Wicklow singers

Sceala Clann T.D. Location: Wicklow

I bring to your attention ...two young singers from my county.
Luan Parle is an Irish Singer ..Songwriter.
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In February 2007 young Wicklow woman Luan Parle received the prestigious Meteor award for "Best Irish Female Artist" following a public vote
The first single from the album - "Failed Romanaces" was confirmed at number 10 in the Irish Radio Airplay charts for 2006
She has worked and written in the US, UK and Ireland with legends such as: Sheryl Crow, Madonna, Michael Jackson, Elton John, Nanci Griffith, Rolling Stones, INXS, Bon Jovi, Hanson, Lloyd Cole etc.

Her voice , is very unique ... crosses the Rock ...Pop ..Acoustic .. Folk & Country genres. For one so young she is a seasoned songwriter having started the craft as a child

This section has been copied verbatim from Luan Parle's Myspace
Luan Parle was born in Wicklow, Ireland in the mid eighties

Growing up in Co. Wicklow with a passion for The Judds and Martina McBride as well as a whole host of more contemporary country-rock and pop artists, Luan's confidence as a singer came from the training her father gave to the children who sang at Sunday Mass at her local church.

With an already distinctive name (derived from a French ancestor who was shipwrecked off the Wexford coast) Luan began to develop her own vocal style early on and, a few months before her seventh birthday, won the first of a string of talent contests. She started playing the guitar around the same time and from then on there was no stopping her. Within three years she was fronting her own band.

Her dauntless enthusiasm and unnerving confidence brought her a handful of gigs at hotels and bars. Before long, Luan had become a welcome fixture on her local music scene and, in spite of her tender years, was already making a name for herself as a professional singer. She took some of numerous opportunities to perform on radio and television including national (Irish) appearances on The Late Late Show, Kenny Live and School Around The Corner.

Her parents were nothing but supportive. “My father spent all his spare time driving me around from contest to concert. He would wait for me for hours and encourage me in the best possible way.”

At this point Luan was presented with the opportunity of a lifetime. A Nashville scout, attracted by the profile that thirteen year old Luan had been building up, offered her the opportunity to head off to the U.S. with a full recording contract.

“I couldn't believe what was happening. These people actually wanted to take me to America, to the hub of country music, and record my voice.”

And everyone lived happily after, yeah? Not a bit of it. Luan's parents had other ideas, insisting that she was too young to take such a life-changing risk and that finishing her education must come first.

“I was devastated. I didn't want to speak to my parents for months! Now I can understand that they just wanted me to have a normal childhood. So we made a deal: If I went back and finished school, then, if I still wanted to be a professional singer, they promised to support me 100%”

Luan's deal with her parents didn't stop her playing and performing wherever she could, and settling down to start writing her own songs. But she kept her end of the bargain and they kept theirs.

Me and my wife love her song called ..Ghost

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Fionn Regan
Fionn Regan is an Irish singer ..songwriter ..poet and artist from Bray, Wicklow Ireland.
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Fionn was nominated for 2 Meteor Awards ...Best Male and Best Newcomer in 2006 and The End of History was nominated for Irish album of the year 2006 at the Choice Music Prize and was shortlisted for the 2007 Mercury Music Prize .

This section has been copied verbatim from Fionn Regan Biography
Fionn was born on the coastal outskirts of Wicklow to an artist mother and a musician/composer father. "I remember clearly the day I was born, the patterns and folds of skin worn on the nurses hands and neck… her gold plated wrist watch, made in Korea… An expanse of solid white cloud outside the narrow uniform windows, looking down on earth through the barrel of a telescope, beyond Van Halen’s shield, a fish caught on a line pushed through the oceans ceiling. Then, my first two years were spent living in a staff room, at a hotel. I communicated with the world, age two by blocking sinks, turning on taps, and running naked through the hotel dining room."

"We moved on to our own place. Our house had an energy to it,electrical pulses running along the floorboards, birds in the attic. Passers-by always stopped to stare up at it. Always an audience. There were train tracks at the rear and the sea out front, reminders for the isolated, that the world was out there. My first stage was the space that the bay window afforded, my brother opened the musty curtains, "action!" I performed improvised songs and monologues, wearing a 'map of the world' print waistcoat, bowler hat and clutching a walking cane. Outside the sea swelling, careering over the iron railings onto the promenade and homeless people in the bandstand passing around a bottle. The heavy quantities of sea salt in the air proved a terrible foundation for a future sodium addict"

"Our landlord filled the cracks in the windows with newspaper. I pulled a piece loose one day to find an article from The Wicklow Times on cowboy builders. He poured buckets of tar down the double A frame roof in an attempt to stop the14 leaks, which I secretly loved; any interaction with a rainstorm made a bulb in my chest light up".

"There wasn't a stereo but I fell asleep every night to the sound of traditional Irish music, folk, bluegrass and country. Banjos, uillean pipes, guitars, flutes and bodhrans, vibrating the walls, losing it and winning it back. The last stragglers arguing out the front, while the chukka rhythm of the diesel train grew thinner, winding around the mountain until there was a hollow space left in the air. The local community drug alert people peered and sneered at the house because a junkie was living in the basement. All they found was a poppy growing in the garden which they placed into a transparent plastic bag."

"At school I made spines out of silver paper, collected leaves, acorns, conkers. My first report simply read "colour blind". We spent many periods of time with no electricity. Our landlord would turn up, shout, take instruments, furniture, toys or anything else by way of payment. We'd stand on the steps and chant '*naughty word used*-off-Paddy-Mears-where's-your-cap' he'd give us the fingers and drive south."

"In the morning I would lie on the carpet in the path of sun below the glass fanlights in the front door, resume sleeping and dream about fossils, old buildings and concerts, my mother had a hard time getting me to school".

"In the hall stood an old piano, which i hammered out my first songs on. In the garden we had an open topped canoe, it held pockets of frog spawn like bags of glue, in later years we rowed it down the strand road when the tail end of hurricane Charlie hit. Once, I traveled for what seemed like days to pick up a violin from a old man in a garage. Shortly into the lessons I cracked the bow using it as a make shift sword. It wasn't too long after that i began to play my old man's guitar...."

"We called the back garden Jamaica, set up a a tree-stump table surrounded by cast-off ghost train carriages from the amusement arcade. We'd sit up playing guitars, building mind benders. My father often dropped by to join in the music or just stand on his hands. We often wound up on the mountain playing anything from trad to pop songs. My first public performance fronting a band, was in a barn, at a party, out in the stick's. It went well, I felt good. After the show I drank some whiskey, and saw a ghost."

"There were different groups and by the time I was 15 or 16, I was rounding up the troops, rehearsing in the now near derelict hotel staff quarters, surrounded by old bathtubs, sinks, hundreds of old telephones and mirrors. Until, one day I realised I was the only one left in the band.

"Fionn has been taking a characteristically low key approach to recording his debut record, choosing analogue equipment, recording in houses, sheds and a barn, capturing songs in a live capacity, introducing percussion, piano, and strings to mesmeric effect.
The highly anticipated debut album is in the pipeline, the future is wide open............
Be Good or be Gone

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Wicklow singers

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