Gray sounding out intimate venues

A HUGE star in this country since the success of the White Ladder album more than a decade ago, David Gray is on his way to Glór as part of his Irish tour.
In October, announcing he would be coming to Ireland for a tour entitled Sounding Out in early December, he came up with a unique method of deciding where he would visit.

People were asked to register on his website for tickets and to indicate what county they’d like him to visit. He said the decision on venue would be made either by the strength of numbers or the “compelling eloquence” of the arguments.

When the venues were announced, Clare had made the cut on December 10.

Speaking about the tour on his website, he said he wanted to play in some of Ireland’s smaller venues.
“When you get venues over a certain size, it’s sort of incumbent on me to make more of a show of it and dig a bit deeper into the back catalogue. Now, I’m not saying that’s not going to happen but there’s a certain freedom with a small venue for me to play some new material.”

He said the shows will certainly include songs from an album set for release next year but there will also be some of his best-known work.
“I’m very excited about my new record. It’s almost finished and some of the songs on that I’m going to represent in this new way. I want to just have a little freedom to experiment.

“At the same time, I’m anxious not to patronise everyone by turning up in places I haven’t been in for 10 years and say ‘hi, it’s me and here’s a lot of material you haven’t heard before’. I guarantee there’ll be a lot of stuff in there to get your teeth into from the past.

“I’m looking for some space to give voice to this new sound and new ideas to find myself a little bit.”
Ireland has been good to Gray, as he had huge success with White Ladder, holding the number one spot for six weeks and helping to propel him to stardom.

He said he is glad to be coming back to these shores now.
“Why Ireland? It just feels right and it’s a long time since I really did justice to going over there. It’s been squashed to one side for far too long and, at this point in my musical evolution, it feels absolutely appropriate that I go back to what has always been the heartland for me to find my voice again. That’s why. Am I looking forward to it? Absolutely.”

White Ladder, which contained the songs Please Forgive Me, Babylon, This Year’s Love and Sail Away, is probably still Gray’s best-known piece of work. Since then, he has released another six albums Lost Songs, A New Day at Midnight, Life in Slow Motion, Greatest Hits and Draw The Line.

Tickets for the show at Glór are no longer available and it will be opened on the night by Lisa O’Neill. A band has been put together especially for this tour and includes Robbie Malone, Caroline Dale, David Kitt, Niamh Farrell and Lisa O’Neill.