A Labour 'Of Love and Death' 10/12/12

Image compliments of GC Photographics

Singer/Songwriter Ronan Kearney has an ambition to set off across the country, and as he put it
“Conquer Ireland”, with his ukulele and guitar for company. Ronan has a variety of projects in the
pipeline at the moment including the release of his album “Of Love and Death” in the New Year as
well as anticipating the possibility of more EPs and even a second album as well as a political concept album. Ronan has also seen massive success online were he won SoundCloud of the Day. His profile of music was one of 250 profiles highlighted from 14 million people worldwide. His music has had 40, 000 ‘listens’ online and over 4,000 comments.

Ronan’s first introduction to music came in the form of a Walkman given to him at around six years
old by his dad, around 8 years before he’d hold his first guitar.

“I got Michael Jackson’s ‘BAD’ and Jeff Wayne’s ‘War of the Worlds’ as my first two albums, so it was really diverse music. ‘War of the Worlds’ is the kind of H.G. Wells, kind of alien Martian novel that Jeff Wayne has made into a musical, kind of funky, pop, classical, there was a big mixture of genres in there. Then of course Michael Jackson’s ‘Bad’ has the best pop songs in world almost. ‘War of the Worlds’ actually made quite an impression. Everybody that I met when I was growing up I gave that album to. My dad gave me a guitar when I was about 14 or 15."

He started to teach me, well, he gave me a chord book and taught me three chords. It was more or less Nirvana, Curt Cobain, learning his songs. So after learning a few songs to play the next step was learning to play and sing at the same time, so learning Polly, Lithium, Smells like Teen Spirit, all of them, I learnt every Nirvana song.”

At the age of 18 Ronan joined his first band called Underhill but was by no means an amateur on
the musical front as his band mate found out. “Dermott McGowan was probably the first musician
to get me into more chords. He’d be like ‘I don’t know what these chords are that I’m playing’ and I
sat him down and said: ‘I’m playing guitar in this band so we’re working out every chord to all your
songs today’ and we sat and worked out every one of them. You’ve got to be into theory too to write
kind of more diverse songs or you could find yourself stuck in a rut. I think classical music too will
help you do that because you wonder what all these beautiful changes are.”

Ronan’s influences fanned out to the likes of Pink Floyd and Led Zeppelin but then took a turn
in a different direction. He became interested in Jazz and Classical music in his early to mid 20’s,
particularly the music of composer, Terrega. “It was actually the phone ringtone, The Grand Waltz,
I learned the full piece, it was written by Francisco Tarrega, in the late 19 th century I think. I started
learning Terrega pieces then on the guitar, some stuff is easier but he transcribed a lot of J.S. Bach,
he’s my favourite composer, for guitar.”

Ronan decided to take his love of music into the world of academia and went to university to study
formally but things didn’t quite go as he planned. “With being in the choir I ended up singing. I did
my first two years with classical guitar but then changed to singing because it was easier for me to
get a first. I was getting 70% marks in my classical pieces up until my second year and then I was
playing these really ridiculously difficult Bach pieces and I wasn’t doing them justice and I got a low
mark after getting 70’s straight so I changed to singing.”

Ronan explains his main objective when trying to write songs for an audience. “I’m trying to write
songs that will have longevity in peoples listening. Trying to write real songs about love and death
and life, not just teenage angst rubbish, I want to write something substantial. I always try to write

political song but it leaves me too annoyed. I will definitely write a political album at some stage
but I can only write what I feel now and that’s people that I’ve lost through death or whatever and
falling in love, falling out of love and that kind of stuff. I’m trying still even to master just me and a
guitar, or me and a ukulele so I could just go on the road by myself and just say ‘I’ll be back in a year,
500 albums in my boot, see ye’s, I’m going to conquer Ireland’ That’s basically what I want to do next year, well the second half of next year.”

Of course many musicians dream of the idea of going on tour and being on the road but Ronan has
been driven to do this in a search for the right venues and audiences for his music. “Derry’s more
into drinking, just being honest. I know from playing loud gigs, you don’t care about people talking
and shouting over you, you just play, bitta craic, get your money, that’s alright. But when you’re
singing a song that wrote about someone like your cousin that died, it actually means something
to you, you’re closing your eyes. Just to get 50 minutes or 45 minutes of a listening ear, it’s nearly
impossible in Derry, for me anyway. I would love to do a tour with like Sharon Shannon or Winter
Mountain, someone like that, so it’s always listening people, just come in and do my wee half hour
of picking.”

The wonderful melodies and soothing finger picking styles of Ronan’s music are available online at Soundcloud. The nine track album, ‘Of Love and Death’, will be launched
locally at the end of February. If you haven’t yet heard Ronan’s dulcet tones you are certainly in for a
treat!