Hailing from Limerick,Ireland, Siobhán O'Brien has been entertaining audiences with her individual unique voice, and her personal style of songwriting.No newcomer to the entertainment field,Siobhan made
her first audio recording at the tender age of six,with an old sea Shanty.
Siobhan has roots from four generations in the music industry.Her great grandparents were Travelling Opera Singers.The Bowyer/Westwood Opera company, they came from Blackpool in England. Their only son Stanley played violin in the orchestra pit.They settled in Ireland when Albert Bowyer (Great Grandfather) died in Omagh Co. Tyrone while touring.Most notably, she is the niece of Ireland's Sixtie's music legend, Brendan Bowyer (The Beatles opened for Bowyer 1962 at The Liverpool Empire)
SIOBHÁN O'BRIEN'S
HIGHLIGHT PERFORMANCES 2008
Guest Vocalist with
THE CHIEFTAINS
Boston Symphony Hall
Massachusetts, USA
Performed on
RTE 1 TV SHOW
SEOIGE & O'SHEA
Dublin, Ireland
Guest Appearance with
SHARON SHANNON & BAND
Charity Fundraiser at Purcells
Ruane, Co. Clare Ireland
When Siobhán O'Brien heard that the Frames frontman Glen Hansard had won the Oscar last month for best song for "Falling Slowly," his duet with Markéta Irglová from the film "Once," she was so happy for him that she cried. Her father told her he had heard the company that makes the guitar Hansard favors had seen him playing his battered old instrument at the awards show and offered him a new one.More stories like this"I was going, 'Don't take the guitar, don't take the guitar,' " O'Brien recalls from her home in Limerick. She got her wish. Her father said Hansard had declined.
"That's Glen. I knew he wouldn't take the guitar," says the 38-year-old Irish singer-songwriter. O'Brien seems to need her heroes unsullied and intact; she isn't into the "glitz and the glamour" of success: "I just love doing this," she says of making music.O'Brien met Hansard 15 years ago when they bonded over a mutual love of Bob Dylan. Around the time, Dylan had invited O'Brien, a plucky girl with a strong, delicately tremulous voice, to sing his song "The Fox" onstage in Dublin with him.
That song is just one of many covers - from Harry Chapin's "Shooting Star" to Brian Wilson's "In My Room" - that O'Brien recently recorded for her self-released covers record, "Songs I Grew Up To."
"I never in my life thought I'd do a covers album. Writing was such a huge part of who I was and who I wanted to be seen as. The letting go had to happen," O'Brien says. "I realized I was limiting myself.
Tonight at Symphony Hall, O'Brien will sing some of those cover songs when she appears as a guest of the Chieftains. Tomorrow she headlines the considerably more intimate gathering with her friend and producer Martin O'Malley backing her on guitar. It was O'Malley who was instrumental in O'Brien's "letting go," when he tinkered with some cover songs she had recorded at his studio as a gift for her aunt.
"Martin had put all this lovely guitar and double bass behind them. But she went with it and recorded more songs, inviting more musicians to add parts. One of them, Pete Cummins, asked his friend, the Chieftains uilleann pipes player Paddy Moloney, to play.
Moloney says he was astonished when he heard O'Brien's voice on tape."I was blown away. I thought she's brilliant, you know? I can't understand why she's not at the top," Moloney says. "Maybe she didn't want it? I don't know the full story, but she has a beautiful voice. When you have a voice like that, you should get on with it."
O'Brien's back story includes ties to one of Ireland's biggest pop stars: Her uncle Brendan Bowyer was a show-band superstar in the 1960s before relocating to Las Vegas to become a successful performer there. Over the years, O'Brien has performed as far and wide as the late Tir Na Nog in Somerville and, in 1999, Austin's South by Southwest music conference. She's certainly no shy retiring type and has sought out many of her heroes along the way (on Dylan: "Basically, I ambushed him outside his hotel," she says semi-apologetically). As Moloney puts it, after she tracked him down in Dublin to thank him for working on her record, "She comes right out with it."
"I want to work with great artists. It doesn't matter what genre, just great people and great musicians," she explains. That, she now realizes, includes singing their songs. "It's all about the unity," she says. "Music's such a powerful thing. It reaches out and grabs people, and they don't really have any say in it."
Thank you for adding me. I really appreciate you joining me on my author page. My fiction novel with a CD soundtrack is due out in a few weeks. It will be at CD Baby, Amazon, Barnes & Nobles etc. Keep in touch.
hi, how are you doing? i wanted to stop by your page and let you know what has been going on in my life.....the new album i just finished with charlie sexton in austin is available for pre-sale by clicking the banner at the top of my page.....i .just left wisconsin heading to the south east....lots of great things are happening.....we just shot a new video in nashville, it is the single from the album .......hope you will check out both.....here is the link to the video....let me know what you think about it if you get a chance to watch it.....
Thanks for the add Siobhán. Yeah i play the odd night in Nancey's, usually on Monday and Weds nights, pop in anytime you want, Gerry Mac would be delighted.
It's nice to go back every now and then through the people that I've met up here. The essence of true friendship is to make allowances for another’s little lapses!!
Absolutely Beautiful voice & songs. Being an Irish/American I've never had the chance to come to Ireland... But listening to you I can Close my eyes & I'm Home....Thank you Siobhan
The new James Maddock album "Sunrise On Avenue C" is OUT NOW on Ascend Records. Take a sneak peak at his page! If you like it, you can buy it at iTUNES.
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Four more little sonic gems for your August pleasure are now available on the site. Blitzen Trapper, Boulder Acoustic Society, Jay Brannan and The Wiyos. Yet another fine quartet even though we say so ourselves as picked them out.
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