Cheryl's Healing Harmonies! 24/6/13

Image compliments of Patrick Duddy Photography

Cheryl-Ann McEvoy is a new young talent whose name is becoming increasingly known in the City’s Music scene. Cheryl started playing as a result of having an operation on her hand. She used the movement and practice as therapy in her healing.  

“It was about three years ago I started playing guitar. I had an operation on my hand and it was really just to make my hand start to move. My daddy’s guitar was always sitting around the house and to start with I tried to play it and played the same old ‘Smoke on the Water’ or ‘Teenage Kicks’ and then I thought that I really did want to learn. I kind of fell in love with it. My daddy’s been everywhere with music so it’s always been running in the family. Then coming to the Tech in September 2010 brought out my confidence. I was able to get up in front of people and start singing properly. Started writing songs, the Tech gave me the confidence to start writing. Now it’s like the yin and yang, everywhere you see me there’s a guitar somewhere, it’s pretty much everything that I do now.”

As any proud father would Cheryl’s dad went out to buy a guitar as a present to encourage her but it wasn’t quite what Cheryl expected. “My first guitar, I cringe about it all the time, was pink! I hate pink! Anyone that knows me, knows I hate pink. It was pretty cringy but I got up and sang with that then. That one actually got broken by accident and then my daddy gave me his, it’s really old so that meant a lot to him that I was playing it.  My daddy thought it would be class, because I was a girl to have a pink guitar. I came down one morning, a Christmas morning and it was sitting there. I was like ‘Aw, that’s nice, it’s pink but it’s nice’. It was a lovely guitar, just pink but I ended up with his and I still have his now, it’s the only one I use.”

Cheryl’s attachment to the guitar her dad gave her grew when the original owner of the instrument passed away last year. “The guitar belonged to a friend of his, Seamus McBrearty. He was a golfer so the guitar just sat about the house. He sold it to my daddy and the next thing was he died then, last year. There would be a bigger emotional attachment to that. That guitar is the only guitar I can write with, I couldn’t write with anything else, I get memo blocks. It’s the only one I can actually put music to songs with.”

Like many students leaving school Cheryl was faced with the decision of heading off to uni or staying at home. She chose staying at home and concentrating on her music. “Rocket ship was written on the back of an envelope. I was playing on going to uni this year and my acceptance letter, the envelope that was in it was huge, from Cambridge like so it was one of those big letter saying ‘Do Not Bend’ and all that. I started getting idea in my head and I’ve always had a thing for rocket ships and I thought ‘Right, I’m going to write a song about a rocket ship’ and it just sort of came out. At the minute, here in Derry there’s a lot going on for music, there’s a lot of people being seen about like SOAK and different people. It’s not somewhere at the moment that’s being overlooked in the music scene. People are still making it big, look at The Clameens now making a start. It’s that process of going from your home town and getting there from your home town is far better than trying to find it somewhere else. It means more if you’re coming from your home town I think.”

Studying music at the North West Regional College has seen Cheryl’s song writing and confidence come on leaps and bounds. She’s now in a band and will soon be releasing an EP.

“Studying music now, first year of music finished, second year next year. It was class, the amount of people I met and the amount of musical ideas that have come out of Tech were amazing. Started writing a lot of stuff too for the band that we’re in ‘Don’t Get Personal’ , I’m kinda the front woman of that. There’s a lot going on. I’m going into the recording studio soon so we’ll get that EP out as soon as possible.

I do a lot of cover stuff and that’s how I fund my own stuff. I bought a wee home studio, especially for writing, maybe not for recording and doing my EP on but anytime I write something I would record it straight away.  My gigs are funding that, I don’t do any full original gigs yet because I want to have a full set that I’m able to do. I do a lot of stuff my own way and use the open mic nights to play my own tunes.”

Cheryl is running an open mic night for singer/songwriters and musicians similar to herself every Tuesday Night in Masons. It will offer a platform to people like Cheryl who may not have enough material to fill an entire gig with original music but who still want their music to be heard.

Acclaim For The Clameens! 27/6/13

Image Compliments of Haarala Hamilton Photography

Fresh young talent and dare I say the best indie rock band the City and even the North West has to offer, The Clameens. There single ‘Follow’ has gone from strength to strength being used on a national scale by a number of companies on promotions of the City of Culture.

