latest news
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23rd July 2010
KIERAN TO FEATURE ON BBC RADIO ULSTER'S ‘FOLK CLUB’ LIVE FROM THE FIDDLER'S GREEN FESTIVAL
Kieran is one of the artists to feature on BBC Radio Ulster's Folk Club, presented by Colum Sands, on Saturday 24th July 2010 between 8–10pm. Listen to BBC Radio Ulster on 92-95 FM, 1341 MW or Digital Satellite: Sky–0118, Freesat–716, Freeview–719 and Cable–932.
Other guests on the show include folk legends Tom Paxton, Archie Fisher and Ben Sands and a fantastic young traditional band from Northern Ireland, Venue i.
The show will also be available on the BBC iPlayer for one week after transmission, just follow the links on the BBC website.
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1st June 2010
THE LATE SHOW WITH KIERAN GOSS, BBC RADIO ULSTER
Kieran will present BBC Radio Ulster's Late Show on Friday 25th June 2010 from 10pm to 12 midnight. Listen to BBC Radio Ulster on 92-95 FM, 1341 MW or Digital Satellite: Sky–0118, Freesat–716, Freeview–719 and Cable–932.
The show will also be available on the BBC iPlayer for one week after transmission, just follow the links on the BBC website.
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20th May 2010
KIERAN GOSS ‘LIVE AND SOLO’ NORTHERN IRELAND TOUR DATES ANNOUNCED
Two Northern Irish Live and Solo dates have just been added for September 2010. These are in Newtownards and Coleraine. For further details and booking information, see the tour dates page here on the site.
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13th May 2010
KIERAN GOSS ‘LIVE AND SOLO’ U.K. TOUR DATES ANNOUNCED
Kieran's new Live and Solo show will be touring in the United Kingdom in October 2010, playing venues in Oban, Aberdeen, Bury, Bristol, Brecon and Canterbury. For further details and booking information, see the tour dates page here on the Kieran Goss website.
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10th March 2010
KIERAN GOSS TRIO INVITED TO PLAY SOMMERMUSIK FESTIVAL, MÖNCHENGLADBACH, GERMANY, ON 26TH AUGUST 2010
For further details and booking information, see the tour dates page.
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17th February 2010
KIERAN TO PLAY RARE SOLO IRISH SHOW IN CLONMEL, COUNTY TIPPERARY ON
24TH MARCH 2010
To celebrate his recent Tipp FM Songwriter of the Year award, Kieran returns to Clonmel for a rare solo date at Brazil’s New Music Club on 24th March 2010.
Address: The New Music Club, Brazil’s Café Bar, Clonmel, County Tipperary.
Telephone: +353 (0)87 2913484
Tickets: €20 from Premier Music and Golden Discs
Support: 9.15pm / Kieran onstage at 10.00pm
For further information, see www.myspace.com/newmusicclub
Click here for a complete list of Kieran's upcoming tour dates and booking details.
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11th February 2010
KIERAN GOSS ALBUMS RELEASED IN THE U.K. ON 22ND FEBRUARY 2010
Just in time for his upcoming U.K. tour, I’ll Be Seeing You and all of Kieran’s back catalogue are to be released in the United Kingdom on 22nd February 2010. If you would like to pre-order any of the CDs from Amazon, click here.
Kieran will be on tour in the U.K. from late February until mid-March. Accompanied by Ann Kinsella on backing vocals and Gareth Hughes on double bass, he’ll be playing dates across Scotland and England. Click here for a full list of dates and booking details.
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9th February 2010
CANADA DATES FOR KIERAN, SEPTEMBER 2010
Kieran returns to Canada in September 2010 to play some shows on the East coast. There will be dates in Newfoundland, Nova Scotia and Ontario. As dates are confirmed we will add them to the website, so keep an eye on our tour dates page for updates.
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9th February 2010
KIERAN CONFIRMED FOR MILWAUKEE IRISH FEST AND STANFEST, SUMMER 2010
Kieran has been confirmed to play two prestigious festivals this summer in North America: Stanfest in Nova Scotia, Canada, and Milwaukee Irish Fest.
Stanfest takes place in Canso, Nova Scotia, from 2nd to 4th July 2010. For more information, see www.stanfest.com or email: info@stanfest.com
Milwaukee Irish Fest runs from 19th to 22nd August 2010. For more information, see www.irishfest.com or email: info@irishfest.com
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21st January 2010
GARY GILLEN: A TRIBUTE
Gary Gillen was our Lighting Engineer and more importantly, our great friend for more than 15 years. We were devestated to learn of his death last night.
