“Cat Called Dogs sound is a soothing reassurance of natural blood-pumping ,lug hole piercing, raw-rock that grabs you by the curlies and demands attention”
After struggling to find suitable like minded musicians to help take its vision to the stage Cat Called Dog decided to “just do it” anyway. Stepping out as a duo and immediately making an impact at a number of high profile gigs. Within weeks of live shows the band were invited to play the prestigious 2013 International Guitar Festival in Eire and ended its debut year with a 25 date UK Tour supporting the likes of Enemies, Rook & The Ravens, Evil Blizzard and the Arkanes along with a trip to the studio to work on their debut EP.
The band have dismissed and brushed off initial Lazy comparisons based on the obvious trend setting guitar/drum based duos of the last 10 years by preferring the music do the talking instead.
With a massive but melodic sound that has to be experienced live to be believed and visually stimulating to watch as any of the more fully populated acts around, Cat called Dog know how to deliver the goods
‘Rude Mood’ are a tribute band to the late Texas guitarist, ‘Stevie Ray Vaughan.’
The tribute band was originally a three piece from West Cork/Ballincollig, but soon became a bigger ensemble of nine.
Now with more guitars, a full brass section, more rhythm and timbre, this band is a real force to be reckoned with.
Covering all tunes from his classics to B Sides, ‘Pride and Joy,’ & ‘Crossfire’ to ‘Life Without You’ & ‘Texas Flood.’ The band is fun and entertaining.
Stevie was hugely influenced by Jimi Hendrix, and Stevie Wonder, tunes such as Voodoo Chile, Hey Joe and Superstition have many flavours of Stevie’s approach to guitar.
Hailing from the rich musical landscape of Southwest Victoria, John Hudson is considered one of Australia’s most talented and in-demand guitarists. In a career spanning over 20 years, John has performed in a diverse range of festivals and venues worldwide. Stylistic diversity is a feature of John’s shows showcasing a deft hand on guitar, keen observational song writing and the right amount of wit and irreverence in delivery. John’s versatility as a musician has allowed him to perform as a solo artist and as a member of various ensembles, both nationally and internationally. Most recently John has been touring with iconic singer/songwriter Shane Howard (Goanna).
Eugene Brosnan & the Innocent Bystanders were formed in Clonakilty in late 2015, initially, to pay tribute to the late, great American songwriter and composer, WARREN ZEVON, but in recent times the band has incorporated some of its own material into the set, along with a selection of covers, from artists such as, Bob Dylan, Dave Sharp, John Lennon and Prince…
Bassist, Martin Kingston and Eugene have shared a deep appreciation and love of the music of Warren Zevon, for many years and when Eugene approached Stephen Housden to join, it seemed almost predestined and serendipitous, when Stephen informed the lads that he had actually played in Zevons live band!
Since forming, the band has played to full houses around West Cork, where the band is currently based and they have also appeared at the 2016 and 2017, Clonakilty International Guitar Festivals…
THE INNOCENT BYSTANDERS ARE:
EUGENE BROSNAN: (Guitar & Vocal) has performed over 2500 shows in Ireland, the UK, Europe, Scandinavia and the USA. He has released 3 albums, mainly of his own material, to critical acclaim and has appeared as a guest vocalist on various other productions. His music has been influenced by both Americana and Irish songs, the lyrical poets and of course, Warren Zevon.
STEPHEN HOUSDEN: (Guitar & Vocals) is regarded as one of the finest guitarists in the world. Well known as guitarist with Little River Band for more than two decades, he has also played and recorded with such music legends as Warren Zevon, Glenn Frey, Dr. John, Christopher Cross, John Entwistle , P.F Sloan, Albert Lee, Steve Cropper, Noel Redding and many others.
