Tom McShane

Fighter reviewed by The Devil Has The Best Tuna

Another review of Fighter is now online at the ace The Devil has the Best Tuna Blog:

BOXING CLEVER: Tom McShane
Genre: Indie / Alternative
From: Belfast, Northern Ireland United Kingdom

Tom Mcshane is a singer songwriter from Northern Ireland who takes you on a tour of his emotions with his heart firmly pinned to his sleeve. Like a mellow, melancholic David Ford or Will Oldham if he’d been brought up on the streets of Belfast instead of Kentucky Tom reaches right into your chest tugging at your heart and leaving you breathless. Such honesty is rare in a scene that emphasises style and fashion over passion and should be treasured by anyone with a passion for music.

Tom has recently released a single, ‘Fighter’, a lo-fi tale of a son following his boxing father into the ring. ‘Fighter’ was released as a split 7″ single with fellow Belfastians, the altogether more mainstream sounding indie pop trio Escape Act (of which more tomorrow).

If you’ve grown tired of run of the mill singer songwriters like David Gray then Tom McShane has arrived to restore your faith.

Thank you kindly, sir!

Tom

Back to the Studio

I’m going into the studio with Rocky today. The plan is to begin recording two or perhaps three new songs. This recording session isn’t going to be very intensive, my plan is to take a relaxed approach where I record for a day, take the rough mixes away and see what ideas come in between sessions. With the fighter sessions I had a very fixed idea of how I wanted things to sound from the outset, this time I’m not making any decisions until I get into the studio. When I record at home, how I worked on the Songs Are Sad stuff and other home recordings, I would invent and arrange as part of the recording process. Now I want to see if I can get that sense of spontaneity with a studio recording.

Working with Rocky is great. It’s important to record with someone who gets what your music is about. It makes recording so much more fun. I guess you need to trust the person you’re working with, trust their ideas.

Nick came over to my house on Friday night and we worked on drums for a new song he hadn’t heard before. It was really good fun and I recorded a rough version of the song. It’s the first time I’ve ever had anyone come and recorded with me on my eight track. Actually no, my friend Rigsy Recorded piano on a few songs for Songs Are Sad back in 2003, but apart from that! It was great anyway, I’d like to do more of that!

Here are a couple of shots.

Fighter reviewed by Subba-cultcha.com

A brief but very kind review of Fighter appears in the single review section of Subba-cultcha.com; 

TOM MCSHANE – FIGHTER – PENNY DISTRIBUTION

Slow burning lament, touched with melancholy and exploding into falsetto when the emotion calls for it, a touching song from an artist with a pure soul…

Jeremy Chick, Subba-cultcha.com, July 2008

Thanks, Jeremy!

Tom 

Stendhal Festival 16th August

I’m pleased to announce that I’ll be performing at the Stendal Festival on Saturday 16th August along side the likes of Get Cape. Wear Cape. Fly., David Kitt and a host of others. For the full line-up check out www.stendhalfestival.com. 

Tom

Irish Tour: Part Four

There are a couple of things I’d like to write about quickly while I have the chance. I’ve been totally swamped over the last few weeks and I’ve not been very successful at finding the time to get caught up with emails, blogging etc. I’m playing a show in Belfast tonight so my usual two hour drive home from work is not required, creating a neat little pre-sound check window.

So we concluded our tour the weekend before last, with two great shows in Cork and Limerick. I love Cork (city and county) so much. I first visited there in 1995. I went to the Feile Festival there when I was 15. It was an amazing experience. I think Cork has to be the prettiest county in Ireland, though that whole south west coast seems pretty spectacular. Anyways, we played in a great bar called the Quad. It was a strange show though as they have an open door policy. The lack of cover charge meant the bar was consistently busy but on the flipside most of the punters weren’t there for the music. The contrast between this and our experience of Baker Place in Limerick could hardly be more stark. There, punters paid in gladly with the understanding that they were going to hear new music and were respectful throughout.

Both shows were great though. I was glad Escape Act were headlining Cork though, as they stood a better chance with that crowd. Originally in fact, I hadn’t wanted to headline either of these shows as my band was stripped down to a three piece. Conor was unavailable so Ross provided the bass duties for the entirety of both shows. I had wanted Rich to join us on bass at the end of the Limerick set and for Ross to play guitar for a song but that wasn’t to be. I thought it would’ve been a good note on which to end the tour and I was a little sad it didn’t come to pass. I digress. As it turned out, my worries about headling in Limerick were without merit. We rocked things up a little for both shows but especially in Limerick. I think it was my favourite performance of the tour. I wish Conor could’ve been there too though, that would’ve made it complete.