Along with Vinnie Higgins on sound (Vincenté y Geraldo!), we toured the length and breadth of Ireland together and came to rely on Gary to, in his own words, “turn any fuckin’ toilet into a real gig.” Gary was an artist and a perfectionist and he would often stay behind long after the sound check because he wanted everything to look just right. He cared about what he did and he cared about people. We will miss his warmth, his hilarious, sarcastic sense of humour, his friendship, his company and his love. The world is a lesser place without him in it. Annie and I send our love and sympathy to his family and many friends around the world, and especially to Vinnie and Tina. We wish we could be there with you today.
We love you and will miss you always Gary. Thank you for being our friend.
Kieran & Ann Goss.
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14th January, 2010
FOR THE RECORD TOUR: EXTRA SHOWS ADDED FOR GERMANY AND SWITZERLAND, APRIL/MAY 2010
Kieran is currently on tour in Germany and despite snow and freezing conditions, the first six shows sold out. Thanks to everyone who showed up, especially those who travelled long distances in the snow. Kieran has been posting updates to Twitter while on the road (see above) and Annie’s been posting tour photos on www.myspace.com/kierangoss
Because of the huge success of the January tour, 16 extra shows have been added to the For The Record tour in Germany and Switzerland in April and May 2010. Click here for a full list of dates. We’re delighted to have BRENDAN MURPHY joining us for the extra shows as special guest. He’ll be accompanied by his brother Declan Murphy on guitar. Kieran and Brendan have been lifelong friends and have written many songs together including Clear Day, The Reason Why, Into Your Arms and Why Should I Be Lonely. Brendan is currently recording his first solo album. We’ve heard some of the early recordings and they’re fantastic: great songs, amazing vocals and gorgeous arrangements. If you’re coming along to the April/May shows, be sure to get there early to catch his set.
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7th December, 2009
HOMETOWN CONCERT IN JANUARY 2010
Kieran will be playing a home town show in Newry, Co. Down, Northern Ireland, on 3rd January 2010. The venue is The Canal Court Hotel, and Kieran will be accompanied by Ann Kinsella on backing vocals and Gareth Hughes on double bass.
For booking details, click here.
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1st December, 2009
GERMANY & SWITZERLAND TOUR DATES ANNOUNCED FOR JANUARY 2010
Kieran will be playing 20 shows in Germany and Switzerland in January 2010. Accompanied by Ann Kinsella on backing vocals and Gareth Hughes on double bass, the tour starts in Bordesholm on 8th January and finishes in Lüdenscheid on 30th January.
For a complete list of the shows, click here.
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16th November, 2009
U.K. TOUR DATES ANNOUNCED FOR FEBRUARY/MARCH 2010
Kieran will be playing 13 shows in the U.K. In February/March 2010. The tour kicks off in Ullapool on 26th February and finishes in Leicester on 14th March.
For a complete list of the shows, click here.
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12th November, 2009
NEW ALBUM: FOR THE RECORD
Kieran has just finished putting the finishing touches to a new limited-release album titled For The Record. The album will be available at shows from January 2010 and from here on the website from February 2010. Kieran explains:
“For The Record is a side project I’d been entertaining for a long time. It came about because I have many songs in my back catalogue that aren’t available on previous albums, but that I’ve been playing live for years. There are also a couple of cover versions in there too. It’s only now that I’m getting around to documenting them and I’m really happy to have finally got these songs down on tape.”
“The album was recorded live in the studio in County Antrim, Northern Ireland; just myself, Annie and Gareth sitting in a circle playing music... It was a lot of fun to record and we’re really looking forward to performing the songs in Germany and Switzerland next January. Initially For The Record will be available only at the live shows, then from February 2010 it will be available from the website.”
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6th April, 2009
VIDEO FOOTAGE OF KIERAN NOW AVAILABLE ON YOUTUBE
There is some great video footage of Kieran now available on YouTube, including an interview with Gay Byrne of RTE’s Late Late Show from 1994 and a performance of Reasons To Leave with the RTE Concert Orchestra.
Click here to view.
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9th March, 2009
THE IRISH TIMES
Kieran Goss is known for his affable on-stage persona and rapport with his audience, but this has not stopped him mining a darker seam in his latest album, writes Siobhán Long.
SONGS OF MEMORIES turning from sepia to full colour; of separation and loss; and maybe, just maybe, of the triumph of hope over experience. Kieran Goss’s eighth album isn’t quite as shiny and happy as his early writing, or indeed as his affable on-stage persona.
