Niland set to play Crusheen gig

GALWAY musician Albert Niland will be the next guest of the Island Music Club, playing at the Highway in Crusheen on Friday, January 21.

There will be a range of offerings on the night. “I’ll have the flamenco guitar on my lap. I’ll be playing a few songs from my first few albums, which had a Spanish guitar theme. There will also be a few songs from other people as well,” he says.
As time goes on, he has got more relaxed in his own skin while performing, he says.
“I’m more comfortable on stage now. When I’m playing I try to have a bit of a Christmas hooley every night. I like to have a bit of craic and a bit of banter and I don’t want there to be a distance there.” He played the Crusheen venue some years ago and says he had “mighty craic”.
Over the past 10 years he has travelled quite extensively but has now come back to his native Mountbellew, where he is working on a new project.
“It’s something completely different. It’s all instrumental work and I’m collaborating with a friend from Kerry. I really like that there are a lot of styles involved from different countries.”
Albert acknowledges he has very diverse tastes in music. “In many ways, I live in my own cocoon, I just listen to whatever I come across on my travels. I suppose before I left I would have been very drawn to Freddie White and people like that. I listen to all sorts of stuff, except for what’s on the radio. I find it hard to find anything interesting on the radio, although John Creedon would have some stuff that I like.”
His performance of Kate Bush’s Wuthering Heights got him a lot of airplay a few years ago. He says his sudden prominence came about as a surprise.
“It was a pure accident. It was about six or seven years ago, around this time of year. I was on Pet Sounds and Tom [Dunne] was asking people to come in and do songs. I’d never played it [Wuthering Heights] before but I thought I’d give it a rattle.”
He has won some warm praise in recent times, with InDublin describing him as the owner of “a voice that could make the coldest heart sing”, while one Dutch newspaper said he offered “one and a half hours of high-class solo performance, boundary breaking work, from rock to flamenco with powerful vocal lines built from his Irish roots.”
Albert Niland will play at the Highway in Crusheen on Friday, January 21 at 9pm. Tickets can be reserved by calling 086 8599957.