Laurie Shaw - Dove From Above (track by track); RF Chaney; CineCeoil Festival #1
In this week's newsletter, the prolific Laurie Shaw talks us through his new album, Ronan Leonard on the first CineCeoil Festival and his fave music videos, and RF Chaney is on the TPOE podcast
It’s a packed TPOE newsletter this week. Hopefully you enjoy - it’s all free so all I ask is maybe give it a share on social media or even tell someone IRL and say they can sign up for the newsletter! For free!
The prolific Laurie Shaw released his latest album Dove From Above on January 5. He says this album was started mid-2022 and finished early 2023 and features parts from other projects, fitted together like arrangement of model kit parts from doomed releases. I asked Laurie to give us a track by track runthrough of Dove From Above, with some bonus questions interspersed. Buy the album here.
The Fireman
The Dove From Above album is a lot less conceptual than other records I've put out. It's like an Airfix plane made using bits and pieces from other model kits. The gestation period for the record was lengthier than usual and the earliest songs for the album pre-date Neck of the Woods by about a year and a half. This song was done in the middle of all that. I don't remember writing it at all or where it came from but I think the fireman element is some way connected to the image of Brian Wilson and the Wrecking Crew wearing fireman helmets during the recording of ‘Mrs O'Leary's Cow’.
Is the starting point for your album-making process usually a concept? And did you try and pin down one when you started making this album?
Yeah, the concept is always really important and that dictates the sorts of songs that are written. For example in early 2022, I was making KAREN and Graduation Night co-currently but because both albums had very specific concepts, everything I wrote was for either one or the other. It ended up working well because if I'd get bored of the Sparks-ish, 70s glam rock, perspex-future KAREN I could leap to the small-town musical of Graduation Night. Graduation Night is probably my most conceptual work to date as it tells a complete story and moves through a year chronologically. The other records I make tend to be concept albums in mood and subject matter only.
Do songs usually stick around for you when they don't make it onto an album? Is it just an idea or a guitar line or a lyric and you file it away for sometime in the future?
Lyrics are always being recycled from songs that are never going to see the light of day but songs themselves I tend to keep attached to a particular album. Songs are very rarely floating off on their own unless they're a single created with the sole purpose of being a single and not part of a wider album.
Bottlenose
This song came from the demoing sessions for a still-unreleased album about Kerry folklore. The song is built on top of the demo in fact, hence why the tempo fluctuates in such a way but I really like the organicness of that. The "Helen of Troy sits comfortably in the passenger seat" line I think came out of the ad-libbing on the original demo and the rest progressed from there. I remember trying to channel Warren Ellis on ‘Jubilee Street’ when I recorded the violin for the climax.
How close to completion is the album about Kerry folklore?
That album has been on the cusp of completion for about a year and half. The album is sort of a journey from Kenmare along the coastline to Valentia Island and then out to the phantom island Hy Brasil, collecting stories from the towns and landscapes along the way. We had the pleasure of debuting some of these live in Tralee the year before last but the right time to just get that album completely finished and out just hasn't arrived yet.
Is ad-libbing lyrics something you've become comfortable with over the years? What percentage would you say you use of it on a given album?
Ad-libbing often throws up interesting combinations of words and sometimes just doing a take and making it up can give you a good idea of where to go next. On things like the last Pelms album I'd say 70% of it was ad-libbed.
Monk Strap Shoes
This song was done immediately after the Sceptre record and carries over some of the energy and colour scheme of that album. I would refer to it having a cartoonish twinkle but I'm not entirely sure I could explain what I mean by that.
Mothering Sunday
This is a song about a very specific memory of collecting wooden beams from John R's in Kenmare with my dad in his little Nissan Micra around spring time. There's a teenage romance weaving throughout echoing some of the stories from Weird Weekends and Graduation Night. There's also a snippet of some morning birds creating a strange texture throughout.
Do you see your albums as kinda speaking to each other or is it just cos this album is, like you say, akin to an Airfix plane made of different model kits?
