Looking back on 2011, one of the most profound musical experiences I had was when I was invited to record trumpet on an album that my father, Mike Nolan, had begun recording trumpet on 34 years earlier, but which was never released.

The Liffey Light Orchestra (www.liffeylight.com) had begun recording their album ‘Filaments‘ in 1977. Musicians such as my father were hired, studios were booked and the recording process was begun… But mid-way through the sessions, life led composer & bandleader Paul Egan along another path and the Orchestra’s unfinished album lay untouched for three and a half decades.

A generation later, The Liffey Light Orchestra re-formed and set about finishing the album. When Paul got in touch with me to see if I could finish the trumpet parts which my dad had begun, I jumped at the opportunity.

I arrived at the studio and sound engineer Philip Begley played the tape of one of the tracks that my father had begun recording 34 years earlier – a composition by Paul Egan called ‘No Road Back‘. As I listened to the louds and softs of his trumpet, the distinctive vibrato, the blasting confidence of his high register, my mind was flooded with memories of my father. Behind every note, I could ‘hear’ his qualities, his joys, his sorrows, each note like a mirror reflecting something of his spirit from his private inner world to the outer world we all share. It was almost like he was there in the studio with us.

After 34 years in the making, The Liffey Light Orchestra released their debut album ‘Filaments‘ (available on iTunes) in October 2011. Seeing my father’s name and my own name listed side by side in the credits has left me both proud and humbled. My father and I had often talked about playing together “someday”… But when he died in 2004, we had never had the chance. Apart from jamming with him during my trumpet lessons at home, I simply hadn’t yet reached a level of proficiency that was high enough to perform with him. Eight years after his death, ‘No Road Back‘ is the first time I have ever played with my father – his trumpet recorded before my birth, my trumpet recorded after his death. It’s amazing how music can sometimes be more than just music. Music can facilitate a closeness of souls, a kind of closeness that is beyond the limitations of time and place, even death.

I took a walk through the streets of Dublin – a city I love more and more as time goes by – and made a video to accompany ‘No Road Back‘. You can hear the song and come with me on a walk through the streets of Dublin here: Hope you enjoy it!

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I thought I’d also take this opportunity to share a video of my father performing on ‘The Late Late Show‘, Ireland’s premier talk show, with his jazz quintet back in the 90s.

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My thanks to Paul Egan for inviting me to be a part of The Liffey Light Orchestra. For more information see www.liffeylight.com

Tonight I had the honour of performing at a special reception to mark the upcoming Human Rights Day (Saturday Dec. 10) here in Dublin. Colin Wrafter, the Director of the Human Rights Unit at Ireland’s Department of Foreign Affairs gave a moving address on the subject of ‘freedom of religion or belief‘ and I was invited to play a short set of songs after his talk. I wrote a new song especially for the occasion about the persecution of religious minorities in the Islamic Republic of Iran.

The reception was hosted by the National Assembly of the Bahá’í Faith in Ireland. Members of the Bahá’í Faith in Iran are being systematically denied one of the most basic human rights – the right to education. By denying young people the right to higher education simply because of their beliefs, the Iranian government is attempting to stifle the lives of an entire generation of its own people. Several Nobel Peace Prize laureates, including Bishop Desmond Tutu and José Ramos, President of East Timor, have launched the ‘Education Under Fire‘ campaign to bring greater global awareness to this issue (www.educationunderfire.com). Rainn Wilson (best known as ‘Dwight’ from ‘The Office’) has voiced his concerns about the situation in an inspiring video posted below.

The song I’ve written for Human Rights Day is called ‘One Hundred Thousand Veils’ and is about the persecution of the Bahá’í Community in Iran. You can read the lyrics and hear the song – which I performed live for the first time last night at The Ruby Sessions in Dublin – below.

Rainn Wilson on ‘Education Under Fire’

‘One Hundred Thousand Veils‘ – performed for the first time last night at the Ruby Sessions in Dublin

Come down

and walk these roads around

the city of Tehran

where seven candles burn.

Follow me

all you who claim to be

possessed of charity

down to the Crimson Sea.

One hundred thousand veils have covered the sun

and darkest clouds have blocked and blackened the blue sky.

Did you hear the fate

of those who educate,

who even in the grave

find no respite from hate?

Have you seen the youth

who gave their lives for truth,

that girl who kissed the noosed

and welcomed all abuse?

One hundred thousand suns have fallen to earth

with blasts that block the ears from hearing the new song.

One hundred thousand veils have covered the truth.

How many mothers’ cries are lost in the tumult?

There is no war to fight

You have no sacred right

No holy book to cite

To make these wrongs seem right.

Does it so offend

to want this world to mend,

to walk in hope to the end

and see each man a friend?

Come down

and walk these roads around

the cities of Iran

which boast so much to man.

