Sittin’ On A Wall is the latest release from Cork singer and songwriter Martin Leahy. For this track Martin has worked with renowned producer and musician Declan Sinnott. Declan is well known for his seminal work over the years with Horslips, Moving Hearts, Mary Black, Christy Moore, Sinead Lohan, his own solo work and many more. Declan plays guitar, piano and a combination of sampled sounds on the track and also sings harmony. Martin sings and plays bodhran. The track was co-produced by Declan and Martin and recorded and mixed by Declan.
Sittin’ On A Wall is a co-write by Martin and his brother Michael Leahy. The song is a sequence of beautiful and unsettling, memories and dreams of construction, road bowling and single row accordions. The songs creative inspirations lie somewhere between Patrick Kavanagh and Four Tet.
Martin Leahy is a musician, producer and singer/songwriter from Cork. Having played as a session musician for many years in Ireland he started releasing his own music as a solo artist just over two years ago. In those two years he has released four singles (Two of which were placed on the RTE Radio 1 Playlist), released an EP with SomeRiseSomeFall for the charity ‘A Lust For Life’ and was a finalist in the USA International Songwriting Competition (the final 16 out of an overall number of 26,000 entries)
Martin received nationwide attention when he released his song in April 2022 about the housing crisis called Everyone Should Have A Home. He has been travelling from Cork to Dublin every week to protest outside Dáil Éireann by singing his song since May 2022 for 59 weeks. He has performed at all the major Cost Of Living Crisis protests in Dublin and in Cork including the recent Raise The Roof Protest in Dublin. He has been interviewed by and featured on multiple national and local print, tv and radio media outlets about his protest and his song. He has been featured on The Irish Times (front cover) The Irish Examiner, Irish Independent, Echo (front cover), Joe.ie, Virgin Media TV, RTE News, TG4 etc..
‘Martin Leahy is one artist speaking out – literally making the weekly trip from West Cork to Leinster House to register his protest in song. A deft piece of distorted pop that rings true and clear’ – Mike Mcgrath-Bryan
Martin has also had the honour recently of Christy Moore covering one of his songs called ‘Snowflakes’. The song is related to Martin’s own experience of social media trolling.
Martin has been playing as a session musician on the Irish music scene for about 25 years. Along with his recent successes as a singer/songwriter he has worked with some of Ireland’s greatest songwriters and musicians including John Spillane, Christy Moore (on his No.1 selling album ‘Listen’), Cormac O Caoimh, Ger Wolfe, Jimmy McCarthy, Greenshine, Seamus Begley and Jim Murray, Noel Brazil, Declan Sinnott among many others. An accomplished multi instrumentalist, he has produced many albums including the most recent very successful album by Cormac O Caoimh called ‘Swim Crawl Walk Run’ which was awarded album of the week by many radio stations including RTE Radio One, RTE Lyric and BBC Radio Ulster. He also produced Ger Wolfe’s well received album ‘I Have Been Loved’. Other productions include Leah Sohotra, Blind Poets, Tim O Riordan, John Neville. Lynda Cullen, Victoria Keating and Aine O Gorman. As a member of the traditional Irish group North Cregg he has toured the World playing many major festivals including Glastonbury, Cambridge and Milwaukee. As a songwriter he has collaborated with a number of writers including Leah Sohotra, John Neville, Mary Greene and more recently with Cormac O Caoimh on his successful single ‘Building My Ark’ which received substantial airplay around the country.
He released his debut single ‘Song For Kirsty MacColl’ and received extensive airplay and coverage nationally. The following year he released another two singles ‘The Wolves In The Valley’ and ’Brian’ which also received great airplay and made the RTE Radio One Recommends List resulting in lots of national airplay. He also released a three track EP for SomeRiseSomeFall in aid of the charity ‘A Lust For Life’ .In January 2022 he collaborated with Leah Sohotra and released ‘The Valleys Of Her Mind’ which they co-wrote.
