Songwriting & Composing
My current release, Barricade the Sky. I wrote the song in response to something I used to witness every day on my journey into Dublin city centre, which would take me past a centre that at the time was being used as temporary accommodation for asylum seekers. A small, but bizarrely committed, group of protesters maintained a constant vigil outside it, waving tricolours and banners with scaremongering slogans referencing ‘Unvetted Military Aged Men’ and claiming ‘Ireland is Full’. No, it’s not. Ireland is one of the wealthiest countries in the world, and also one of the most sparsely populated, and those of us who were lucky enough to be born here don’t get to decide who else has the right to safety. We have some serious infrastructural problems, but you can’t blame that on migrants. And if you do go down that road, where will you draw the line?
It gladdens my heart that Barricade the Sky always gets a great response from the crowd at The Back Room Dispatch, a singer-songwriter night that I curate. And we’ve got a shiny new event coming up in the new year, on Feb. 8th!
Hot off the presses from our the Summer 2025 Back Room Dispatch, here’s a clip of vocal harmony group Glór Eile performing a new song of mine, Lay My Bible Down:
I also had the opportunity to showcase some of my original material on July 29th at Ashbourne Library, Co. Meath, thanks to a small award from Meath County Council Arts Office. Joined by Pádraig Kilbride (keyboards), Paddy Joyce (bass) & Brian Tavey (guitar). I’d love to see more live cultural events in this part of the world, so it was cool to play at least a small part in starting that conversation.
I’d also love you to check out Even When I’m Strong and, if you like it, tell others…..
Unfortunately, most people experience profound bereavement at some stage of their lives. The song sounds very personal but it’s not about my own grief; I wrote it for a friend of mind after she lost her partner far too young. I hope it can bring comfort to anybody dealing with loss. Shot by Jonathan Lavery at Camelot Studios and featuring Clara Rose on lead vocals, plus Josh Johnston on piano, and string quartet comprised of myself, Lioba Petrie, Mihaly Magyarics and Oleksandra Kristieva. I was recovering from Covid at the time, hence the mask.
While you’re there, take a look at Strange Kind of Rain, written and recorded with support from the Arts Council of Ireland
It’s inspired by the sea shanty tradition, a genre which has gained a certain cachet lately, thanks in particular to a number of TikTok hits during the pandemic. While the finished piece doesn’t have much in common with the work songs of a 19th century merchant sailing ship, it does draw on a range of cultures and references, and on languages real and invented, just like the crew of a typical merchant vessel. Throughout the writing process, I was haunted by a host of different images; the challenges faced by 21st century fishermen, biblical imagery, sirens luring ships onto the rocks. But the images that I really couldn’t stop thinking about were those of the tiny, overloaded migrant boats making perilous crossings to the EU that have become all too familiar in recent times. The work is scored for choir, cello, percussion & speech, performed by myself, Pia Dunne, Paddy Groenland, Michael McCartan & Sadhbh O’Sullivan on vocals, Lioba Petrie on cello, and Alessandra Azevedo voice over. I hope you’ll check it out.
You might also like to check out this (very!) rough recording of Solder, a piece I was commissioned to write for Lourdes Youth and Community Services during my period as Artist in Residence there.
If you’re still reading, thank you! Sharing all of the above is, for me, by far the easiest way to answer the ‘what kind of music do you write’? question that I’m convinced many other music creators dread as much as I do. And you’ll have gathered that I don’t write in one, easily-defined genre; I love being able to write a country song here and a ‘high art’ piece there, and I rejoice in the fact that the world has changed sufficiently that nobody minds too much when a writer turns their hand to different styles and idioms.
I started writing songs when I was about 8 years old. This didn’t seem like any great achievement at the time because as a child I thought everyone wrote songs (almost everyone in my family writes). I was a finalist in the 2FM Yoplait Song Contest four times in my youth…never won it though 🙂 Later I went on and studied more ‘serious’ Composition at degree level in Trinity College Dublin and Masters level at NUI Maynooth. In 2020 there was further training, El Curso de Composición Musivisual at Música Creativa, Madrid. And I’ve also received the following Music Awards/Professional Affiliations:
-Professional Artist Development Award, Meath County Council Arts Office, 2025
-Awarded Agility Award from the Arts Council of Ireland, 2021
-Recipient of Meath County Council Regional Bursary Arts Award, 2018
-Awarded Travel and Training Award from the Arts Council of Ireland, 2016 for purpose of attending Conducting Gesture and Voice Course, Voice Care Network, Minnesota, U.S
-Selected to represent Ireland at the EU Youth In Action Community Arts Connecting through Creativity, Mayfield Arts Centre, Cork, 2014
Member of the Irish Music Rights Organisation (IMRO), Phonographic Performance Ireland (PPI) and Recorded Artists Actors Performers (RAAP)
Founder member of and former secretary to the Irish Composers’ Collective
Member of Artists’ Panel of the National Concert Hall’s Music in Mind programme
A random collection of some other material:
Another Winter – for Prepared Piano, performed by David Adams
cathymcevoy 