When I first began coordinating this tour, I didn’t really know that many people around the UK, but I started off by contacting some friends in England and Scotland, and with a little bit of networking and a whole lot of goodwill, 5 dates turned into 10 dates, and 10 dates into 20 dates, and 20 dates into a grand total of 42 dates – from Dublin to Northern Ireland, then from Scotland to the South… and then from the South to Scotland again.

When I think back on the logistics of a ‘self-managed’ tour, I marvel at how little went wrong, or I should say, how much went right. Apart from that one night when I locked myself out of my car (with all my equipment inside it) and, after an hour of trying to jimmy the door open with a coat hanger, I finally had to put a brick through the window and drive to the venue with the cold October breeze blowing in my ear – apart from that, things went miraculously smoothly. Each day flowed softly into the next, and each evening, as I drove from one city to another, I found my smiling concert hosts waiting with open arms and kettles boiled.

A part of me wished I could have just kept on going in my little blue Nissan Micra, perhaps across the water and on into France, Luxembourg, Belgium, Germany, and why not all the way up and across Russia and China?!?!? But perhaps that kind of tour can wait a little while. Besides, there’s plenty of work to get back to here in Ireland. Speaking of which, I’ve been immersed in practice since I came home, preparing some new songs to be released in the spring of 2012. Tomorrow morning, I’ll head into the studio to start recording the piano parts.

My heart is filled with gratitude to all my dear friends – old and new! – who so graciously hosted my humble house-concerts on this tour, and to all the lovely people who attended the concerts for giving me the great privilege of sharing my music with your precious ears. I wish I could reach out to each one of you to let you know what a delight it was to meet you all, to visit your towns and cities and to play in your homes, but hopefully the likes of Facebook will enable us to find each other and keep in touch for many years to come. You are all a precious part of my own musical/spiritual/four-wheeled journey.

Luke

I had the pleasure of singing ‘Create in Me‘ today at a friend’s home in the hills overlooking Glasgow, followed by fireworks and much cake.

It’s just about time for the drive home…

And today I hit the road for a month-long ‘House-Concert-Tour’ of Ireland & the UK. I’ll be spending the month of October driving around Ireland, Scotland, England and Wales, performing in the living-rooms, parlours, barns and chicken coops of friends and friends of friends. I can’t wait to be on the road.

A few brief words about A Few Honest Words…

The title song on this E.P. has had a curious little life so far. It was produced back in 2007 by my dear friend Kelly Snook. At the time, Kelly was a well-established astrophysicist at NASA who spent her spare time recording local musicians. But that part of the story just got more interesting… Earlier this year, Dr. Snook left behind the world of space exploration at NASA to become a full-time music producer, sound engineer and officially indispensable right-hand woman to one of the UK’s most prestigious artists, the Grammy award-winning Imogen Heap. Go Kelly!

After we recorded ‘A Few Honest Words’, the song made a brief step into the world via a cardboard box of CDs in a small town in Connecticut, but when the cardboard box was empty, the song disappeared and hasn’t been available since…

So I’m just a bit ecstatic to announce that ‘A Few Honest Words’ (along with some new tunes) is now available on CD and download from lukeslott.bandcamp.com and Tower Records, Dublin.

As I set out on this grassroots house-concert tour, I’d like to express my utmost thanks to you all for your support in the process of making this little CD. I hope you enjoy it, and perhaps I’ll see you in someone’s living-room somewhere along the road…

Click the pic to listen or buy

Things are lining up nicely after a busy summer. The recordings were finished, the mixes were mastered, the artwork was designed and two big boxes of CDs have just arrived from the factory. Phew!

I’m delighted to share with you the cover design (including tracklist) for ‘A Few Honest Words’. It was designed by Dominic Flannigan, the multi-faceted graphic designer and creative director of one of the UK’s hippest record labels, LuckyMe. For this cover, he collaborated with the superb Scottish photographer Christina Kernohan.

You can see the splendid job they did for the cover of ‘A Few Honest Words’ just below!

A Few Honest Words comes out on Saturday 1st October.

Thanks so much for all your support on this. Hope you enjoy the artwork.

Luke

Seizing a rare window of sunshine after a pretty rainy summer in Dublin, the director of the show arrived at our house and filmed the early-morning process of me and my dad wheeling my piano out of the house and into the van, and – at the other end – out of the van onto the cobbles of Grafton St in Dublin’s city centre to busk for the day. We were lucky with the weather and I’m excited to see the footage!

‘Capital D‘ will be aired tomorrow, Thursday 22nd September, at 7:00pm (GMT) on RTE One, Ireland’s national broadcasting station. 

On another note, THANK YOU all for the tremendous support in helping me to spread the word about the free download of the ‘acoustic version’ of ‘A Few Honest Words’ from my upcoming E.P. (You just can’t beat word-of-mouth so your support is much appreciated!) And it’s been great fun getting your feedback and ideas about what you would do with the song if you were the producer!