JERRY FEHILY: (Drums) came to prominence as the drummer with Hothouse Flowers, touring the world with them and drumming on their Top 10 hits and a No.1 album. Apart from the Flowers, he has also played live or recorded with: Tim Finn, Michelle Shocked, Luka Bloom, Midnight Oil, Ronnie Wood, Joe Elliot, Sinead O’ Connor, Ray Lynam, Interference and Celine Carroll.
MARTIN KINGSTON: (Bass & Vocals) ran the now legendary, Kilty Stone, pub and live music venue in Clonakilty’s, Pearse Street for many years… In the 90s, it was home to many great music sessions and musicians, (Noel Redding, Eric Bell, Mitch Mitchell,The Blues Band, Bill Shanley, Nick Harper, Hothouse Flowers) which included the proprietor, as bass player for the house band and many of the guest artistes that appeared there during his tenure.
ED KADYSEWSKI: (Piano & Keys) Originally from Philadelphia, USA, but residing in Clonakilty,Ed recently joined the Innocent Bystanders and also, like the others, has a long standing admiration for the music of Warren Zevon and in fact has been playing a multitude of his compositions for many years. Ed is also a film and documentary maker of note and now lectures on the subject at St. John’s College, Cork.
James O’Flynn and his folk band The Claddagh Rogues have battled their fair share of demons to consistently produce passionate music rooted in their troubled lives. The Claddagh Rogues were born out of Cork’s Simon Community, which cares for the homeless and those at risk, in 2007. They have produced two EPs and their first album, For the Record, launched at the First Fortnight festival in January 2017 with guest performer John Spillane. The album was produced with Louise McCormick and John Crone who have previously worked with Davy Spillane, Tír na nÓg and U2.
James, lead singer and songwriter with The Claddagh Rogues, spent most of his early life in prison, under psychiatric care and homeless on the streets of Cork. Fellow Claddagh Rogues founder member and lead vocalist Mags Kelly experienced addiction and homelessness. The new album pays tribute to Mags, who passed away in 2014, aged just 44.
James and Mags started The Claddagh Rogues during an artist-in-resident project at the Cork Simon Community in 2007, led by musician and clinical nurse Kevin O’Shanahan who specialises in mental health and the arts for Cork’s mental health services. Kevin, who plays and writes with the band, said a project designed to explore creativity and build confidence and self-esteem has grown to be so much more: ‘The group’s writing has the energy and vibrancy of lives lived on the on the edge. The songs are based on experiences of both the darker sides of life – addiction, homelessness, incarceration in prison and psychiatric institutions and also those things that light up our lives such as friendship, beauty and love. Through his songs, James recovery journey continues to inspire. Mags’s untimely passing and our wish to honour her memory through music is the motivation for this album and tour.’
The Claddagh Rogues are supported by HSE South’s Cork Arts and Health Programme, Cork City Arts Office, Cork Mental Health Services and MusicAlive.
Featuring the ‘Golden Generation’ of west cork musicians including Sam & Eve Clague, Sonny & Josh Samson & Sam McNichol …these guys are bringing Saxy Back!
“They remind me of my first days at ‘Les Cousins’ in Soho in 1965… Ye Vagabonds are a modern expression of a tradition that is truly robust and important to these islands.”– Roy Harper
“Going backwards to go forwards, [Ye Vagabonds] look not to modern day influence to inspire their sound but prefer to absorb and reflect the most genuine leanings of deep tradition, playing folk music that resonates as pure and honest as it has since time immemorial. In an age where styles have a limited shelf life, and musicians so often live by definition of their sell-by date, Ye Vagabonds make music that honours timeless sincerity with acoustic fireside storytelling that will sound as current a hundred years from now as it has a hundred generations past.”– Myles O Reilly (Arbutus Yarns)
Brothers Brían and Diarmuid Mac Gloinn grew up playing music together around their hometown of Carlow, a small town in the southeast of Ireland. After moving to Dublin in 2012, they quickly became a staple of the live music and session scene in Ireland, playing their own original songs as well as folk songs from Ireland, Scotland, England and America.
