So What Happens Now?

I think I have come to the end of the “Steady State Sessions Demos”. It’s nearly coming up to a year now from when I started and in that time I have recorded 25 Songs, isinglas was laid to rest, college is coming to an end and the exams are looming. I rang Darren earlier, he and Remma are doing well for themselves, I wish them all the best.

So what happens next for me? Hopefully I’m off to Limerick for my Masters in Biomedical Engineering, I don’t feel like I’m ready for a job as of yet! Push back reality a while longer. I am hoping to form a band with Steve up there.

Over the summer I will start up a new Session, I think I will call it “The Last Train to Budapest Sessions”. Bands have asked me to record their music too, so I’m up for the challenge. Bands have asked me to join them. I don’t know if I will. The remainder of isinglas want to record what we have written for old time’s sake, maybe so. I got rid of the isinglas logo off my amp, weird. I have a new bunch of songs written too, their a lot more advanced than the Steady State stuff, there was only so much I could do with the old songs with lack of facilities; I wanna try different stuff this time round. Record drums. Sessions mark 2.

I was asked to play at a Fundraiser Open Mic Nite on Saturday the 13th of on Cove Street. It will commence at 8pm. I will debut some new material at that gig.

Im off to Germany for a couple of days to the Rock Im Park Festival, maybe ill get another tattoo.

Quick thanks to anyone who expressed interest in Pallus Sinfony in anyway over the past year.

Stay tuned for more. A new site, new songs and more.

Rock 'n' Roll Band

This song is hidden somewhere in the site!

The song is also what exactly it says on the tin.....

“Courage of Thought”

This is probably the saddest song I’ve recorded for the sessions! Everything about the song is sad, from the music, to the words, to the time when the song was written. I wrote the song one night when everyone whom I had organised to hang with, cancelled on me to do something else. Pretty much everyone told me they going kiss their girlfriend/boyfriends or whatever they had. I rang up Jurgen, the old reliable, to do something, I asked him did he want to jam, and he was up for it! I was to go down to meet him after work that night.

I went down to Jurgen’s workplace and went upstairs to wait for Jurgen to finish up. I’ve probably mentioned this before but when I was living in LA I used go up on top of the roof of where we lived in the middle of the night to write songs, whilst everyone was sleeping, I gazed upon the whole of Hollywood and strummed away until the Sun peaked his head from up over the hills. That nite I meet Jurgen I went onto the roof of this particular building, via the fire escape and started to strum away like the old days and this song pretty much wrote itself from the first chord I played. When Jurgen finished work we went back to his place and played Pixies songs till we couldn’t stay awake anymore, and during this time Jurgen’s infectious “Jolliness” passed onto me and I was all good again! Thanks man!

Anyways, I forgot about the song, until my friend Podge was at me to let him sing on something I was recording. I taught his voice would be perfect for this song; as I’ve been listening to him sing me Damien Rice songs at 3.30 in the morning while walking home after the pub! I initially wanted to be just a simple piano song and vocals but when I jammed along with Simon playing keyboards, it was obvious that it sounded better with Simon “plinking” along with me on the Spanish guitar. (Cheers to Andrew for letting borrow your guitar!)
I typed out the lyrics for Simon on my Typewriter, I was meaning to get it photocopied, but forgot, so he re-typed them out and we made note on what he was gonna do for the song on this, the most professional and high-tech devices are available to you when you record with Pallus Sinfony, as you can see here!!:
http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/2078/1410/1600/pLINK.jpg
I was really happy with Simon’s keyboards on this, they are so pretty and it adds a depth to the song, merci muchly Simon!!

There are pretty much only a couple chords in the song, but I play the exact same notes for the song, it quite easy to hit the wrong string and when I was recording the guitar tracks, I had to give up because I was getting quite frustrated! When I went back to it the next day, instead of concentrating on each note I played, I just closed my eyes and zoned out and taught about The Tempest. When I “returned” to reality, I had nailed the song in one take! The next day my friend Sham was telling me about “letting the music control you” when playing it, that he was gonna touch on this subject for his Psychology Thesis. I was “ahhhh!” More on Shams Thesis in the near future!!

Next up was Podge for vocals. He was at me for ages asking me when we are going to record something, and I hadn’t recorded anything that I think would suit him, I write and record songs and afterwards who would be suitable for the song. When I recorded this I know Podge would be perfect for it!! The only time I heard him sing before was when he sings Damien Rice songs at 3.30 in the morning awhile I carry him home after the pub! I picked him up, he bought a pack of biccies in the shop and we went back to my “studio”. By “studio” I mean the spare room, and by spare room, I mean the room where all the shit that isn’t wanted goes! Ha!

I gave a copy of the lyrics to Podge, and started to playback what I had recorded to him over headphones, while I made tea. From my studio (ha!) I could hear Podge sing the words and the song was being played back. All I could hear was squawking and hollering and he sang back over the song. “Its gonna be a long recording session!” I said to myself. Suddenly, he cleared his throat, and beautiful singing began! And in 20 minutes the song was completed.

I really like how this song turned out, everyone who contributed to the song executed exactly what was needed to add to the emotional scope of the song that I was going for. Nearly everyone that listened to the song couldn’t listen to the song the whole way thru because of the “theme” and they just handed me back the headphones. I didn’t mind, I have recorded it the way I wanted to.

Shannonbridge

Remember when you were so young that when someone asked you your age, you said "5 and 1/4" and that extra ¼ was always so important!!

When I was at that age, my family would go up to Shannonbridge for a week during the summer. This was usually our familys holiday for the year. Shannonbridge is a beautiful town next to the River Shannon situated between Co. Roscommon, Co. Offaly and Co. Galway and this was the place where my Father was born and raised. All my fathers brother and sisters lived her with there wives and children, but all my cousins were all three times my age!

Over the course of the week we stayed with my Uncle Sham who was my fathers oldest brother. For the week we went fishing, went on long walks, went on boat rides and all the running around a young healthy boy could do. My Uncle Sham (pronounced Shem) had gotten polio in the 1950’s in Ireland when there was a scare. The meant one of his legs was shorter than the other and he had to walk around with a brace on. I only found out that it was polio he had when he died at his funeral. Up until then he told me he broke his leg whilst playing when he was younger and it was never right since.

I slept in the room next to my Uncle, which was situated upstairs. It had giant old fashioned wardrooms and had giant picture of Our Lady and Jesus looking at me with there huge eyes whilst I tried to sleep in my sleeping bag. I even had a chamber pot because the toilet wasn’t actually in the house it was out in a shed. I never got the hand of this pot. I had to kneel down over it and somehow manage not to splash the wooden floor, which I always ended up doing!

Every morning I was woken up by my Uncles alarm clock and if that didn’t wake me, the church bells did. I used to sneak into him then to talk. I’d lift the latch on the door (the house didn’t even have door handles!!) and pop in to help strap on all these braces and straps to his body so he could walk. The room was dark and those braces and straps hung over all the walls next to the giant bed.

My Uncle used repair bicycles and print the memorial cards for people that have passed away. He still was able to drive and always went places. I guess what im trying to say about all this is even thou he was disabled he never acted like he was. He never stopped this disabilty from his everyday activites. I didn’t notice this when I was younger, but I certainly do now.