Last time I wrote here, it was snowing . . . . . . .

What a weird year it has been so far - and it's only April.

The prime minister of Great Britain has taken to calling his potential voters bigots and we've had four seasons of weather (and quite extreme seasons at that) in four short months. Nobody has any money and everybody seems to want to blame somebody else for that and all their other problems.

Despite still being a penniless musician, I've just moved out of my parents' house for the first time in 15 years which has proved enormously positive and enormously exciting. It's also spurred on all sorts of other opportunities. I initially went even further than I ended up settling on by going over to London for three weeks which I loved except that I had a reality check and realised that I couldn't stay. I would run out of energy and money within about a month of needing the sort of money staying in a place necessitates. Still, it was a lot of fun to catch up with people, play some of my songs, meet old friends and make new ones, go to the theatre and some gigs, and get to travel on lots of trains. I love trains.

I came back rested and having realised that two bands I was in were both timebombs waiting to happen, I realigned my priorities and have worked steadily on a number of other projects since then. I have decided to release my own third solo CD The Shape Of Things in September. It's an album of lullabies, something I discovered whilst trying to decide the order of tracks. Put it this way, they're extremely effective lullabies. Just don't listen to it while you're driving. Apart from the fact that one of the composers of the tracks I didn't write has been left somewhat upset by my level of improvisation on his tune, I've been getting good feedback from people listening to the pieces - I look forward to playing some gigs around the launch.

I'm also playing with Keith Mullins, SJ McArdle and Ronan Swift. These three guys write, sing and play fantastic music. I have a bit of a split personality - I'm a big music fan and a performer. As a fan, there's nothing more inspiring than the fact that we are in an extremely exciting time for new CDs but that's also a bit intimidating as a performer. It's all part of the challenge. My label - Shandon Records - is going to release Ronan's second CD early next year and Ronan and I are working together to start turning the cogs of self-promotion already. SJ, Ronan and I are doing a Round Robin Gig in Bewleys on 19th May - looking forward to that.

And I've taken to music promotion - working with Conor Daly of Nota, an independent classical music promoter who I've known and sung in choirs in for a long time. He's bringing Thomas Hampson to the National Concert Hall to sing American Artsong with his collaborative partner, German pianist Wolfram Rieger. We're in the throes of writing press releases - a new experience but one I'm enjoying immensely.

And I'm also busy playing accompaniments myself in exams for flautists, violinists, singers and recorder players in various schools and music schools around Dublin. It's hectic but good fun and a great opportunity to meet the professional musicians of tomorrow. Keeps you on your toes.

Possibly the most exciting gig of all was last night when I played piano for a staged reading of a fascinating play "On Religion" by AC Grayling and Mick Gordon. It's quite an intense play but really makes you think and pushes you to question spirituality, religion and faith in your own life and in the world, something that in these very dark days we need to do more than ever.

See you,

jj

Sharing The Stage With Friends

Now that the snow has removed itself from Dublin City, my thoughts have returned to the small matter of playing music and making a living out of it - hopefully.

To this end, I drove up to Drogheda this last Thursday with recording engineer Brian Masterson for a recording session usiing the Steinway Model D Concert Grand Piano in St Peters' Church in the middle of the town. At this session, I managed to stop drooling long enough to re-record the piano tracks for "The Art Of Saving Lives", a band CD which I recorded basic tracks for last August but I also spent a good chunk of the day recording piano solo tracks for a new record of instrumentals which I think will be called "The Shape Of Things". I recorded a wide range of pieces ranging from tunes I wrote at college to tunes composed by me last week to a new David MacKenzie piece composed especially for the session. I think it went very well although I guess I'll know a lot more when I hear the disc of rough mixes that Brian has compiled for me tomorrow. I'd love to put this new collection of tunes out at some stage before the summer although I know better now than to put deadlines on these things. Life has a funny habit of getting in the way.