I think so. Naturally there are ideas and memories and feelings that are coming back all the time throughout the records. I feel like every now and then (maybe once a year?) I try and make the definitive Kenmare record. Weird Weekends was an attempt, as was the Great Southern, Bat Sanctuary and Graduation Night but each one drew on different influences and viewed the town through a different lens. Dove From Above has lots of Kenmare in it but it's one of many geographic locations.
Any Questions
I kept singing like Bryan Ferry for a bit too while recording this album. It started with the backing vocals on ‘Rollover’ and ended with this one. Similar to ‘Rollover’, this was me trying to create a velvety 70s thing. I wrote a song for Year Zero that didn't end up on the album called ‘Coconut Halves’. I finally got to use the imagery of cocktails in coconut halves in this song. Also, the title not having a question mark suggests something a bit unnatural and untoward. To me, anyway!
Is Ferry an influence on you in general? What other musical influences are there on this album, or what are you listening to at the moment?
I got very into Roxy Music, sometime around 2022. I saw a clip of them doing ‘In Ever Dream Home A Heartache’ on Old Grey Whistle Test and then ended up down a Roxy Music rabbit hole. I haven't heard all their stuff and I'm not in love with everything they did but their original manifesto of being sort of nostalgic futurists I find quite exciting and the whole Bryan Ferry persona as well. Songs of theirs like ‘Re-Make, Re-Model’ I've always loved and that song in particular is a great distilled version of what it's like being in a band, especially at the end where everyone gets a chance to do a little solo. I love how everything stops and you get a sax solo and then resumes and then it stops again and you get Eno doing a mad synth bit.
What else am I listening to? I've been enjoying the singles from the new Smile album, Wall Of Eyes. I got very into Sun Ra Arkestra before Christmas as well as A Charlie Brown Christmas by the Vince Guaraldi Trio.
You're Your Own Bossa Nova
A pun title that possibly materialised at about 1pm. Definitely not something you'd come up with in broad daylight. Lyrically, it's a big parade of costumes and locations but the story is pretty simple. The base of the pyramid meeting the top of the pyramid line is from a Melville film called Army of Shadows.
Rollover
This came out of sessions for an album of very wordy songs that were going to be about eight minutes each. This was the most succinct and funky of them all and I thought it deserved to be a single and became the little centrepiece I could decorate around with the rest of the album. The video was heavily inspired by Alphaville which I'd just watched.
Again, what's the state of this album you mention - filed away to an uncertain point in future?
Most of that album never got finished and I doubt any of it will see the light of day. There was a song called ‘A Funky Soul’ that I would have liked to have finished and that was a song about a competitive wedding DJ. But apart from that, nothing particularly memorable materialised.
F-Stop
I like the shortness of this song, especially next to the lengthier ‘Link Road/Link Wray’. I enjoyed recording my camera clicking and moving the film on for an added bit of percussive texturing. I'm particularly fond of the idea of getting a pilot licence for "light flying overhead with a reference". The song is unapologetically short and has kind of a snap to it and I like the reference to Jonathan Fraikes; hopefully that's shorthand for the quality of VHS that the fake memories in the song are playing out on.
Link Road / Link Wray
I love the word Link Road and I wanted to put it in a song. Somehow it ended up as basically an instrumental. The title of the song definitely came out of a fantasy tracklisting thing where I'd pick a holiday snap I thought should be the next album cover and write the tracklisting underneath it. I find this technique throws up a lot of good titles and ideas. In the past I've stuck rigidly to these track titles and written the songs to go with them one at a time. Originally, this was a song with two sections that would go on for about 8 or 9 minutes. This would be the first section and then it would launch into a faster segment but the faster segment never really worked. Hopefully this song sounds good cruising on the link at half 11.
Part Timers
I was playing around, like all the trendy people are, with putting my vocals through a delay pedal and twiddling the knobs mid-performance. What that tends to do is obscure lyrics which I'm sometimes hesitant to do on my "Laurie Shaw" albums simply because the lyrics are dead important. But anyway, I did it on this one and I think it works. What a sad song as well - didn't come from a very happy place. It reminds me of some of the stuff I was doing when I was 19/20.