On Saturday 1st October, the official version of ‘A Few Honest Words‘ will be released and I’m sure you’re going to love astrophysicist/producer Kelly Snook‘s studio skills.

Enjoy your week!

Luke

There’s an interesting story behind the recording of this song…

A few years ago when I was playing in music clubs in New York, a songwriter friend of mine (that’s you Hillary!) said, ‘You should do some recording with my friend Kelly Snook – she’s an excellent sound engineer and she’s got a great recording studio in Washington DC… Oh, and she’s a rocket scientist.’

Intrigued by the prospect of a recording session with an astrophysicist, I called Kelly and introduced myself and she invited me to come and record a song at her studio. So I hopped on a Chinatown bus from New York to Washington DC where Kelly, driving home from her Mars research lab at NASA, picked me up and brought me to her studio, charmingly titled ‘It’s Not Rocket Science Studios’, in central DC.

Surrounded by her endless collection of musical instruments, studio gadgets, toy spaceships and books on astrophysics, I sat and played Kelly a few of my songs. We settled on ‘A Few Honest Words’ and set up some microphones. I laid down the guitar and vocals, noodled around on the trumpet for a bit, and then caught the last Chinatown bus back to New York, leaving the song in the hands of this rocket scientist I had just met, without any idea of what she would do with it.

A few days later, Kelly sent me the track and to this day, I’m amazed at how she took my simple little guitar song and transformed it into something quite unique.

We printed up a small batch of CDs which we sold around the East Coast or gave away to friends, but other than those few CDs, the song never got a proper release and has never been available since. So we’ve decided to give ‘A Few Honest Words’ an official release along with a few freshly recorded new songs!

‘A Few Honest Words’ will be officially available on October 1st.

In the meantime, I thought it would be nice to share with you the original acoustic version of the song which I played that day for Kelly at It’s Not Rocket Science Studios. The first 1000 downloads will be free.

Click here to download the original ‘acoustic version’ of ‘A Few Honest Words’

And on October 1st, you’ll hear how a very cool rocket scientist at NASA produces a record…

If you like the song, I’d be so grateful if you could help me out by sharing it with your friends on Facebook & Twitter.

Looking forward to seeing you tonight at 8pm for my final show at the Bewley’s Theatre in Dublin with special guest Diane Badíe!

Over the past 4 months I’ve had the immense honor of sharing the stage with some of Ireland’s most influential musicians.

And for my final show on Friday September 2nd I’ll be especially honored to be joined by a dear friend of mine, New York vocalist & poet Diane Badíe. Diane and I met 5 years ago at a downtown open-mic in New York City where her stunning rapid-fire poetry and soulful vocals left the audience entranced. We began singing together and doing the rounds of the New York open-mic circuit. Whenever we’re on the same side of the Atlantic, music abounds, and I can’t wait to share the stage with this talented artist once again.

Though I’ll be sad to move on from the cosy intimacy of the Bewley’s Theatre, the end of this concert series will see the beginning of a new adventure. On September 2nd, I’ll be releasing a free song online in anticipation of my new EP which will be released this October. So watch this space on September 2nd!

The Bewley’s Café Theatre is a small intimate venue with only 50 seats. You can reserve tickets in advance by emailing Bewley’s at bewleysbookings@gmail.com

Tickets are €12. Doors open at 8pm. Show starts at 8:30.

Hope to see you at Bewley’s on Friday 2nd September!

Luke

Diane Badíe performing in New York City

Filed under: Uncategorized ]]> http://lukeslott.wordpress.com/2011/08/23/my-final-show-at-the-bewleys-theatre/feed/ 0 Luke Slott Diane NYC http://lukeslott.wordpress.com/2011/07/26/show-number-4-at-the-bewleys-theatre/ http://lukeslott.wordpress.com/2011/07/26/show-number-4-at-the-bewleys-theatre/#comments Tue, 26 Jul 2011 12:55:22 +0000 Luke Slott http://lukeslott.wordpress.com/?p=477 ]]> On Friday 5th August at 8pm, I’ll be returning to the stage for my penultimate (!) show at the Bewley’s Café Theatre in Dublin. In this month’s ‘guest musician’ spot, I’m very happy to announce that multi-instrumentalist Vyvienne Long will be joining me for a second time with her enchanting cello, piano and vocal harmonies.

For those of you who made it to Bewley’s 2 months ago when Vyvienne joined me on stage for the first time, you know we’re in for a treat. And for those of you who couldn’t make it, come along! Vyvienne and I will be performing new songs together for the very first time.

Tickets are €12. Doors open at 8pm. Show starts at 8:30.

The Bewley’s Café Theatre is a small intimate venue with only 50 seats. You can book tickets in advance by emailing Bewley’s at bewleysbookings@gmail.com

Hope to see you on Friday 5th August!

Luke