Palace Tonight!

Ok so I'm gonna head down to The Palace Bar tonight (the place where I am playing next week!) and see what the local competition is like...

I need to see what everyone else is doing before I decide what I want to do... I'll be playing 2 songs - so I thought one of my own to start and then a cover song to leave them with - that should be cool! But we'll see...

Best not get too wrecked tonight - I need to remember what I've seen! lol

First gig booked in over 2 years!

Ok so I'm not ready to start gigging again but this is just a one off show! There's a competition running in Ireland called Stars of Our Bars and it's in Athlone as well so I thought I'd have a go...

I'm playing at the Palace Bar, Athlone town centre on Friday 5th March!


http://www.last.fm/event/1430373+Stars+of+our+Bars

Now all I have to do is decide what the hell I'm going to perform... Guitar? Keyboard? Congo's? Will I use the laptop as accompanyment? Or shall I get one of those foot pedals that you can loop to make layered sounds? Hmmmmm.

Ok well I have 1 week to prepare!

Eeeep!

Cover Versions on Demand!

One of my friends (who is also a musician!) had an idea that we should both choose 3 songs and the other person has to choose one of those songs and cover it!

So he gave me the option of these 3:
Otis Redding - Try a little tenderness
Imogen Heap - Half life
Joe Cocker - My father's son

I know other songs from all 3 artists but don't know the actual songs at all, so I got home last night and downloaded them from iTunes... I was really tempted to cover Half Life because I like Imogen Heap, but then I thought that My Father's Son was quite a simple song and I would be able to do more stuff to it to make it my own but in the end I chose Try a Little Tenderness, simply because I loved the vibe to it - think I need to invest in a bit more of Otis Redding... So last night I started practicing... The bloody chords were wrong on all the internet sites (I think they just copy from one another so if the first ones wrong, then they all are!), so first I had to work out the correct chords. It went quite well, but I need to practice it more yet...

The 3 songs I picked are:
Joni Mitchell (obviously!) - Carey
Whitney Houston (obviously haha!) - Saving All My Love For You
Billie Holiday - These Foolish Things

So I'm waiting to find out which one he is going to cover now! Woo!

Sunrise

I love dawn. You start to think about all the things the day could have in store for you. More so, I think you believe in yourself more at dawn than any other time of the day - it makes you feel like anything is possible if you just put your mind to it.

:-)

Love Nest

I've had a good few days but today I kinda crumbled when I got home...

Got a little tune out of it though at least...

Download free mp3: http://freedownloads.last.fm/download/384979610/Love%2BNest.mp3

Today i thought
About you all day
As usual
My heart is full
And I miss you
Oh so much

I'm watching the sunset over the marina
We've watched many times together

I'm fighting off the urge to say i love you
Yes, I still refrain
I hope you're ok

I'm fighting off the urge to say i love you
Yes, I still refrain
But I think I'm gonna be ok

YouTube Covers - Tear In Your Hand / Redemtpion Song

Recorded a couple of YouTube videos on Friday night...

A cover of Tori Amos' "Tear In Your Hand":

A cover of Bob Marley's "Redemption Song":

Aftermath

One of the worst things about someone breaking up with you...

...is that they have realised that their life will be better without you, than if they were with you. And then it's up to you to find ways to make your life better without them too. And it's kind of a hurtful thing to think and its difficult to get your head around - it's like you're trying to make the transition from being "one" in your relationship, to being completely your own person again both in heart and mind.

So, moving on.... Healthwise I had a terrible time last week. I ate a lot of junk food, I didn't go to the gym once and I was smoking. I was going to the gym twice a day in January and I think I was just really upset that after 4 weeks, I hadn't lost *any* weight.

So now this week, I'm starting again, but this time I will be following the same regime as I did last year when I lost a stone - except this year I will be weight training too. So I'll be having All Bran and an apple for breakfast, soup for lunch and then vegetables and some kind of meat for dinner. And I won't be eating any bread. I'll be getting my 5-a-day fruit and veg and drinking my usual copious amounts of water. So I'll be doing 30 minutes cardio Monday to Friday in the morning before work and then after work on Mondday to Thursday, I'll be going to the gym to do 45 minutes of weight training.

That's the plan for now until 29th March. I've got 7 full weeks to lose 14 pounds.

Fingers crossed.

Ableton for Mac now LIVE!! Ace. Face. Of. Pies.

Yesteday evening was ace. Period.