What other acts are you playing with at the moment?
I guess by this I was referencing my other projects like The Pelms and Felted Fruit where I experiment a little bit more and I'm not trying to be too clever.
Satellite Towns
I spent a bit of time in Glasgow last year and I was introduced to Life Without Buildings and the artist Sue Tompkins. ‘Sorrow’ from their Any Other City LP in particular really resonated with me and the line "figures in a Sue Tompkins way" is a direct reference to that song. She's become a bit of a hero of mine and her music and art is now interwoven with my memories of the Glasgow underground and the great sunsets. This song is one of many that I did around this time that utilised Sue's playfulness with repeated words and abstract use of everyday language but this and ‘Bottlenose’ are the only two that made it to the album. It also somehow tells the story of my life while also having a completely fictional narrative running alongside it.
In what way has Tompkins become a ‘bit of a hero’? Her way of singing/talking on that track is a bit like you alright.
I like the idea that she was an artist who became the lead singer in a band and applied her artistic practice to that. She sounds so much more genuine than the other groups you'd hear where people are talk-singing and a lot less angry and argumentative which is often a by-product of that talk-singing technique. The decision to keep in the bit where I trip over the word "lacklustre" on Satellite Towns for example came from trying to exude the same vulnerability and real-ness of Sue's delivery. There's a video of them playing ‘The Leanover’ and Sue is reading the words off an A4 sheet which is perfect because it gets rid of that smoke and mirrors thing of performance where you have to look really trendy and be professional and know all the words.
What Irish act/song(s) are you excited about at the moment?
I love pôt-pot and I love Ana Palindrome. I saw Trá Phaidín recently in St. Luke's and they were fantastic. I know for a fact Danny Carroll has a great record coming out soon. Crying Loser are also unbelievably good. Also there's a super-group doing swing music called The Bat Pack putting together some dates and I've heard their demos which sound ace.
Any plans for gigs or any general plans for 2024?
Not yet. The main plan is to get more people listening to Dove From Above. I have some physical copies I'm currently gluing together and a lyrics book I'm going to try and get into coffee shops and record shops around Cork. Also have some postcards too with a QR code so that people can send the album around a bit. On the subject of paper-based physical media, I've mostly been in the cartooning zone lately so hopefully I can put some things together where record making and cartooning can intermingle.
TPOE 291: RF Chaney
This week’s guest on the TPOE podcast, the first episode of 2024, is RF Chaney, who you might know as John Francis Flynn’s drummer. We did talk about his work with John, which not only stretches back to his very first show but also to school days together. It’s a really nice, interesting chat - Chaney’s very much a jazz aficianado and listening to how that weaves its way into playing Flynn’s 'nu-trad’ (*shudder, I’m sorry) is brilliant. But Chaney also released his debut album Tropism in November - he just launched it at the Cobblestone on January 11 and it sounds like it was a great show. It was his second go at launching it - the first fell on the night of the Dublin riots. That was my first question when we met and chatted in mid-December: what was that night like?
RF Chaney: Well, it was a vibe for sure. Aongus MacAmhlaigh was playing support. I was quite nervous for the gig cos I'd never put on my own gig before ever. So I was already a bit nervous. I was there most of the day, pretty much rehearsing in there. And when we finally sat down after doing the full soundcheck, I was like, 'Right, will we get a Namaste in from up the road?' Get an Indian in, sat down, like, 'Ah, beautiful. I actually feel confident about this now'. Then Adam from the Cobblestone came in with his phone and was like, 'D'ya see what's happening in town?' And I was like, 'No, I've been completely preoccupied here, what's going on?' And he's like, 'There's buses on fire and stuff!' So, immediately, I was very nervous again. Because I was like, I hope people turn up for this gig. And then I was like, yeah, the chances of people turning up is slimming very, very fast. But yeah in the end, Aongus played support and I was like, 'Actually, that was very grounding and calming, let's just focus on the music now.' And then we're just getting prepped to go on stage, I was like 'I'll just make sure all my synth stuff is ready to go', and then Adam came in from the Cobblestone, 'Very sorry, Ross, but we're gonna have to close the pub.' I was like (sighs) 'OK, yeah.' It was a very surreal night. But I think it worked out for the best because it would have been a really weird dark buzz to be playing this electronic chamber jazz or whatever you want to call when the world is literally burning outside.