This Friday on 22nd January, I'm teaming up with regular collaborators SJ McArdle and Ronan Swift to perform a Round Robin concert in Bewleys Cafe Theatre on Grafton Street in Dublin. Regular readers of these missives will know how dear I hold Bewleys Cafe Theatre to my heart but this concert will be very very special - three singer-songwriter musicians on the stage for the whole gig interacting with each other and with the audience, each taking it in turns to sing and play their own songs or personally selected covers. A nice informal gig in the intimate surroundings of one of the nicest places in Dublin to spend an evening. Hope you can make it. If you can't, please feel free to invite other Facebook friends to come on my behalf !!

Then the following week, I'm off to London to have a much-needed break and also to throw some copies of my CD Asylum Harbour around and see if I can earn some new musical or music industry contacts. It's a hard industry to crack but you can't get there if you don't get out there and knock on doors. If you know someone who you think should hear it or have any valuable context or perspective for me, I'd love to hear it before my trip.

In the meantime, Happy New Year - may 2010 bring us all what we wish for and dream of.

All the best,



Josh

Nothing happened this October

Did anyone else notice how October passed them by this year ? I organised and planned a few things in connection with Ronan Swift's debut CD and played one or two weddings and otherwise tried fairly frantically to find things to do but very little came of it. Hence, very little to blog about and that's why I haven't been kicking about here recently.

I thought maybe it was the recession kicking in to the musicians' world but since November 1st, my life has kicked off again and November look as though they're going to be busy. Calm restored.

I haven't done an awful lot with my own CD this year and I'm rather at a loss about what to do with it. It's not got obvious singles on it and touring possibilities are limited without radio play, particularly for a piano player. Instead, I've been putting the word out to other singer-songwriters and bands that I'm available and interested in playing in their bands and this has resulted in some very exciting opportunities. SJ McArdle (also on Facebook) phoned me early in the year after he co-wrote 3 songs on Asylum Harbour asking if I'd be interested in doing a few gigs with him. Since then, the promotional push for his brilliant forthcoming album Blood And Bones has kicked off in earnest and we've now done a number of gigs in different lineups from full band to duo. He has two singles out already from the album and the second one (in particular) is really super - a cover of Annie Lennox's moving song Why. You can get it from I-Tunes as well as from downloadmusic.ie and you can also see the video on YouTube. I have also been playing with Peadar King both with his own music and his Island Air project (see previous blog) and Stewart Agnew.

When Roesy and I first toured together, we were asked to bring a support act along for a whole tour by the name of Noelie McDonnell. I immediately became a fan and have followed his work since, almost putting a cover of one of his songs (Steal A Rhythm) onto my Asylum Harbour album. He is just about to release his third album on Friday (Come Alive) and it is a great pleasure and honour to be playing keys in his band for the Galway and Dublin launches of the CD. The dates are -
Town Hall Theatre, Galway, Sunday 8th November, Doors 3pm and
Academy 2, Dublin Friday 20th November at 8pm.
The album is also really good.

On that subject, it is astounding to see so many outstanding Irish albums coming out this months and over the last few years and to also see the Irish radio and television media ignore them so consistently. There are pockets but everywhere else, the radio producers seem to be completely guided by what the music pluggers are shoving in their direction and that is generally not Irish independent music. It is so hard to get heard in Ireland and interestingly also really hard to get people to gigs by bands / singers they haven't heard. I'm not complaining. This is the business I'm in and that's the particular challenge our business has at the moment. We just don't have too many friends in the media helping us and the public hear great original Irish music. Anyway, if you haven't heard of them, go seek out some new dynamic music by the likes of Ian Whitty, Armoured Bear, Julie Feeney and keep an eye out over the next few months for new releases by Ronan Swift, SJ McArdle, Noelie McDonnell, Roesy, Keith Mullins, Stewart Agnew.

Oh, and Asylum Harbour is still available too.

Cheers for now,


josh

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

A Blast of Island Air

One of the wonderful things about my job is that I get to wake up every morning and do stuff I love doing and get paid for it. But another cool thing about the way my career has been panning out is that every gig seems to be completely different from the last - accompanying exams, directing choirs, playing gigs with bands - and this leads to very exciting musical opportunities, something I love and something which keeps my musical life consistently interesting.