Some snaps from The Quad:

And some from Bakers Place:

My very good friend, Maria, who lives in Cork really helped us out by getting loads of her pals down to the Quad show. We’re all in her debt! She then joined our road trip and came to party with us in Limerick. I’m glad she came along, it was great to see her. Our friends Amberlea and Suzanne were also along for the ride and helped keep the party ship afloat!

As well being joined by old friends we had the pleasure of making some new ones. Tim and Brian of Vertigo Smith opened both the Cork and the Limerick show. Tim is an awesome songwriter, and if he wasn’t clearly going to be and international rockstar (which he so obviously is) he would still have an extremely promising career as a professional songwriter. His songs are so smart, witty and intelligently constructed that he’d have no difficulty securing success in that field. Brian, his bass player is as pleasant a person as I’ve encountered in a long time; he simply exuded friendliness. They both made us feel so welcome. I look forward to playing more shows with these folks in future.

Vertigo Smith:

So that’s it. The tour is over. A mixture of highs and lows but thankfully, mostly highs. I’ve received a lot of great feedback about our shows which is always welcome. Maybe some negative feedback would’ve been useful too, to help improve things for the next tour but then again, I’ll not complain too much about the lack of negative comments. For now I’ll take all the positivity I can get; my confidence needs the boost!

Now I’m heading to the Limelight. I’m playing there tonight with Driving By Night who are launching their new single, Departure. It’ll let you know how we get on!

Tom

PS: As always, more pictures can be found on my flickr!

Driving By Night Single Launch

I especially like the title!

Live at the Cathedral Quater Arts Festival… on NVTV

Two tracks from our stripped back performance at the AU Magazine show at the CQAF have been included in the NVTV broadcast of the concert. Also featured are the awesome And So I Watch You From Afar and, one of my personal absolute favourite new bands, the Benjamins. I blogged about it at the time and you can read that post here.

Tom

Hot Press Review

TOM MCSHANE

‘FIGHTER’ (Penny Distribution)

Spot of lo-fi alt country from Northern Ireland, anyone? Tom McShane channels the likes of Uncle Tupelo and Smog on this great track, which eloquently tells the story of a boxer’s inner conflict. Only deep martial drums resonate beneath McShane’s timeless voice for much of the track, with a simple but devastatingly effective little guitar lick cropping up every now and then too. An extremely promising taster.

Stephen Errity // Hot Press // Volume 32, Issue 13 // 16th July 2008

Thanks Stephen!

Irish Tour: Part Three

I’ve been in the car almost all day. My job involves much driving at the moment and the advantage of this is that I get to listen to the radio loads. Usually I listen almost exclusively to the BBC’s Radios 3 & 4 but today I branched out into “popular” radio.

At one point this evening I flicked on to Zane Lowe’s Radio 1 show. He was playing something that sounded a lot like it might be The Hold Steady. Nick brought me to see the aforementioned Boss-obsessed, pub-rockers in the Spring and Airbrake a few months ago. It was my first experience of the band and I have to say, after all the hype I was so stunned by how unimpressive they were that we had to leave. I felt bad about that because Nick had obviously wanted to see them but leaving was actually his idea and he seemed genuinely underwhelmed himself.

Many friends have since assured me that had I been familiar with the band and the charm of their lyrics (which in fairness were totally inaudible when I saw them) that the show would’ve been a wholly different experience and the track I heard tonight, “Sequestered in Memphis” went a long way to convincing me of this argument. I got to thinking maybe I missed a great opportunity by leaving that show. A short time later though, I flicked on to Mark Radcliffe and Stuart Maconie’s Radio 2 show. They played another track from the new album, “Stay Positive”. The track was called “Lord, I’m Discouraged” and I could barely believe it was by the same band. The term “power ballad” springs to mind. Now I don’t know what to think. Any fans of the band out there, please feel free to explain to me what it is I’m not getting, because all of you can’t be wrong, and I think I’m the only person I know who doesn’t like them. “Sequestered in Memphis” is definitely enough for me to want to give them another chance.

I also had the misfortune of hearing the new track by The Feeling twice. Okay, so, I’ve never liked this band so that’s nothing new, but the fact that they appear to have ditched their Bowie facsimile approach to making music in favour of some sort of Queen template got me thinking. There are an awful lot of bands out there at the moment heavily indebted to Messrs Mercury, May, Deacon and Taylor. Can this be a good thing? When did sounding like Queen become cool? I must have missed that memo.