In 2014 they came to the attention of Arbutus Yarns’ music filmmaker Myles O Reilly, whose videos gained international attention for the brothers for the first time.
After a chance meeting at Electric Picnic in September 2015, the brothers performed onstage with Glen Hansard, who immediately invited them to open for him on his European tour the following October.
Their debut EP Rose & Briar was released on October 7th 2015.
Since then, they have been busy touring Ireland, the UK and Europe, opening for acts such as Villagers, Roy Harper and Lisa Hannigan (whose band they played in for her Irish tour, June 2016). They have also played sold out headline shows in Ireland, Paris, Geneva and Solothurn, Switzerland.
They have made numerous television and live radio appearances in Ireland, and were featured in Ep. II of Myles O’Reilly and Donal Dineen’s music programme This Ain’t No Disco in March 2017. They were also part of ‘Imagining Home’, a live broadcast concert in the National Concert Hall of Ireland, 2016, curated by Glen Hansard, Philip King and Gary Sheehan.
Ye Vagabonds are currently finishing their highly anticipated debut album, due to be released in Autumn 2017.
Lisa O’Neill has a remarkable voice; a Cavan twang, a growl, a song-call. It can be many things. She needed to make an album about that voice. ‘Pothole in the Sky’ is a recording of “the voice”. The voice is everything for the folk singer – a conduit for the words, the emotion, the thought process. This is no ordinary record.
O’Neill’s voice goes to all sorts of places throughout the course of this album, and the music provided by Emma Smith, Seamus Fogarty, Joseph Doyle, and Mossy Nolan follows her like a dark swirling storm, often bringing to mind the loose impressionism of the Dirty Three. On ‘Planets’ O’Neill delivers her most extraordinary vocal and lyrical performance to date. It is remarkable and on this form she could go toe to toe with Nick Cave at his most fire and brimstone. Except O’Neill’s prose is elemental and mysterious, not angry.
As any truly great singer knows, it’s not all about those big reaching numbers. There is some truly brave singing on this record. For instance, the odd high-pitched flourishes on ‘Nasty’, or the shrill parlour style singing on ‘Black Sheep’. The latter features some of the best accompaniment too, a mellifluous psychedelic montage that literally sets sail one-minute-thirty in as Lisa goes off on one of her patented hypnotic stream-of-conscious word-play trips. The album closes out on a succession of brilliant songs. ‘The Banjo Spell’ is a tender ode to the aural folk tradition without being throwback. In fact it has a big lush modern feel to it. And ‘The Hunt’, featuring guest fiddle and banjo from Colm Mac Con Iomaire and Glen Hansard respectively, is just another meandering epic Lisa O’Neill number, twisting and turning and changing its phrasing and tempo to suit the story and accommodate the words. She makes it sound easy. But it’s not.
At a time when sameness threatens to drain the world of charm and surprise, Lisa O’Neill stands tall for difference, as an outlier with a mission to frame the world as she sees it and to perform it accordingly.Joe Breen, Irish Times
In the end of the day and the heel of the hunt, you’re left with the songs. Everything else comes and goes – the shows and the tours and the applause and the acclaim which goes with them, the prattle and the palaver which accompany an album release. Everything else fades out of view. Everything else doesn’t matter in the long run.
But the songs remain. The songs you write on your own stick around. They’re going to be here for many years to come so they deserve to be treated with due care and utmost respect in the creation process.
Mick Flannery realised this a long time ago. He also realised that songwriting was the best part of this strange job of being a jobbing-gigging-talking-singing musician.
“It’s never a chore”, Flannery says about the craft. “The creation is the nicest part, it’s something you always have and you can use it to work through stuff that’s in your head. You have to take it seriously if it’s going to be any good. It’s always my favourite thing, like putting Lego blocks together. You can make a lot of things with Lego.”
You can make an album like “By the Rule”, for instance. It’s Flannery’s fourth album but it’s a world on from anything he has put his name to before now.
