“I’m delighted to finally be able to share this video with you, begun during the first heady flushes of lockdown when, like the rest of you, I found myself stuck at home, looking at some way to fill the time and flex my creative muscles.
As well as my “From the Washing Machine” live performance videos, I decided to make a video for the studio version of my song “It’s OK (‘Cos We’re in Love)”, taken from my most recent album “Make It Up”.
I chose the track as I felt it was suitably manic and energetic and that I would be able to have some fun with it. Armed with a greenscreen I borrowed from my neighbour, I filmed myself “acting out” with various props and in various parts of my house. I also put the call out on social media to get other locked-down folk to do likewise and to send me their own footage. They didn’t disappoint…
It was lovely receiving people’s contributions and to turn the project, begun in isolation, into more of a collaborative one. I’m very grateful to the people from all over the world (Spain, France, the USA, Mexico, South Korea, the UK, Ireland…) who got involved!”
A Galway native, Kevin has been writing songs since he was eight years old, and is now at the stage of his career where he might be called a veteran. Music has been what he has built his life around, for better or for worse. “I’ve tried living without music as my focus, but it has only led me down some dark alleys,” he says.
As a teenager, he remembers spending weekends locked away in the sitting-room with a 4-track recorder and a microphone. “The joy I get from putting the pieces of a song together and emerging with a finished product has never diminished”, he says. He formed his first band “Bliss” with some school friends. They wrote songs about school and sexually active bishops and learned valuable lessons about lying promoters, shifty managers and how one wasp can single-handedly ruin an entire live performance.
In college he joined his brother in the alt-country band El Diablo. Based in Dublin, they released two albums on Catchy Go Go Records and toured in Ireland and the USA. Over the years he has also collaborated on projects with the National Prayer Breakfast (NPB), singer Alison O’Donnell of the legendary 60s folk band Mellow Candle, and Matthew Mark Anthony (Life After Modelling) and gigged in Spain, France, England, Norway, Ecuador and Peru, where he lived for a period.
‘Monsters’, the first collection of his own songs, was released under the name Herm in 2009. Ireland’s leading alternative music magazine (Hot Press) and radio station (Phantom FM) included it in their top ten Irish albums of the year and reviewers drew favourable comparisons with artists such as Beck, The Eels and Tom Waits.
In 2010, Kevin and his friend Paul Clancy began performing as a duo under the name Clancy. They recorded an album together called ‘Road to the Heart’. Sadly, Paul passed away shortly after its completion. The album was released posthumously, and the Irish Independent described it as “an accomplished, meditative collection…moving and beautiful”. Four more songs that the pair had been working on were released as the Clancy EP in 2011.
The second collection of Kevin’s songs, “Make It Up”, was released in 2019 and reveals a development in Kevin’s song-writing from the quirky and edgy indie pop of his debut to a more reflective and organic approach. Described as “accomplished and impressive” (Hot Press), “refined and contemplative” (Connacht Tribune), the album is available on all digital platforms now.
www.kevinhermconnolly.bandcamp.com
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