 “Boat Magazine from London had a promotional video about Derry because of the City of Culture about how good Derry is, they used our songs for the promotion. It was used again in the Irish Times & Discover Ireland when Derry was listed as one of the top 5 destinations to go on holiday and live, the track were used in the back ground. 

We’re really excited now because they’re also going to be used in a BBC documentary about City of Culture at the end of the year. They’ve emailed us and asked to use the track.” said Hayden.The group have only been together a year as the final line-up took a little time to master as guitarist and vocalist Sean tells. “It was myself and Hayden did it from the start but we thought we were lacking something so we brought Ethan, Hayden’s younger brother who is only 15, into the piece but we still felt we were lacking something. I had joined another band in this time and met Ryan and asked him to come join The Clameens and that’s really how the final line up was formed. It was like a jigsaw puzzle.”

Ethan Diver is the youngest member of the band playing lead guitar and vocal also, though he’s quiet he’s thrilled to be playing. “It’s fun to be doing that much at such a young age, having the experience, it’s class.”

The experience is going to continue as the guys have been picking up more success locally and further afield particularly in the last 6 months. Ryan, the bassist of the band think a lot of it has been as a result of adopting a manager. “It’s finally starting to pick up pace now since January, the ball has just been rolling since then. Once we got Mark on board. Once we got Mark on board as manager some things really began to push on. He on the ball, he knows, he’s really committed.  Where you’d hear a lot of managers would use their artists he supports us one hundred percent. He just wants us to be the best band that we can be. He’s not in it for money or anything.”

It turned out that for at least one member of the group, Sean, Manager Mark Holden was the final piece in the puzzle to their growing success. “We actually got mark by accident. We went into the studio to record a single and we rang Mark for advice for studio he gave us the studio which was the Blast Furnace with Rory and he came down and gave feedback, ‘Sounds good, you should do this or do that’. Eventually he was just giving us advice after a wee bit then I think one day we just called him manager and he was just the manager then. He never said ‘I want to manage you’, he just fell into it. He was the other jigsaw piece.”

Having heard the single ‘Follow’ and subsequently fallen in love with it the coming single seems like something keeping an eye out for. Hayden suggests that there was a lot of hard work involved before the singles came along. “We were practicing for ages before hand and came up with the first track ‘Follow’ which we recorded and we just released that on Soundcloud for free for people to listen to. The last single called ‘She’s got my Heart’ will be coming out in mid June time. You’ll be able to buy it off itunes and stuff like that. That’s our next big thing and what we’re really looking forward to it now.”

Taking a different approach, the group have decided not to have a launch of their single but instead to push it to online audiences in order to make it the most accessible to everyone. “We wanted to do something outside the box, a lot of artists now do videos and single launches, some people will think, ‘You’re not doing a video, you’re not doing a single launch, you’re not really pushing it’ but we wanted to focus more time on pushing it online and pushing it to a wider audience. We’re focusing on going back to the studio now too again.” said Sean.

As with any group the support they get a home can go a long way to setting them up with a future. The Clameens have expressed massive gratitude towards those giving a helping hand. “We really appreciate the help everyone’s been giving us like Stephen McCauley, I think he’s played the single every show that he’s done in the past week. We only gave it to him to play it before the release and I think he’s played it in every show and everyone that he’s done now this we. We were very humbled because we didn’t expect that. He’s said a lot of lovely things and Mark Patterson has said a lot of lovely things and Micky Bradley too.

The guys have just finished the gigs they’re playing as part of the North by North West festival but are playing more this summer. You have the chance to catch up with them this weekend at the Carnival of Colours festival in St Columb’s Park this Saturday, where they’ll be playing as part of a fun filled family festival. Fear not if you can’t make it as they will also be appearing at the Stendhall Festival outside Limavady this summer too.

There will be lots more information on up and coming gigs on their Facebook. You can find links here to their Bandcamp page were you can listen to some of their tunes or even their YouTube channel for teasers on up and coming tracks. Get a listen to the single; I played it on repeat for a whole hour!