By the way, I fully admit to judging The Feeling entirely on their singles output which is something I don’t like to do. However, if you want your albums to appear even remotely credible and if you’d like folks to investigate beyond your singles you could at least try to make them less… risible.

Now I feel bad. They’re probably nice lads. What do I know anyway? Besides, I get the feeling that complaining that The Feeling aren’t a very good band is a little like complaining that The Sun isn’t a very good newspaper.

The highlight of my radio odyssey was catching the last 20 minutes of Electric Mainline on Radio Ulster. Stephen McCauley is a man who knows how to find good music.

Perhaps I’m just grumpy because I’ve come crashing back to earth after a weekend of playing shows. I guess I’d like to fill y’all in on our second trip to Dublin.

Fighter/God Says Tour Date 3 // Whelan’s, Dublin // 6th July
I don’t know why, but I was really nervous about this show, almost to the point of distraction. The following conversation might give you some idea how scatty I became. Just after we arrived at the venue I exclaimed, “I’m really excited about this show!”
“Why this show in particular?” I was asked.
“It’s the first time I’ve played in Dublin” I replied.
“What about when you supported Gomez in the Ambassador?”
“Oh I was just playing guitar in that band, I mean with my own band.”
“What about Friday in Tower Records?”
“Oh yeah…”
So clearly, I was not, shall we say, entirely focused. I guess it was a combination of factors. The worry that no one would turn up, the worry that folks would turn up and that I’d lose my nerves and have a repeat of the Holly Golightly show. Also, I was headlining this show, and I always worry about going on after bands who are considerably more up tempo than me. I guess I feel that maybe my music is an acquired taste and following a band as instant and accessible (in the best possible way) as Escape Act can be tough.

My nerves gradually passed though. Watching the opening act, Dublin’s Mumblin’ Deaf Ro was enough to put me back on an even keel: he has a voice that would calm a ragging sea. We booked him for the show on Nick’s recommendation. Well, Nick and our friend Andy McMillan suggested him and Nick gave me his album, which is awesome. The man is not only an amazing musician but a storyteller par excellence. His stage presence is strangely spellbinding. Other worldly almost. The man has star quality, that’s the only way to put it, I think.

Once again, Escape Act lifted the roof off the joint. The band just keep getting stronger and stronger live. Oh, and remember that new song I mentioned in the last post? It’s called “Well Rehearsed”.

We opened with “The End of the Summer”, followed by a new song we’ve been playing on the tour, “Private Rooms”. We’ve been getting a lot of great feedback about those two tracks which is promising, because neither of them have been recorded yet. The rest of the show was a selection from the “Fighter” tracks, Departures and even one from Songs Are Sad, for good measure. Turned up loud, we rocked out and I really got lost in the music. I think it’s most relaxed I’ve been on stage since the Spring and Airbrake show I did a few months ago. Except here it wasn’t a reaction to an audience who I thought weren’t interested; here the audience were extremely attentive. The turn out on the night wasn’t massive, but it was better than I could have hoped for for our first Dublin show and as I said, they were very attentive. It was so good. I’m glad I got a chance to improve on my Tower Records performance, which if I’m honest, was sub par.

After the show I got to meet a lot of nice folks as well as a few familiar faces. Ali Donnelly, who drummed for me for some shows last year came down. He’s living in Dublin now. It was great to see him.

BalconyTV.com // Dublin // 6th July
Between sound-check and getting dinner, I ran around to Balcony TV to record a session for them. It was a bit of a rush job as I was late (sound-check ran over). I kind of made an hilarious gaff too which wasn’t great. Okay, so I’ve seen loads of episodes of Balcony TV and I know the format so I only have myself to blame for the following. The presenter, Tom Millett conducted the pre-song introduction/interview, then left the balcony leaving me to play a song. I played “Fighter” what with it being the single an’ all. I nailed it in one, then Tom returned to the balcony to do his outro. We exchanged a few words then he said something like, “Well Tom, thanks for coming in…” and left a long pause. A really long pause. So I, thinking the interview was over but not being 100% sure sought clarification, “Is that us then?” I asked. “Yes”, Tom confirmed. So I stood up and walked off NOT REALISING THE CAMERA WAS STILL RUNNING and that Tom had still to do his to-camera conclusion of interview. “He just couldn’t wait to get out of here” Tom quipped. I’m such a fucking clown! It’s funny though. Slightly embarrassing, but still funny.