Recent personal traumas have left their mark. Having lost both his mother and sister-in-law to cancer, as well as supporting his wife through her own recovery from breast cancer, Goss has taken a pummelling in his private life. Still, there are artistic riches to be found in adversity, and Goss isn’t the first songwriter to discover that.
The truth is that great art is often the product of personal crisis. John Martyn’s classic album, Solid Air, mightn’t have seen the light of day were it not for the personal grief he experienced (Martyn composed the title track in response to the suicide of fellow musician Nick Drake). And what of the marital strife that informed Dylan’s Blood on the Tracks? You can almost touch the enmity on Loudon Wainwright’s cynically titled More Love Songs, a post-separation anxiety record of gargantuan proportions. The human heart seems to find its best expression during tough times.
Goss recorded his latest collection, I’ll Be Seeing You in Nashville, with Gabe Rhodes, son of country singer Kimmie Rhodes, co-producing alongside him. It’s a stripped-down, spare collection, shot through with Goss’s undeniable lyrical tenderness. The depth of the songwriting demands repeated listening, and return visits are amply rewarded, with layers revealing themselves slowly over time.
Goss is more than comfortable with such patient appreciation. He’s not in hot pursuit of the lightning hit or the instantly hummable three-minute wonder. Maybe that’s what comes from maintaining a career for two decades and making eight albums.
“See what Johnny Cash achieved in his 70s,” Goss muses. “For someone to dig that deep is like a light at the end of a tunnel. I’ve been on the edges of commercial success and I’ve seen the fickleness of it and how transient it is. Of course, we all love our little bits of fame and recognition, but you also have to recognise that what it’s about is the work, and the quality of the work.”
“I genuinely do believe that part of that package is that the tide goes in and the tide goes out. It’s part of the deal, and if you don’t accept that, you’re going to have some difficult days when the sun’s not shining on you.”
Goss’s trump card, ever since he first stepped on to a stage in the late 1980s, has been his rapport with his audience. He’s an artist who thrives on the challenge of the heckler, whose store of impromptu on-stage witticisms would be the envy of many a professional comedian. But the fact is, he’s not a comedian; he’s a singer/songwriter, and sometimes he has to remind himself of that when he’s on stage.
“I think there’s a balancing act that you have to strike,” he says. “I would like to think that really good performing is about being yourself, but you also have to know that it’s an amplified version of yourself. You’re turning up the colour on things that are genuine, because you are entertaining people who’ve come out and paid good money to see you.”
“What loses me, though, is when I go to see an international artist and it’s like a West End show. They’ve turned it up to within an inch of its life. I don’t like that. I feel like I’ve been short-changed in some way. When I go to a show, I need to feel that I’ve really got some genuine communication with that person. That’s a balancing act, and as you get older, you get to do it better. So I think I’ve learned to talk less during my shows, because it can distract from the songs.”
PEOPLE WHO AREN’T on intimate listening terms with songwriters such as Leonard Cohen have a tendency to consign his work to a dustbin labelled “depression city”. Contrary to such cliched thinking, though, songs of death, loss and life’s rougher edges are often the most life-affirming snapshots. How many of us have had our eyes opened by a lyric that spoke to us directly? Or been rattled by an emotion expressed in a song that we presumed was ours alone?
Goss seems to know a thing or two about the universality of human experience, but he’s not in the business of using his songs to expunge guilt, exorcise grief or slough off the pain that life brings with it.
“I think that you have to allow your personal experience to feed in emotionally to your songs,” he says. “But it’s not therapy, it’s a song. That can be a fatal mistake. That seemed to be a trend for a while: singer/songwriters seemed to represent a moan-fest and, to me, that’s a very juvenile way to see songwriting. It’s based on the songwriter being the centre of the world, whereas what I want to do is to apply the craft of songwriting to details in my life to make them universal in some way. There’s a good chance that what touches a nerve in my life will be going on for other people too.”
Goss’s particular talent is in allowing songs such as I’ll Be Seeing You to breathe a life all their own. He doesn’t spell out his personal experience, line by bleeding line. Instead, he suggests, invokes, conjures, summons. Feelings and sensations are the stuff of his songs, not interminable verses cataloguing personal trauma. It’s finding the universal in the particular, and Goss has managed to make use of that all-too-rare gift with enormous subtlety and understatement.