You can buy Tropism here and listen to the TPOE podcast wherever you get your pods - just search for The Point of Everything or, indeed, just listen below. Or here.
Ronan Leonard on CineCeoil Festival #1: I'm trying to get people off shitty speakers and small screens
Presenting one-off screenings in various venues and festivals in Ireland, Europe, and the UK since 2009, Ronan Leonard, the creative producer and presenter of Cineceoil and member of the IndieCork team, has announced the first standalone CineCeoil Festival, to be held Friday-Sunday, January 19-21 in The Pavilion, Careys Lane, Cork. He’s selected three feature-length films and four music video programmes for screening. Booking in advance is advised via Eventbrite.
The three features are:
Slingshot Hip Hop (Irish premiere) - braiding together the stories of young Palestinians living in Gaza, the West Bank and other parts of Palestine in the late 2000s as they discover hip-hop and employ it as a tool to surmount divisions imposed by occupation and poverty. (Saturday, 3.30pm)
The Year Of The Langer (world premiere) - a film directed and produced by Scooter Twomey using footage he recorded over a year with Los Langeros - a bunch of Irish, Scottish and English musicians who were based in Cork in the late 2000s and early 2010s. (Saturday, 6.30pm)
Love, Gilda (Irish premiere) - a 2018 American-Canadian documentary directed and co-produced by Lisa D'Apolito about the life and career of Gilda Radner through her own eyes using her diaries, audio tapes, home movies and interviewing some of her closest friends at that time. (Sunday, 7pm)
Celebrating music videos is the second strand of what CineCeoil is all about, and there will be four ‘42-ish’ minute-long shows.
CineCeoil #28 will focus mainly on music videos from the last 12 months, mostly but not exclusively Irish (Friday , 6pm).
CineCeoil #29 will be a wider range of interesting videos from many corners and genres of the globe. (Friday, 7pm).
CineCeoil #30 will be a mix of music videos and songs that will entertain all ages, and all the content will be appropriate for all eyes. The videos won’t necessarily be funny but will be fun. (Sunday, 4pm)
CineCeoil #31 will be all instrumental music videos. (Sunday, 5pm)
This is the first CineCeoil Festival, but CineCeoil has been going for a while. When and where did the idea come from and how has it grown or changed over the years?
Did the idea come from the wordplay, or the wordplay from the idea? I don't remember anymore.... There's a few strands to this, I've been both a musician and event put-er on-er for over half my life now, I like helping to make interesting things happen. I also have been working with film festivals for nearly as long. So in that respect, it just makes sense that I do it. I have put this together with favours asked for and favours to 'cash in' and Judy and Benny in The Pavilion have been very supportive of having access to the venue.
I've been doing one-off screenings of films to do with music and music videos for 15 years or so, and with IndieCork I've been doing an annual screening of generally recent music videos which I present as a sort 'of live in-person radio show of music videos'. Essentially, I'm trying to get people off shitty speakers and small screens; like all these musicians spend so much time (generally) with really good equipment and getting their sound specifically EQed, then they get film-makers who (generally) use big monitors and whatnot to do the best they can - only to end up having people watching them on YouTube on the bus or whatever, everything compressed and small. It's like when someone cooks your dinner and you microwave it later, there's nothing *wrong* with a microwaved dinner but if you'd eaten the way the person who put in the effort had hoped for, it would be better for all concerned.
