6 posts tagged “nigel place”

Hi

Just wanted to share a photo of my last gig with you, I think it looks great, it was taken by Stefan Duerr.

There are other which I'll post soon.

Cheers

Nige

Nigel Place - The Academy - Dublin

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So last thursday I supported one of Ireland's most popular singer/songwriters Declan O'Rourke in The Academy Dublin and it was great, loved every second of it and couldn't believe 30 minutes could go so quickly. Time flies when your having fun I suppose?!

The day itself was brutal, it rained all day and i'd been up since 7:30 that morning and was on the go all day, so there was no one more pleased than I was when I eventually got to the venue to sound check and settle into the night ahead. I was joined by some friends, Labhaoise my backing singer and Len who produced my EP, he was gonna take some pics and provide some moral support. Also in the venue was another friend Shane Brennan who was filming the night for both myself and Declan. Shane having a production company called Moondance Productions had 3 cameras set up and so when the results are ready I'll put something up here.

But I loved it, it went really well and the crowd gave me a very good welcome and alot of their attention. The venue itself holds 650 people and when I came on it looked quite full from where I was standing, so I said it on the night and I meant it........................ its really nice to actually play to somebody! My previous gig involved playing to 2 people, I kid you not, so if that night was swings I'll take the roundabouts.

Anyways I'll keep you posted anyways on the footage from it.

All the best

Nige

Well my gig on tuesday went ok, started late and kinda ran over and so being the last act to play, I didn't get on stage til after 12. So I kinda threw caution to the wind and opened up with a song that I'd not really played publicly before. Its called "Coming Down is Hard", the opening verse being "She smokes her cigarettes with grace, you know exactly what she mean when she pulls that face, without saying a word, but sometimes she swears a little to remind you its still hurts". It got the idea from an article in a newspaper whilst in London last year, I was sitting in The Bedford Arms waiting to play at The City Showcase having a pint of Red Stripe, and lovely it was too. 

Anyways there was an interview with a girl who said something about smoking cigarettes with grace and still swearing a little in the context of her now being a little older & wiser whilst reminising about her youth.

So those lines and that idea stuck in my head and on my return to Ireland I wrote a song but I've been fiddling with the arrangement and the melody and the lyrics, since then and its had several incarnations but the one I'm at now I feel is the way the song should be.

Its quite a subdued sparse and underplayed song and so requires more of the listener, so past midnight wasn't the greatest time to play it but now that its had its first airing I shall introduce it to my set more often. Hopefully I'll get it demo-ed soon but I only really like putting up stuff thats finished for people to hear, so you might have to wait.

I'm hoping to get back over to London and do a few more shows this year, so hopefully I'll get a song or 2 out of the trip too

In the summer of 2006, I ventured out into the open-mic scene of Dublin , armed with some new songs and a belief that they were the best I'd ever written and although I was low on confidence and very rusty on performing live (as it had been years), I had done it before and I had also adopted a "sure fuck it, you never know til you try" attitude.

So, I tried, it worked, I gained confidence and I grew with the songs. It was amazing. Sometimes I even got to play to as many as 10 people. One time a film crew came down and 10 secs of one of my songs was played on national TV, fame at last. I wasn’t going to be long now but better than this I was energised, I had total belief in my singing, playing and song writing.... a rarity for my modest Irish self. (Modesty something I’ve learned to leave behind)

It was around that time I met Len Arran who was embarking on a new project with Labhaoise Brennan, a quality female vocalist. Anyways Len was doing a bit of music for a pilot TV show called "The Coalboat Kids" but he needed an Irish male vocal and asked if I'd have a go, so I did. I spent 20 minutes recording a vocal to a song Len had written and done the guide vocal to. It was the most inspirational 20 minutes ever. I suddenly realised what was possible, I had to get my own stuff recorded. So over a series of evenings and the occasional afternoon with Len my 4 track EP "Broadcast to Anyone Who'll Listen" was recorded.

In that 20 minutes, the realisation that you need to hit people immediately with what you are trying to say, you’ve got about 20 seconds, there’s no time to fuck about, be hard on yourself and your songs and ditch the deadwood, no one cares if you can play every scale under the sun or you can reach that super high Maria Carey note, they want to be able to whistle a tune. "Nah, Nah-Nah, Nah-Nah-Nah-Nah, Nah-Nah-Nah-Nah, Hey Jude" case in point.

Anyways I'm drifting off the subject back to the "The Coalboats Kids".

Once upon a time, there was a band. This was no ordinary band, the lived in the Kingdom of Ringsend. A Dublin trio called "The Blades", who were held in higher acclaim than U2, Phil Lynnott and Van Morrison in their day. In that band was a guy on drums called Pat Larkin, and the very same Pat Larkin in post Blades life started writing. One of his creative endeavours was "The Coalboat Kids".

Long Story Short………Pat Larkin………Screen Play………Zanzibar Films………Graham Cantwell………TV Pilot Show………Len………Song………Me………"When You Get Old", so have a listen.

So this pilot show is in post production right now and fingers crossed it’ll see the light of day. I’ll keep you posted on any developments when the time comes.

Nige

Hey Again!

Heres the O2 Making Waves podcast I mentioned in my previous posting. It's really well put together, so cheers to the O2 Making Waves Podcasting Ireland people.

www.podcastingireland.ie/listen-channel.html?id_directory=71&item=79

Anyways I'm off to pick up some CDs of my EP that I got done up for promo with new artwork, so I'm excited to see how they look in the flesh so to speak.

Later

Nige