I got home and managed to get Ableton Live 7 for Mac. This put me in *such* a good mood cos my Mac actual has a bit of power behind it so composing on that will be like composing on a real computer woooo! Lappy is sooooo slow with Ableton but I had already started a song on there from the other night which started off being inspired by a Demdike Stare song but I ended up working on it aaaaall night and now it's turned into a kinda Dark Progressive House / Minimal style song.... It felt really good to be creating again... I don't often feel the thrill from writing guitar or piano songs anymore unless something really hits me but I loved recording this last night with 3 different bass lines, 3 different drum tracks, and I bought some congos last weekend and they're included on there too (although to be honest they sound more like tom toms due to mic positioning but thats ok...!) So I really wanna go home and finish it off now! Would be ace to have a new song out so early in the year... I recorded a little demo the other night called "No Sweet Conversation" but I was only messing around and then after realised that the mic was set up wrong and had only recorded in one speaker! haha So may work on that again another time and add some strings and harmonies too...

Hmmmm I'm sure paragraphs aren't meant to be that long!

Returning to Shine... and Garageband

Am listening to Joni Mitchell's "Shine" album right now... It feels completely appropriate for my feelings at the moment... When I first got into this album, it was Autumn/Winter 2007 and I was living with Mark at The Apple Building and I was completely in love with him...but by this particular point I knew that nothing was going to happen between us... And I just felt completely devastated inside and I used to go to a branch of Starbucks and they would always be playing Shine. At the time, I felt like I had lost an integral part of me... In reality I had lost nothing but my faith in a fantasy... I had realised, for real, that nothing was ever going to happen between Mark and I... and that had took a year to surface in my mind... Obviously I'd lost something that I never had in the first place, but whenever you lose something dear to you, you are going to have a period of mourning...and that's what I had to do for a while in order to come back stronger afterwards. Both listening to Shine, and going to this Starbucks after work and having a relaxing coffee gave me sooooo much comfort... I thought I was never going to hear another new Joni Mitchell album.. in fact she hadn't released one since I had got into her music in 2003 so it was absolutely amazing when the album came out, also when I actually liked it, and then even more so when it started to hold so much significance to me.

I feel kind of the same now. I've lost Sandeep and this is my period of mourning. It's so strange because I haven't felt like listening to Shine since I got over Mark... Whenever I listened to it, it just felt like I was tapping into a feeling that I didn't want to address... a feeling of desolateness, weakenss, starting from scratch, finding myself again... But all of those things I feel again right now... and this album now feels just as important, as relevant and as comforting as it did 2 years ago... The funny thing is I never really got over Mark until I met Sandeep...

I've written a lot of lyrics this week about mine and San's break up... I don't know why, but this week has been the most difficult week since we first split back in December... It shouldn't be because Tarni is home and I have more people around... But I guess I'm just feeling lost. I just don't know what to do!! I'm confused.

I was sooooo happy last year... In periods during the past, I have had happiness but I don't think I'd ever had such a feeling of contentness as I had last year. I remember I'd leave work at the wekeend and drive to Dublin to the airport and I'd be listening to Alas I Cannot Swim by Laura Marling and thinking about what me and Sandeep were going to get up to that weekend... I'd catch my flight, I'd have a small bottle of red wine and I'd sit on the plane just thinking how lucky I was to have such a wonderful guy to be with, to have parents that love me, to have such caring friends, to have got my big break in my career, to be talented enough to write my own songs and express myself, I'd even think about how lucky I was to have grown up in a country where I got an education, and a decent place to live... I don't think I'd ever felt so thankful to the world and I was so happy to admit it. I started writing songs for an EP and even the lyrics were positive...

"Suddenly I feel
Like I'm on holiday
I'll talk to strangers
I'll read in cafes

I'll wake up at dawn
Even in the summer
I'll watch every sunrise
And I'll feel stronger

And when I wake
I'm straight out of bed
And I feel rested
Watered and fed

Finally I feel
And I don't have to think
Soon all will be in place
Finding my missing link"

This was early Summer... and then Summer was amazing too... and then I don't know what happened...

All I have to do though is get through these few months and I know that I will be ok. I need to plan. I need things to work towards and to look forward to.

Music-wise, I've had a good week... I wrote this crazy experimental piece on Tuesday night... but it was a bit mental - crazy rhythms with a vocal part over the top... I bought 2 congos over the weekend so I've been playing those a bit too. And I've been learning to use a new software programme called Garageband which I got free with my iMac. Although I really don't want to, I want to buy Abelton Suiter but its about €700.... it's absolutely extortionate... and I certainly can't afford it right now...

So I'll make use of Garageband for the time being...

Ok...time for me to go....x