Songwriter.ie – Irish songwriters in the midlands

I have been incredibly fortunate in moving to Ireland and, particularly, Athlone, in that I’ve found myself in the smouldering heart of a breathtakingly talented musical community.

After a couple of years here myself and other musical acquaintances realised that, while there was music in most pubs most nights, that finding live, original music was not common. This needed to be rectified.

To that end we organised an evening in The Palace Loft featuring six original songwriters in the community. We recorded the night and released a CD later that year. The response was so overwhelming we have continued the non-profit event with new songwriters taking the stage every year. We also set up a website, www.songwriter.ie, on which to host information about the event. We hope eventually have saved enough money from the event to be able to put it into recording and performance gear that can be utilised by local musicians who haven’t access to such things.

I am pleased to announce that this year’s songwriter CD is done.

We’ll be having a release party next Tuesday at the Shack Session (where better?). I’m really excited about this year’s CD, not just because the songs and performances on it are fantastic, but because the recording quality of the night has been improving every year and this year it’s sounding just amazing.

You can hear samples of the CD on songwriter.ie, but as a special treat I’m sticking up a track from the CD, one of Ciaran Flynn‘s tracks, Stay The Night. Ciaran is originally from Athlone but calls Dublin home nowadays. His is just one of the fantastic live performances on this year’s CD.

Enjoy!