Gráinne finds her voice as a singer with real soul

Gráinne Cotter is a soulful, multi-instrumentalist singer/songwriter whose music brings Amy Winehouse and Lily Allen to mind. And next Wednesday, October 24, she and her four-piece band perform an intimate set at the Black Gate Cultural Centre on Francis Street.

Having grown up in a family of traditional musicians it was her eventual exposure to jazz that saw Gráinne’s music take shape.

“Initially, the route I was going down seemed to be the fiddle and the classical violin,” she notes. “It has moved slightly away [from a traditional sound]. Each genre benefits the other. Having come from that background, I think it maybe opens your mind musically to other genres.”

Gráinne, from Kilmaley, Co Clare, released her debut album TIDES in September 2017 with launch nights at The Workman’s Club in Dublin and Galway’s Róisín Dubh. The decision to record was a spontaneous one.

“I went on The Pat Kenny Show on Newstalk and he was like ‘Gráinne, what are your plans?’” she recalls. “Right there and then I said ‘I’m making an album!’ I had only two members of the band at that stage and they both went ‘what?’”

TIDES was recorded in Galway city with producer Ray Diamond before being sent off for mastering in Dublin with Gavin Glass, a former band mate of Lisa Hannigan.

“I tried to produce it myself but I realised you can’t do everything. Ray and Gavin were fantastic – so professional and so helpful.”

Many of the tracks on the album come at major moments of change in Gráinne’s life. She ties her songs to the different locations that inspire her – from a year’s scholarship at Boston’s Berklee College of Music to a three-month sabbatical in Paris.

“Some of them are from when I came back from America, in the limbo-land of your twenties when you’re questioning what you’re doing,’ she laughs. “Paris was the first time in three years that I’d taken a break from work, stepped back and realised what it is that I actually want to do.”

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.

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