I've just come home from a week on the road with a project called Island Air, an exciting show celebrating the musical heritage of Inisbofin, an island off the Connemara coast in County Galway. The brainchild of this show was a young singer-songwriter from the island, Peadar King, who I've started working with as keyboardist in his band. When I started rehearsing with him and the rest of his band in May, there was only one gig booked but promises of more. There was talk of a tour in August with this week earmarked for it. He was applying for a grant from Music Network and, as time went by, he was advised that to add some sort of a conceptual slant to the show would aid his chances in getting the grant and his mind turned to an idea for a show that had been percolating in his head for a while - a mixture of singers from the island of Inisbofin where he lives, maybe concentrating on his music but also bringing in the other singers - Andrew Murray, Dessie O'Halloran, Luke Murray and others - to sing at specific places in the show.

He didn't get the grant but by this time, the show and the plans for it had taken a different turn and an unstoppable momentum had begun. Peadar's band - myself, Cormac Dunne, Tom Portman and Fergal Gallagher - were hired to be less Peadar's band and more a house band while more islanders were drafted in to appear in the show. A small tour heading home towards the island - Galway, Clifden, Inisbofin - was lined up and people nominated songs to sing and trad tunes to play that they were already familiar with.

The itinerary had to be changed due to difficulties with schedules but it worked out very well in that we ended up starting at home - Inisboffin. The feel of the show was that of a session and tunes were alternated with songs to allow for variety throughout the evening. The ages went from 7-year old dancers to Dessie O'Halloran (69, I believe). Peadar, Andrew Murray and his son Luke performed songs with the band and Dessie closed the show with a rousing finale but now young and old performed together, sometimes in small ensembles, sometimes solo, sometimes as part of the Inisbofin Ceili Band. For this first night, everybody who plays music on the island - 25 musicians - was featured and it was incredible to be part of the spectacle, not as an audience member but as someone welcomed into the community to participate in the occasion. Although we had done some rehearsal with Peadar on Tuesday, new songs and tunes were introduced to the band at the soundcheck - chords feverishly scribbled down while the singers sang - and then performed on the night, something I'm able to do but also always adds an extra bump of adrenaline to the proceedings, great fun ensuing when you try to remember a song you've been sung for the first time 2 hours ago and draw a complete blank. However, everybody else was on home turf and so was very comfortable and relaxed with the occasion. The mood was so relaxed in fact that the concert took something over 3 hours to get through and left everyone exhausted. It was a hugely positive bonding experience for band and performers, community and visitors, organisers and audience. After two days of rehearsal, i was tired too but very pleased to be there.

On Thursday, we got the ferry to Cleggan and set up camp in the wonderful Crane Bar in Galway. Some lessons were learnt about the running order (particularly with regard to length) and the list of performers was shortened, partly due to availability, partly due to the size of the stage. The set was sized down to 2 hours !!! Usually a venue that holds sessions, The Crane was perfect for the occasion - up-close and personal for all concerned and everybody absolutely focused on putting everything they had into the music. Dessie, who had very carefully selected songs which Peadar had rehearsed with the band, decided to play a completely different song and everybody mucked in to give him the backing he deserved. The young trad ensemble played their socks off, particularly Liam King who was particularly exciting to watch playing the accordion. The band tipped along occasionally with this music too when we felt we weren't going to be stepping on any toes but everybody was open to musical ideas. I don't consider myself a trad player but I was able to busk the chords too and enjoyed it - John O'Halloran's small-box Dance Of The Honeybees was a particular favourite of mine. The addition of the interval to the proceedings was welcomed and gave everybody a chance to draw breath and grab another pint.

The final night in the Station House Theatre in Cliden had a different feel again - an enthusiastic audience but more of a theatre feel which can often deaden the interaction between the performers and the audience. This gig was good too nevertheless and the crowd came with us finally - everyone onstage comfortable by now with the music and each other's contributions to it. The stage, though not as big as Bofin was bigger than Galway and so some musicians omitted from the Galway list took the ferry to join us for this one too adding to the bonhomie on the stage. By the end, we were ready to sleep but more drinks were had first. The after-show sessions on the first two nights had run quite late - I have no reason to believe the last night was any different. Aware of ongoing commitments, I was in Galway and asleep within a few hours of coming off the stage.