So next weekend we’ll be off to Cork and Limerick and that’ll finish the tour. I’m looking forward to it obviously but I’m sad it’s coming to an end so soon. Still, it’s an incentive to get back out there again soon. I really can’t wait!

‘Til next time!

Irish Tour: Part Two

It’s been pretty busy in the run up to the release. Rich at Volver and Nick at Penny have both put in a lot of man-hours to getting coverage for the single. Now their hard work is paying off. We’ve been getting some great media coverage and some good feedback from bloggers.

Last weekend Nick took a trip to London to meet with buyers from Rough Trade East & West and Sister Ray. The single is now available in all these stores. I tagged along for the ride and we made a bit of a weekend out of it. We stayed with Nick’s sister, Judith and her boyfriend Giovanni. They were hospitable to the max and showed us a great time. They have the most fun friends too. Also I got the opportunity to meet up with a very old friend who I hadn’t seen in the longest time. The trip was quite literally, all good.

So this weekend the tour rolls on. We played two shows on Friday, an afternoon show in Dublin and an evening show in Belfast:

Fighter/God Says Tour Date 2a // Tower Records, Dublin // 4th July
On Friday we played another in-store, this time a full band set in Dublin’s Tower Records with Escape Act. When we arrived Yo La Tengo’s “And Then Nothing Turned Itself Inside-Out” was playing over the tannoy. A good omen and no mistake. James and Neassa at Tower were really nice too.

Escape Act were up first and played a blinder. It was very fun to watch the shoppers, pulled away from their browsing, foot-tapping appreciatively. They have a new song, I must find out what it’s called, but it really slays me.

Our set seemed to go down well, but none of us could hear each other on stage which made things a little tough. Playing at low volume can be a bit restrictive. The simple fact is amps just don’t sound right when turned down low, or at least I’ve never managed to make that work. But we played are hearts out none the less and folks seemed to, as they say, “dig”.

We ended with “Guide” and as the last chord hung in the air, the music from the store PA faded in once again. But no Yo La Tengo this time. “This sounds terribly familiar” we thought the opening notes of my “Departures” mini album began to emanate from the speakers. Amusingly, the first track from “Departures” is “Guide”. Still, we played it well so at least it wasn’t a “now here’s how that should’ve sounded” Shooting Stars moment!

Escape Act, Conor and Ross loaded their gear out and hit the road straight away in order to reach Belfast in time for sound-check. Nick left to retrieve his car from the carpark leaving me to mind our equipment. Standing in the shop, the only remaining member of our party while the entirety of my last release blasted across the store made me feel more than a little self-conscious. I buried myself in vinyl browsing!

Fighter/God Says Tour Date 2b // Lavery’s Attic, Belfast // 4th July
Back on the road again and the race was on to get back to Belfast in time for sound-check. However, us being a bit smart, or so we thought, we’d arranged for our Belfast support, Serpentine Smile to be at the venue from 18.00 so that load in and sound-check could commence in our absence. However, when we arrived at 19.30, we found them waiting patiently to get on with this, as they had been since their arrival at 18.00.

You see, we had originally booked to play the Pavilion but as the Pavilion is currently being renovated, the management shifted us to the Attic in Lavery’s. This is a new venue in Belfast of which we had no previous experience. As it turned out, by day it is a pool room, part of the larger pool area on the top floor of Lavery’s. In the evening the tables are moved, the hanging lights are taken down and the room becomes what is actually a really great venue. It’s a great shape/layout and it’s got a great PA. The stage is strange, dangerously high (they store the pool tables beneath it) and it runs the width of the venue. It’s not terribly deep, so there’s always a fear that one might fall off it, also there’s a rather large gap between the stage and the wall right behind the drumkit which struck fear into the hearts of our percussive contingent.

Anyway, the problem was that sound-check couldn’t commence until that section of the pool room closed (the main pool area remained open for the duration of the show). This was not explained to us when we made arrangements for the two obliging chaps from Serpentine Smile to waste a large part of their evening sitting about:

The show was great though. There was a great turnout and we shifted some vinyl too, which was very encouraging. There was one, to use the Belfast vernacular, “Spide Ballbag” who watched almost the entire show from the door to the main pool room, his trusty pint of Harp in hand. I asked him if he would like to come in. He said, “Fack aff, why the fuck would I pay in when I can watch the whole thing for free from here, like?”. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Belfast.

We’re heading back to Dublin in an hour to play our Whelan’s show. Also we’ll be doing a spot for Balcony TV too! Can’t wait!

Road trip!

Tom