My screenings in IndieCork have led to me doing more in places like the Hamburg Short Film Festival, where I got to show music videos by people such as Elaine Malone, Jinx Lennon, The Mary Wallopers, To Those I Love, Lankum and AEMak in a huge old postal sorting office. Was incredible to just host it, but also introduce prole there to really good acts in a city where it'd be hard to imagine all of them getting to tour to. There is something sustainable about me going around spreading the word about Irish/Cork acts. Another thing I will be doing is 'one-dayers' in music venues, starting with all ages during the day. It will never be as good as band playing but it will bring out some engaged people and a few interested curious people and it will be something positive.
For my first standalone festival, I've decided to go with the 'pay what you can' model for the tickets and a 'Rising Tides Lift All Boats' model for the artists. Some people just don't have spare at the moment and others do, but I still want things cultural and interesting things to happen. I want to thank every single person who is letting me show their work for going along with the idea too.
I presume you're a connoisseur of music docs - what are some of your favourites?
Well, I've seen a lot and I know what I like, if that's enough to make me a 'connoisseur', I'll take it. In terms of fly-on-the-wall 'Meeting People Is Easy' about Radiohead was really good, it certainly was one of the reasons I've chosen to not become an internationally successful rock star.
'Where You're Meant To Be' following a project Aidan Moffat was doing and its chasing direction is a brilliant watch, asking what is folk music, who keeps it alive, how and why?
'Smoke' about Benjamin Smoke has always stuck with me too, a decade or so of footage of an artist, who had an interesting varied life, to say the least and was looking at the end of it coming towards him.
I would point out though that ‘music documentary’ is just one strand of CineCeoil, I say 'films about music' are also a central element, and what comes to mind as I say that is Jennifer Reeder's 'A Million Miles Away' [I'm not showing it at this festival edition btw folks, but I will link to it here], a coming-of-age film about confident-ish girls and a confidence-less conductor which features the song 'A Million Miles Away' as one of the pillars of the film. The only downside for me is that Jennifer used the wrong A Million Miles Away song! She went with The Plimsouls song while any true 'connoisseur' knows it should have been Rory Gallagher with a different song, but with same title. (look at this version that includes him walking around Cork at the start)
What are the elements that a great music doc needs?
On a programming level, I like them to be at most 48 minutes long! But, in any artistic endeavour, if I think you've made the most of your resources then I'm in. I like docs where the subject isn't in charge of the film as they inevitably pull punches. I like it when people show vulnerability and some insight to their creativeness and/or how they express themselves, even if I don't like what it is. Argh, how do you answer this question without sounding you have a ticklist? I can't tell you the exact make-up of an interesting person, but I know one when I've met one. Same with a documentary.
What goes into securing the Irish premieres for these three feature films? Is it a lot of admin?
Hmm, one was a Facebook message to someone who tagged me in a post. So that was easy peasy. The other two involved a lot more messages, but this is the thing, I'm showing films that were released 15 years ago Slingshot Hip-Hop and four years ago Love, Gilda. If someone wanted to watch them at home we can all do that with a few clicks of a button, but I want to do it 'right', that means proper screens and sound, communally with possibly a friend at your shoulder and a stranger two metres away and at the end (hopefully) you've been moved and/or entertained and you've had a shared experience, lord knows we have lost out on so many of those, but also - permission from the makers. I want them to know why I want to show it, I want to pay them where I can. They all accept I'm trying a new model of 'pay what you can' (on the way in, not the way out!), let's see what people go with it - I could end up finding out it's a bad idea, but I hope not. This is a very modest festival but the start of something bigger. A few more things will be announced in 2024, those are a LOT more admin - and that's before I've even told anyone. If anyone has a couple of grand get in touch.
I never got to see Los Langeros but heard lots about them. I presume you have fond memories?
I've fond memories of the band and of the times, not a camera phone in sight, full pubs, heaving crowds at the front of the gig, craic. In truth, I simply didn't see them enough, I fell into the classic trap of 'I'll catch the next gig' too much. Watching the footage Scooter Twomey recorded really makes me wish I'd bothered to see them more tbh. I'm not speaking for Scooter, this is just my take, but while this is 'just' recordings of two different gigs and a band practice session, it is so important somebody bothered to do it. He really absorbed in the atmosphere in his footage and has documented the time.