Maybe his decision to take time out, to allow time for gestation, is part of the explanation for his insights? “For me, I keep writing until I know, in some instinctive way, that I have nothing to write about today,” he says candidly. “It’s a scary place, because we all fear that we never will have again. But what I know now, that I didn’t know 20 years ago, is that you go off and you live your life, and writing becomes a part of it again. At some point, I think every artist fears that they’ve done what they’re going to do, and that there’s nothing more. But you know, we all need time out.”
“You don’t stop being a writer. You just give it time. If you don’t allow that in your life, then you’re allowing your ego, your sense of what the world expects of you, to dictate the terms for you as an artist. That’s just an ego trip, and for me, more than anything, this journey has been a journey in control of ego.”
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13th February, 2009
4 STAR REVIEW FROM THE IRISH TIMES
Joe Breen of The Irish Times gives Kieran’s new album, I’ll Be Seeing You, a 4 star review. Read it in our reviews section - click here.
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6th February, 2009
THE BELFAST TELEGRAPH
Kieran On Life, Love And Loss
Kieran talks to Jane Bell of The Belfast Telegraph about the background to his new album, I’ll Be Seeing You.
Kieran Goss left his 19th century country cottage in west Sligo for a state-of-the-art studio in Austin, Texas to record his latest album, I’ll Be Seeing You. But the transatlantic journey from the damp and chill of the isolated Irish countryside to the shimmering city heat of the American South was nothing at all compared to the tortuous emotional journey that had come before.
For Kieran and his wife and music partner, Ann, have been through a rough couple of years since she was diagnosed with breast cancer.
Cruelly, in the midst of this most personal of battles, Kieran’s beloved mother, Josie, who had raised 15 children to adulthood, lost her life to another form of this terrible disease.
And in the same period his younger brother Cormac’s wife, Alison, also died of cancer. As a family, it felt like an “all-out attack”, he says. “As though war had been declared.”
“I actually left my mother’s wake in Newry to drive back to Sligo to take Ann to chemotherapy. Then, after resting a few hours, we turned around and drove back to Newry to go to my mother’s funeral the next day.”
It was, to say the least, a bleak time. Not surprisingly, the couple “went to ground” while reeling from the blow of diagnosis after Ann found a lump in her breast while they were in Nashville, where Kieran spends part of the year recording and writing.
The ordeal of a mastectomy, chemotherapy and radiotherapy was eased by her being able to be treated close to home in Sligo General Hospital.
Now that she is well again and they have come out the other side, they are speaking out, from personal experience, in support of the local health services that gave Ann her life back.
Kieran says he’s not a political animal, but this is an issue he is passionate about. “I want any woman who is in this situation to have available the excellent care that Ann had,” he says. “I want it to be free of charge and that she shouldn’t have to drive for six hours to access it.”
“Being able to go to a local hospital close to home for treatment beats any centre of excellence hundreds of miles away,” he argues. Certainly, their cosy, country retreat near the sea in west Sligo was Ann’s refuge during the long storm towards recovery.
Somehow, despite it all, they managed to hold on to a sense of humour and an appreciation of what makes life worth living.
“When Ann went into hospital in Sligo,” Kieran recalls, “one of the radiologists reassured her breezily: ‘Now you needn’t be worried, because everything that Kylie had in Paris, you can get here’.”
“It’s a great line,” he smiles, “but, as well as humour, it also shows great warmth and humanity, typical of how we were treated.” He is deeply proud of how Ann coped and the strength she demonstrated throughout.
“One of the things I’ve learned is that what, in many ways, distinguishes people is how they handle adversity,” says Kieran.
The death of his mother from cancer, in the midst of it all, was a deep sorrow. Lovingly called by her girlhood name of ‘Josie Roe’ by her big brood of 15 children — eight sons and seven daughters — she devoted herself to running the home and family while her husband William worked all hours in the garage business to support them all.
Kieran, the tenth child, fell somewhere in the middle. “We all had our jobs — with 17 people in the house, you have to delegate,” he says. “And certainly, there’s a great support structure.”
“I don’t know what it’s like to grow up in anything other than a big family but the upbringing I had, the value systems and structures of it, seem to be disappearing.”
“Coming from such a huge family, you do have a side to you that’s extrovert. If you want to be heard at all, that part of you becomes capable of performing at some level in a big crowd. That’s the part of me that’s the performer. It’s very easy for me to be on stage, it always has been. I know from working with other artists that some go through excruciating dramas stepping out in front of an audience. But I never did. I love it.”