New friendships - both convivial and musical - had been made and I look forward to playing with many of these musicians again. Luke Murray's concert debut as a singer and guitarist in this run of shows was extremely exciting as he bravely and convincingly tackled both Christy Moore's arrangement of As I Roved Out with the band and added his own tasteful and subtle characterisation to Paul Brady's arrangement of Arthur McBride solo. Being a city boy, I was thrilled to be hearing more traditional music in one week than I've probably heard in the last five years, and all magnificently played and sung by people who've been singing it all their lives. Peadar only ended up singing one song each night - I wish he'd sung more. He's an exceptional songwriting talent waiting to be discovered but I guess he felt it was about a lot more than just him by this point - a chance to really treasure the musical heritage of the island as a shared heritage, a community of people working and living together, and a chance to highlight lots of unsung talents alongside more well-known singers such as Dessie and Andrew, and in all that it certainly worked in a very moving way. It was a really beautiful experience for me. I've heard it may happen again. I hope it does. If it does, don't miss it.

Golden Music & Then Silence

Before today, I haven't sat still since in or around the 10th July. This year so it's no heroic feat but I'm talking 7-day weeks here. Of course, I do actually love being busy, especially if the work is invigorating, challenging and productive which the last month's stuff has certainly been.

There's stuff about the US trip in the last blog. The second half of the trip was very enjoyable too. I didn't continue the story because I had expended so much energy telling that much that I was left wanting when trying to decide how to follow it up. Saturday was the hotspot for the trip - literally. We went to Duardes (I think that's what it was called) where it got to 102 degrees F which really was way too hot for me and when the trip to the beautiful Getty Museum was spoiled for me by the fact that it was SO hot and SO bright (which led to me being barely able to open my eyes for the day), I realised that it was definitely time to go home. The trip home was very successful. I put on my shorts and headed with Hedda to drop the keyboard back to the rental place, drop the car back to the rental place and partake in the great rigmarole that is US Airport security. Many hours later and we were back on Plane 1 of 3. The I-Pod was a welcome friend.

I managed to make all connections this time and arrived back in rainy Ireland still in my shorts but certainly not cold the following morning. I seem to escape jetlag and this was no exception. Home for a 70th birthday party for my aunt (in fact 2 over 2 nights) - it was a terrific week but great to be home. Sometimes when you get tired of your family and your home, all it takes is a little time away and some perspective to realise how real their love is for you and how much you need them there.

As soon as the weekend of parties was over, I was off on my next project - this time to the house of the same aunt who had just had the party. My aunt Lorna is an extraordinary woman who has sculpted the most amazing garden out of the woodlands around her house. Since her husband died, she has built a second, smaller house further into the garden, designed to look like a glorified tree-house. Which leaves the first house empty for large chunks of time, punctuated by shorter periods where family come to visit or, since 2006, I bring groups of friends to rehearse, record, retreat and generally have a groovy time.

For the last week, a group of friends and I started work on the next Josh Johnston CD. I always like to have a working title - the next CD will most likely be called The Art Of Saving Lives and the drums and bass parts are now recorded, along with piano and guitar tracks which may be bettered or, if not, may be the final tracks. All of the songs are finished musically but quite a lot of them are not finished lyrically so I sang first verses and la-la-la'ed melodies to give the other musicians an idea of where the singer was going and then we worked up parts for everybody, rehearsed them and then put down tracks for 13 songs in 5 days. That's quite a feat and it was a whirlwind of work from Day 1. We worked from 10 to about 7, ate well, played cards in the evening and got some class of a holiday out of it too. A residential recording studio without the expense. I do feel blessed to have got the opportunity. The project is well and truly off the ground.

One final bowed cymbal and then it was back to Dublin on Saturday after a marathon tidy session in the evening. On Sunday, I was off to play piano for Stewart Agnew in Dundalk. Revitalised now and ready to put as much expertise as I have into Ronan Swift's marketing campaign for his debut CD which comes out September 17th. A few quieter days and then it's back up that hill with Peadar King next week. It's mad, exhausting and completely exhilarating. Oh God let me never be idle. Our lives are too short.