Stay on the scene!

Dear Reader - Inspired this week by Thelonious Monk and Steve Wickham…

The Big Thing

Back in 2017 Imelda May performed her new song Black Tears with the Jools Holland rhythm ‘n’ blues orchestra big band on his New Year’s Eve Hootenanny show. The video went viral and so when it came to picking a song for Emily Meades for the end-of-year Teenage Showcase the following May I knew we had a winner.
Emily did such a good job on it that we asked her to perform it again in Vicar St in 2019 and despite it being only the 5th song in the set that night, the Vicar St crowd stood to applaud her performance.

And since then it has never been far from the surface when it came to our Teenage Theme Nights. A few years ago Imelda herself shared a video of Cara Carleton singing the song at one of our shows in The Model.

And then last Monday Imelda was in the Hawk’s Well and asked for a volunteer to come up and sing a song. Up shot the hand of current Academy member Rhona Kerlin and what did she have the courage to sing - with Imelda a matter of feet away watching her? You guessed it - Black Tears - and here’s a snippet below.

Rhona and over 100 more of our Academy members will take to the stage in The Model this Friday, Saturday and Sunday - the theme is The Power of Love and it will be a fantastic weekend as always.
You can get your tickets here.

Where else but Liverpool?

A trip to Merseyside last week got me in a Beatles mood - and it lasted all week!

When it came to Sunday evening after a busy weekend I found myself wanting to sit down and play something simple yet beautiful.

And of course the Beatles had something to fit the bill…

What’s New?

I met Steve Wickham last Wednesday at the legendary No Crows weekly session in Shoots. Eddie and Felip were there with him and the music was great as always.
I spoke to Steve afterwards and he pointed me towards Thelonious Monk’s 25 tips for musicians from 1960.

Steve said that one of the reasons he plays the Wednesday gig each week is to ‘stay on the scene’. Or in Monk’s words “Don’t sound anybody for a gig, just be on the scene”. He wrote some real gems though - read them all here.

Finally…

The original of the species! That performance by Emily in Vicar St…

Till next time - Kieran.