A few weeks back on my social media I shared the last song on my album ‘The Rest’, called ‘Caretaker (Requiem)’ and I just wanted to record it here, on my website as well. The song was a tribute to a friend of mine, Mícheál Gormley who I worked with. Mícheál came to lots of our gigs at Sligo Live, we played lots of music together and had great, (extensive!) music chats. He also played the bass and for this reason I have a little bassline running through the song. Although I put the album out in October 2020, I didn’t get to deliver the record to his family until recently and that was quite a touching moment.
The song was a tribute to Mícheál but also seemed fitting as I had some other loss in my family leading up to the release of the album and of course the pandemic brought its own existential weight to bear on everything. The title for the album ‘The Rest’ comes from Hamlet’s last words ‘the rest is silence’ and I managed to fit those beautiful words into the song too.
Kudos are due to Enda Reilly who I asked for a second opinion on the song, as I wanted to do it justice and sometimes you need someone objective.
‘the ocean takes back its islands’