“Yet I also have an introverted side. My mother would find me in a wee quiet corner reading or with my guitar and there would be bedlam going on around me yet I’d be completely switched off. Even now my wife sometimes finds it irritating — saying ‘You’re here and you’re not here’.”
The star has never been afraid to go his own way. Having graduated in law from Queen’s University Belfast, he went on to study as a solicitor at the Institute. But the reality of practising law was “all consuming” and left no room for music or many of the other things he wanted to do with his life — so he gave it up.
“It wasn’t as simple as giving up law for music,” he explains. “I gave up law to go out and have adventures, to travel. Having a guitar facilitated that. In Germany I busked and played in pubs. Somewhere along the way songwriting became the thing.”
He doesn’t recall any objection to the career swerve from his parents, only support. “I was in my early twenties and maybe not old enough to realise my parents could have had anxieties.”
“I’m not a parent, I don’t have children but I can now well imagine that they had concerns, thoughts of ‘he’s blown it’ or ‘it’s just a phase’, but both my parents were very supportive.”
“My father’s take on it was, ‘You’re a free man, go and do what you want to do’. But he did say ‘If you’re going to be a musician, work as hard at it as you would if you were going to build up a business as a lawyer.’ There was always that work ethic.”
William Goss, aged 84 and long retired, was a keen accordion player as a younger man, before a father’s responsibilities edged it out. When the family bought him a new instrument for a recent birthday, he picked it up and played with ease after a gap of many decades.
Having turned his back on the law, Kieran continued to be his own man — releasing his work on his own label, Cog Communications. When he first took that step back in 1997, it wasn’t the cool thing to do. “I remember deliberately trying not to tell people we recorded albums at home because there was some sort of vibe within the music industry that assumed it meant you couldn’t afford a big studio or you couldn’t get a record deal.”
“Maybe it’s the old legal experience, I don’t know, but my instinct was to do my own thing. I’m not a gang person, in that sense. It’s been interpreted as some sort of business decision but I see it more as an artistic decision, a natural extension of the way I work.”
“It’s more about staying true to a vision. It meant I had to go and build my own support structures. It’s not all about me. I have fantastic people around me. One thing I do know is that it’s people who make things happen.” And he names a string of talented individuals who bring their production expertise to bear and others on the ground, from agent to publicist, who keep the wheels turning.
Chief among them, of course, is Ann. A graphic designer, she was a singer in an a capella band and sings backing vocals on the recent albums. Along with Gareth Hughes on double bass they are a small, close performing unit.
Kieran (46) had just come off a hugely successful tour with Frances Black when he met his future wife, nine years his junior, in 1993 at a friend’s birthday party and they bonded over music.
The couple travel together from gig to gig, Kieran reckoning Ann is a keener, more inquisitive, traveller than he is. His musical independence means he can, if he chooses, perform to 600 people in a church hall in a village in Germany, as well as the big audiences.
The intimacy of a small venue “informs you” as a performer, he says. “Up close and personal, you get a better sense of how an audience is responding to particular songs.”
“Of course, it’s also nice to see your name in big letters for three nights at a huge venue. But playing to those 600 people in a village hall is just as valid as a packed Albert Hall.”
He’s looking forward, with some trepidation, to playing at the Canal Court Hotel, Newry, on February 15 — the first time before a truly ‘home’ audience in 20 years.
“It’s a bit freaky,” he admits. “There’s a bit of me that’s a little bit scared. We all reinvent ourselves on stage to some extent. When I’m on stage it’s very much me but with the colours turned up — it’s an amplified me. I’m not so hyper in real life as I am on stage.”
“In Newry, with my auntie and a guy I went to school with in the audience, I’ll be more self-conscious. But playing in Newry is long overdue. I’m going back home.”
His biggest hit was Out of My Head, which is ironic because Kieran Goss is surely one of the most level-headed artists in the business.
But the tune that most people will have heard and recognised is his hit song Clear Day from the album Blue Sky Sunrise, which the Progressive Building Society used on its adverts.
“You just never know where the music will end up,” he says. “The national railway in Japan wanted to use one of my songs on their ads. The music can take on a life of its own.”
As he launches this eighth album (while busily writing his ninth) he says: “I’ll Be Seeing You is an album of reflection, within the context I’ve described. As an artist I reflect on what’s going on in my life. There would be something wrong if I was writing the same songs at 46 that I was writing at 16.”
“There’s an element of sadness in the album but, for me, it’s not self-indulgent. There’s also a strong vein of optimism, hope and joy.”
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