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nothing-new-under-the-sun

Nothing New Under the Sun – Official Video

March 4, 2021

Nothing New Under the Sun – Official Video
Directed and shot by the husband and wife team of Lucy Jones and John Hennessy of Kerbute Productions.

The official video for “Nothing New Under the Sun” came to be in the same way as just about everything else in the Universe:

One small idea led to another, and that to another, and on and on until before I knew it I was standing in the cavernous space of an unused cinema in my Mullingar hometown with the camera rolling.
The idea began from a simple impulse. I wanted some kind of video representation of the new single, even something as simple as using a still of the cover artwork as the audio played. Put in on YouTube and call it a video. Then I thought about the clouds in that photo – the cover image is by Guggenheim Grotto / Storyman songwriter Kevin May – and if perhaps we could get kind of fancy and have those clouds moving for the video. I reached out to my good friend John Hennessy of Kerbute Productions and put this idea to him. He came back to me shortly after and suggested that we try to find a way to make an actual music video. John had the initial concept of involving projections in some way, possibly inspired by the lyric in the song “I sit back and let the projector run”. We thought maybe we could make the video at my home place, maybe firing the projector at some of the old farm buildings or stone walls about the place. You’re always looking for a great space to make a video, somewhere with character and atmosphere. It wasn’t a huge leap then from projector to making enquiries about using the old cinema here in Mullingar.

When I was a boy the Ritz cinema was coming to the end of it’s era but I did catch a few blockbusters there in my time. Before my time, my parents courted in the glow of the enormous screen. I’m told that the space was used regularly for live music too and that in the 50s and 60s there was a stipulation that there had to be an interval in every feature where musicians would take to the stage and perform. I believe the great Joe Dolan was a regular performer here. All this is to say that the building is filled with a great history of film, music, community and young love. It was a real treat to spend a few hours there making this new video.

The building today is home to a clothing store on the ground floor (The owner is a friend of mine) but the upstairs is still very recognizable as a theatre space, albeit one that has been stripped of some of it’s furniture and the great velvet curtain that would have hung on the back wall. A small side note of history here: that very curtain was donated to The Blizzards some years back, to help them control the room sound for an early recording project of theirs. But the space still holds an echo of it’s former glory, and definite potential for rejuvenation. Here there are parallels between the building and the song itself. “Nothing New Under the Sun” deals with the idea of being caught in a state of suspended animation, repeating yourself, trapped in time. But bubbling under all that is the feeling that you want to shake yourself free of this lethargy and make a charge again for love or art or whatever calls you.

When we got into the space which is huge and well ventilated and very covid safe, we spent a little while setting the scene. It didn’t take much, a little tidying up here and there, some lighting, a little bit of smoke and mirrors and we were ready to rock. We projected a selection of beautiful old archival footage onto the back wall and rolled camera. The original plan was for me to simply sit in one of the old cinema seats and let the projector beam shine on me and that would be that. But given that we had all this space I started to move about the place. I picked up an umbrella that was randomly on the floor and started playing with that, using it as a sword, imagining it was a bird or a beating heart or a jellyfish. Encouraged and guided by John & Lucy, I started roving around the theatre like a drunkard in a dream, spinning and dancing and enjoying the motion of it all. I think it was just some sort of release after the last year of rolling lockdowns and being at home for so long. It felt good to be doing something creative and to have room to dance and to dream. It felt like waking up.

—

Nothing New Under the Sun

February 11, 2021
Cover Pic by Kevin May / Graphic Design Eugen Kern-Emden

11th February 2021

“Nothing New Under the Sun”, the first single from my upcoming album “Voices”, will be released tomorrow on streaming platforms world-wide. Special thanks to the Department of Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht, Sports and Media. I am so excited for this song – and the record as a whole – to at last see the light of day. I hope that you love it every bit as much as I do.

“Nothing New Under the Sun” is a song about those moments when you feel uninspired and sleepwalking through your days. It’s about recognizing that feeling and figuring out a way to shake yourself free of it. “Give me one time, something tribal, something bloody for my survival”. The final verse offers hope of reinvention and the belief that there is something yet to become.

It’s been six years since my last single release – “Moon” from the “Outlines” album in 2015. Six years seems like an eternity, and maybe it is, but things take the time they take and sometimes you just have to follow the flow – or lack thereof as the case may be.

In those years I have gotten married and moved into an Old Farmhouse just outside my hometown of Mullingar. Since moving here I have tried my hand at growing vegetables / lime-plastering / digging holes / fixing stone walls / chopping Timber / planting fruit trees /basic wood-working / Concert Promotion / painting / music-studio building and of course continued adventures in Songwriting. All this is to say I haven’t been in complete hibernation these last years.

Having such a space of time between records makes this new one feel in a way like a debut album. There was lots of time to work on songs, time to live with them and let them grow organically until they were at a place that I was really happy with. I am very proud indeed of this bunch of songs.

At the beginning of 2019 I had songs enough to make what I believed could be a very good record. But I had no plan in place about how I would record them. One of my ambitions then and now is to make a record in my own home studio here in the farmhouse. But work was progressing slower on that front than I had hoped so I needed to find a place to record. An early idea was to try and get access to the closed-down studio where I recorded my first album “Wood”. I could bring in some mics and try to work away myself like I had done for “Outlines”, but I quickly abandoned that idea because I really wanted to work with other people on this one. To surround myself with good people. Good musicians. So that we could kind of bounce off each other in an inspiring and musical way and hopefully bring the best out of these songs.

I reached out to my friend Hally who has a studio a little over an hour away from me and asked if he would be interested in recording / producing the album with me. I knew Hally for a few years at that point and admired him both as a musician and an engineer / producer. Hally, thankfully, was excited by the idea and we set to work planning out a timeline for recording and discussing recording philosophies and approach etc. and who we might try and get to play on the album.

I will write more about the whole process in the coming weeks but for now I am just so excited for people to hear the first fruit of this labor tomorrow. The first single “Nothing New Under the Sun” was the first song we tackled on the day one of band recordings so it seems fitting to put it out ahead of the other songs as a taster of what’s to come.
I’m so thankful to the musicians involved and I feel blessed to have so many incredible artists add their musicality to this project. The first notes of the song are played by cellist Mary Barnecutt who made the wonderful string arrangement for this song. Violin & Viola were played by Aoife Ní Dhornáin.

The stupidly talented Lenny Cahill played drums, bass, piano and organ on this track and – as with the majority of the record – he is the musical glue of this song. Without his sensibility, musical intuition and creative input this would be a much different record. The icing on the cake then was to have Emmett Tinley sing harmony on the song. Emmett is one of my favourite songwriters and to have him be part of this song was such a great treat.

Well that’s it, I’m excited to take these first steps with the new album. There will be no shows for a little while yet so I will do all I can to get the music “out there” as they say. You can listen to the song on my Spotify page or stream / download on Bandcamp from tomorrow. Please do follow me on either or both platforms to keep up to date with all the new music that’s coming this year.

Thanks for reading,
thanks for listening

~ Peter

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