Clocks strikes new start for Feeney

JULIE Feeney’s mobile phone reminds her of what she has to do. Every time she picks it up, the words “Begin today” stare back.

 

As a composer, singer and conductor, the Galway native has performed her acclaimed music to audiences across Ireland, North America, Britain and Continental Europe, including a capacity show at the 1,200-seat National Concert Hall. On Saturday in Ennis, Ms Feeney will, once again, make good on her mantra.

“This will be my first full solo show,” explains Julie, who typically performs with an ensemble, of her forthcoming appearance at Clare’s newest venue, 3 bed semi presents.

“Up to now, I normally would’ve done 20 minutes to half hour on my own and I’d think, ‘People will be sick of you by then – that’s enough’,” she laughs.

“I’m really, really looking forward to it. It’s quite significant for me. Clare is steeped in music. You can feel it when you perform there. This will be completely different. When Lorraine Hughes asked me to do it, I just thought it sounded really beautiful. It’s an inspired idea.”

Launched last December by Lorraine, 3 bed semi presents is a series of non-profit, acoustic gigs that take place in the sitting room of her Ennis house during the winter. Offering an alternative way of experiencing live music, the intimacy of candle-lit shows is complemented by the homemade treats brought by audience members for the interval.

The Ennis date comes in the middle of an intense rehearsal schedule for Julie ahead of her novel national tour. The classically trained artist has composed choral scores for 10 different choirs to be performed at 10 different venues across the country. It comes on the back of an appearance at the Highline Ballroom in New York last week and a run of 10 sell-out shows at the Irish Arts Centre in New York in April.

“It was an amazing experience,” Julie recalls. “I’d never done 10 nights before and, as a performer, I learned something new about that. It’s a whole new skill set. You’re developing your performance and your stamina each night: not just vocal stamina, but physical stamina because it’s a really energetic show that I do.

“I was physically exhausted for a week afterwards. Each performance is the most important thing you’re doing at that time, so you can never let that lapse. I need to get that every single time I perform.”

The upcoming Irish tour will coincide with the launch of Julie’s third album, Clocks, which she recorded in the Gothic church of Connemara’s Kylemore Abbey earlier this year. After arranging a Credit Union loan to go to Los Angeles to mix the album with esteemed producer David Ricus, an earthquake struck the city the evening they finished work on it.

Julie’s pauses when asked about the origins of Clocks. “This is my very first interview to do about the album,” she explains, “so it’s interesting actually talking about it. I became very interested in my forefathers and my family tree and felt very drawn to them. I’ve gone back at least six generations in Galway – on both sides. I feel like I’m sitting on a timeline of emotion, of feelings; that what I’m feeling is kind of the same as how they did – even though their lives would’ve been very different.”

Although her research uncovered involvement in the boycott campaigns and the republican struggle, Julie was more interested in the personal. 
“I’d find wonderful or very tricky men in the family tree and women who’d hold it together. There’s one song called Galway Boy about it. I found I was in their world and they were in mine. I was very close to them all in my head – not in a spooky kind of way, at all. I feel so at home going back learning more about them.”

If the exercise brought Julie closer to the lives of her ancestors, her future seemed marked out from the very beginning.
“Apparently, I was singing when I was a baby,” she says. “I was constantly darting my head if I heard the birds outside the window. From a young age, Mrs Keavey, my first teacher, said I was putting people into groups and getting them singing different harmonies and using seconds. I don’t think there was any doubt about it, I was destined to do this since I came out of the womb.”

A former teacher, lecturer and model, Ms Feeney toured internationally as a lead vocalist with Riverdance and plays most instruments on her albums, including 11 on her debut, 13 Songs, which won the Choice Music Prize for Irish Album of the Year in 2006.

In addition to a master’s degree in psychoanalysis, Julie holds two masters in music – one in composition and performance and one in music technologies.
“I really only honed the craft of writing words later,” Julie says. “I do it separately. I write something like poems first. I never really studied that, I just decided that I needed to do it that way. I like something to be very solid; if you just looked at the words on the page, it would mean something. I spend a lot of time carving at the words.”

As well as writing music for herself, Julie is in the middle of composing her first opera, Bird, commissioned by four Irish arts festivals and slated for production in 2014. During a recent two-week residency workshop organised by Dublin’s Fringe Festival, she was “like a Duracell Bunny” spending long days feverishly writing new work.

“There were moments of realisation – or re-realisation – that your thing is music and performance. It’s always been that. Making and creating things is what I’m here to do, it seems. You have to check yourself. You have to realise, ‘What are you neglecting? Are you doing what you’re best at doing?’”
Sometimes you need a reminder.

Julie Feeney plays 3 bed semi presents this Saturday.