What really sticks in my craw personally, is that everywhere he recorded is gone now: Two ideal gig spaces gone, band practice spots gone. When you think of the many places bands like Los Langeros played in Cork - the Camden Palace, the Quad. Sigh. So the screening will serve as a reminder. We also see a good few people in the crowd footage, some people you might have seen at gigs since and are now a familiar (older) face and others we don't see around anymore for reasons both geographical or mortality. Hmm, that makes it sound sad, but it's not.
Can you remember the first music video that you ever watched? Or what was the first music video that made you go 'wow'?
Ha, you'd think that is something I'd have considered before. Being a person who grew up in a two-channel country (Poverty 1 and Poverty 2 was the old joke), the window for music videos was for two hours after mass on Sundays with The Beatbox (which was 'simulcast'ed on TV and radio at same time) and occasionally some would feature on The Den. Let Ol' Man Leonard lean back on his rocking chair and tell the younger people that we didn't have everything at hand all the time, I remember seeing Dire Straits' 'Walk Of Life' video and just having to try to remember it in my head and then the next day at primary school talk about it with other kids as we collectively recalled it [essentially children laughing at people falling over and then reacting to it - classic] and then had to wait every Sunday hoping they'd show it again. Realistically that was probably what a proportion of my prayers at mass were for! (I will be showing that video for my Sunday Family Friendly 4pm screening, as everyone - young and old - deserves to see that video, and to be in a room with somebody seeing it for the first time would be a joy. I will also be showing the best music video about a grown man cheating in the school sports day of his old primary school.)
My first reaction to this question was to scribble a quick list and I came up with five 'first videos I remember', they are sort of one chunk. It's that one: 'Sledgehammer' by Peter Gabriel, 'Girls Just Wanna Have Fun' by Cyndi Lauper and 'Take On Me' by A-Ha. Absolutely great tunes and visually fun, but all released in the mid-1980s, so they were still on regular rotation and iconic by the time I started watching The Beatbox in 1989/1990. The first video I remember coming out that people were talking about (Ballinora National School didn't have a watercooler, so it was more of an 'outside tap near the prefab during small break moment') was Sinéad O'Connor 'Nothing Compares To You' video, definitely one of the first glimpses of a grown-up world to my eyes. [as a side note, I urger TPOE-ers to give the video for her 'Take Me To Church' video from 2014 a watch, her reference to the original video is brilliant]. What a loss she has been.
What's the best recent music video, Irish and/or international, that you've seen?
Arrgh, pressure! If in doubt, check your WhatsApp. Looking through my recent messages, I got sent this a few days ago and in turn sent this to a good few people:
Waxahatchee - 'Right Back to It' - it's a good song first and foremost and a few things that always ticks my boxes in song/music videos:
- great vocals and harmonies;
- rivers;
- incredible curling lip and drawl throughout (1 min 26 seconds is a great example);
- slow guitar parts
- and the piece de resistance for me, someone you don't see at all until their backing vocals appear, love it.
I am also showing a video by Fears - which isn't released yet, but will be by next week, called '4th Of The 1st'. It's a great song, from her forthcoming album which I hope brings her to a larger audience, she is just so good, not just with Fears but also with Tulle Collective, (m)Haol and so much more. I don't want to tell people what to read from the video, but I will say the video is astute and well-executed, which is the characteristic that is fundamental to anything I screen. Like Johnny Giles says, 'you can only judge a player by their merits', I feel my programmes this weekend will cover a wide range of genres, resources and concepts with my admiration of the work the main constant.
I try not to say in advance too many of the music videos I will be showing, as that undermines the show element, but I will be giving premieres of songs that aren't even released yet by Barry McCormack (formerly of Jubilee Allstars) and Faoi Bhláth (who was recently named in the Irish Times ones to watch out for in 2024 list.