“Evening Train” (2007), “White Lies” (2008) and especially 2012’s best-selling and critically acclaimed number one album “Red to Blue” had their advocates and champions. They were significant staging posts along the road for the songwriter from Blarney, signs that he was finding an unique voice and vision, signs that he was finding his feet as he was finding an audience.
We can now consider the apprenticeship to be over. “By the Rule” is the work of a confident, assured songwriter, someone who knows how to turn a list of nouns, adjectives, verbs and adverbs into graceful, minor-key pen-pictures and poetry which will resonate with the listener.
Beneath and beyond the beautifully understated, uncomplicated and uncluttered production on “By the Rule”, Flannery’s songs usher us into a world which is by times emotional, romantic, dark, insightful and hopeful.
It’s a world he brought into being in Berlin. He took a notion to go to Germany and, after a bitter cold winter initially beat him home again, he settled and spent seven months there in 2013. In a flat with big, open rooms and lovely acoustics, Flannery set up base and went to work.
He was largely by himself in the city. He did a college course to learn the language, but there was no social circle or gigs to distract him. He’d wander around that great city, taking in the history and grandeur and pace of the place.
Occasionally, he’d throw on a pair of runners, stick Eminem on the headphones and go for a run. “There’s things he does with words that no-one else does”, Flannery says of the Detroit rapper. “He rhymes two words with one word, the two syllables of one word with match two separate words, internal rhyming, skip rhymes.”
Back at his little room in Kreuzberg, Flannery’s new songs began to slowly take shape. His songs are usually based on stories and experiences he has heard from people or overheard in the clatter of a café or bar.
“I’d be a bit of a detective about people, the way they are, how they behave. You have to care about them. If you only want to write about your own experiences, your own break-ups and trials, you can do that without leaving the house.”
The compelling strengths of “Pride”, “Get What You Give” and “Live In Hope” benefited from Flannery’s methodical approach to getting the lyrical dimensions just right. “It takes me a while to pare them down and get the lyrics correct and make everything as concise as possible. You have to think about the songs again and again and again. You have to have a foothold in the song.”
Back in Ireland, the next job was to record the songs. Flannery called on O Emperor’s Phil Christie (piano) and Alan Comerford (guitar) to give him a hand and liked what they were doing in rehearsals. “They were finding things in the songs and I thought the things they were finding were nice.”
The pair of them joined Flannery, Christian Best (drums), Shane Fitzsimons (bass) and Karen O’Doherty (violin) for a fortnight in Beechpark Studios in Rathcoole in December 2013 with Ryan Freeland (Aimee Mann, Ray LaMontagne, Joe Henry, Ramblin’ Jack Elliot, Carolina Chocolate Drops etc) producing alongside Best.
Flannery knew the sound he wanted and that meant less rather than more playing. “The most effective thing to me is a dynamic when something just swells and gets louder and tenser and effects the listener. There’s no need to play a lot of notes to get that. It’s simple stuff, really.”
A few months on from recording, Flannery is still digging what he and the band produced over that winter fortnight. Unlike his other albums, he an imagine himself listening to this one for many years to come. He likes the way it was recorded and the way it sounds.
He likes the way he sounds too. “I sound like myself here. I’ve been trying to get away from singing with that old American twang which is left over from listening to too much Tom Waits. The more I get away from it, the more comfortable I feel.”
This satisfaction with “By the Rule” could also be about the growing up process. Flannery turned thirty last year and finds he’s less bothered than he used to be by the small stuff. When you get to this age, you’re happy to let the small stuff go.
“When you get to the end of your twenties, you become less self-obsessed. You start worrying less about your feelings. You become calmer. It gradually becomes easier to be yourself.”
“By the Rule”, then: the sound of Mick Flannery getting comfortable in his skin. The sound of a man at ease with his work. The sound of a master songwriter creating his best work to date.