Well, I'm finally getting my act together and getting around to recording some music.

01-11-2002: Played in the Hawkswell Theatre in Sligo on Tuesday last (Oct. 29th). Had a 40-minute set at a nice intimate evening titled Six Strings That Drew Blood, organised and hosted by the inimitable Mr. Paddy Curley (who was taking a week off from hosting the Maynooth singer/songwriter night). Thanks for the gig P. My setlist for the night was :
Tea
Roughly 2a.m.
Clickety Blues
New York Cheer
Bar Of Existence
New Every Day
Kiss In The Sky
Paper Cup
Hit the links for the lyrics for each one.
Sorry I didn't get details of the gig up beforehand but it was a little rushed in the organisation. Still there was some excellent feedback from it which is always good.
Oh yeah, and I bought a new guitar yesterday, so I'm off back to lock myself in my bedroom for a month. Thank you Takamine for making such nice guitars!

04-10-2002: One of my options this year is Original Composition. This is a continuation of the same from last year where we had to come up with a 4-minute composition in a 20th Century style. I recently put mine in a midi format just to listen back to it. It's called Lounging Around and was written for Piano, Nylon-stringed Guitar, and Fist-Flute. The fist flute invoves cupping your hands together in such a way that you can blow through your thumbs and get a flute-like sound. I'll have to get a photo of how it looks and put it up here. The midi version has a regular flute playing the part, and I doubled the tempo of the original version. Listen to it here.

01-10-2002: Back in Maynooth for another year. Should be my last year here. Part of my course this year includes an introduction to studio recording which should be fun, and should give me an opportunity to get some proper progress on the whole recording front. On my last night in Edinburgh I was told that at some of the open mic nights I played that people would have parted with money had I something to sell. It's made me even more determined to get some decent material onto cds soon. There's little more irritating than knowing you could have sold your music to people if you had copies of it to sell!
The singer/songwriter night in the S.U. venue in Maynooth is apparently restarting on Tuesday week the 8th of October. One of the other instigators of the night, Shane Arrowsmith Esq. will be 21 tomorrow, so happy birthday Shane!! Looking forward to the great trip to Cavan for the party!!
Oh yeah, whilst in Edinburgh I played the Out Of The Bedroom night in the Waverly bar on Mary St. and received a review for my troubles. Read it here.

15-08-2002: Getting progressively worse at updating this. So what news? Well I'm in Edinburgh and can currently be seen dropping in at random to open mic nights around town. One of the more regular ones is Mondays in Whistle Binkies on South Bridge. The festival is on here now so town is pretty nuts. Recently registered kevinbrett.com, so if that's not how you came here, you can start using it. Passed my exams in college so I will be heading back to Maynooth for my final year in a few weeks. Looking forward to playing there again, and possibly at some open mics or singer/songwriter nights in Dublin and Galway. Was advised last summer to take my music to Skye by some mad Scotsmen in Venice, so we're hoping to head up there before making for the Emerald Isle once more. Read an article in the Sunday Times Magazine a few weeks back about a guy called Jeremy Gilley who started the Peace One Day campaign (Follow the link to read all about it), which inspired a new song called New Every Day. Lyrics are on the lyrics page.
That's it for now, see you all back home soon.....

12-03-2002: Hmmmm, first post of the new year, and it's already March. You'd swear I was busy acting as a Scottish tyrant in a Shakespearean play or something! There should be a new track or two appearing here soon, as we've begun working on a CD of Maynooth singer-songwriters for which I'll be recording at least one song. Might do takes of 2 or 3 and see which turns out the best. They'll just be acoustic guitar and vocals, similar to the rest of the stuff that I have up here. I might put up the take I've already done in the next couple of days, haven't got a copy of it with me at the moment! It's a spankin brand new song, which'll possibly be called Paper Cup. Still not sure on the title. Other new ones which should appear soon are Roughly 2a.m., and Kiss In The Sky...which is a song dedicated to the late Mic Christopher. Lyrics are already available at poetry.com

28-11-2001: At long last I've put up the GPO gig pretty much in full, in MP3 format. Just click on the tracks at the bottom of the page. I am entering Tick-Tock Eyes in a song contest tomorrow. I'm using Kieran Fortunes drum track from the session in March for a backing track, and will also have Conal McIntyre on double bass, and Katharine MacMaghnuis on pizzicato violin. The International Library of Poetry has also asked permission to publish Tick-Tock Eyes in a hardbound poetry anthology, provisionally titled Under A Quicksilver Moon, due out in Winter 2002.

02-10-2001 : For those interested in lyrics, some are available for viewing on poetry.com
Just look up Kevin Brett. As there's only limited space per poem there, I've also made them available in .txt format here. Good news on the recording front too,...now that I'm doing music technology as part of my course I can book the studio here myself and use it, so should be getting back in there soon!!

27-09-2001 : Well, you know, genius takes time, or something like that ;) I've managed to do little or nothing all summer, apart from some travelling and some busking, but I've brought up from home any tracks that would fit on a floppy,  as there's no zip drive or net connection at home. Otherwise I'd have all the GPO gig up here. Been talking to Kieran Fortune, the drummer from the studio stuff, and we should be getting together again soon to work on the recording side of things properly and actually make some headway. Only other news from the summer was that I attended the IMRO  A.G.M. on Sept. 12th, and got to mingle with some of the others in the industry, both people, like myself, at the start of the journey,  and some who've been there done that, for quite a while now. .

1-5-2001 : Mayday, Mayday, :-} Well, still haven't got back to the studio. The whole exam/essays thing is catching up on everyone at the moment. As a result we figured we should wait till after them. I'm finished on May 25th, so possibly sometime that weekend we'll be going back in. Apologies for the delay to anyone who is waiting to hear the stuff properly. Believe me, I'm one of them.

6-4-2001 : I was meant to be going into the studio around now, but our engineer Cormac McCann is currently ill. Also the backing vocalists are out of town on family stuff. We'll probably go in next week to finish off the tracks mentionned below. Not sure yet if we'll be starting anything new. Last Sunday I was at the 3rd of the Frames gigs in Whelans in Dublin to launch their new album. At the late night party afterwards I gave Glen a copy of what we've done so far. He promised (albeit drunkenly) to give it a listen and let me know what he thought of it. David Kitt also asked me for one, but unfortunately I only had the one copy with me. I'll send him one when we get more recorded.

27-3-2001 :  I recently began work on a CD in the Music Technology Studio in Maynooth. I put down acoustic guitar, drums and vocals for 4 tracks. Extra guitar/bass/keyboards/vocals have still to go onto them, and I'm hoping to put down a few more tracks. When I've enough done I will have CDs for sale and hopefully MP3s. The tracks we've started on so far are Tea, New York Cheer, Tick-tock Eyes, andFortune and Fame.

14-3-2001 :  I will have good-quality, full-length versions of songs available here asap, but meantime here's a few tasters.
The quality of them is deliberately low, and they're only about 10 to 20 seconds each, so it shouldn't take too long to download them. They're all taken from a gig I played in the GPO in Galway on Feb 26th 2001. I played a 50 minute set, supporting Colm Quearney and his band.
Just click on the link to hear the song.....

Spare Parts
Fear
Silver Lining
Fortune and Fame
Kind Words
Another Mans Queen
Tick-Tock Eyes
Tea
Goodbye
 

If you want to, feel free to me and I will reply as soon as possible.


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