and Amazon and all sorts of places on the tinternet.

Lots of stuff got closed down during the big freeze including most gigs I had planned for Christmas 2010 but the Iveagh Singers, the new 9-piece vocal ensemble I direct soldiered on and we did a gallant, some might say heroic first public performance in Dublin to 60 or so equally heroic audience members. We had come a long way and wanted to show off what we had done after all the work so we were grateful to the hardy souls who made it into the city centre on that very cold night in late November to support us. We're trying to organise that the weather might be nicer for the next one but we can't guarantee anything.

Since Christmas my imagination has gone into overdrive. I think it's the year for me to FINALLY enter the property market and buy a flat but I've also begun to think about the CD and I'm working on a bit of an adventure for the summer to take in a number of US states, performing my CD in as many Unitarian churches as will have me and getting a bit of a holiday thrown into the bargain. It's early days in planning yet but it's picking up pace as I go so we should have something to show for it. Finally, I"ll get to see Nashville, something I've been meaning to do for many years. I've also spent some money on a publicity campaign for The Shape Of Things on American radio and print media so we'll see if anything comes from that. After 10 or so years in the business, close-to-unknown UK singer-songwriter Jamie Lawson put a new song onto YouTube on New Years' Day and now it has had 33,000 hits. Last night, having never played a headliner in Dublin, he played to a really solid crowd downstairs in Whelans (capacity 400 or so). Crazy what the internet can do for you. Good song too - it's called I Wasn't Expecting That which is kind of funny too, a little bit like Obama and his Sputnik moments in Wisconsin last week. But my point is that lots of things happen because of these little crazy ideas we have around this time of the year and it can really set you up on the right note for the year. So we'll see what comes of my plans.

I've also become a bit of a recording session musician in the last while, last year recording with Ronan Swift for his forthcoming CD, last week going into the studio with Peadar King to record his second, and next month going to Grouse Lodge to record Stewart Agnew's long but eagerly awaited third CD. I'm like a little child with excitement about the latter, not to mention all the various CDs of excellent Irish music which are going to come out this year (adding to the list already featuring SJ McArdle's CD which looks like it will finally see the light of day in April). We have such a lot of really talented musicians all slightly under the mainstream radar so it's very hard to break out and say "look over here". I do wish people would look out for them.

Looks like it's going to be a great year !!!