Irish singer-songwriter Anna’s Anchor is undertaking a mammoth task. Armed with his guitar, a notepad and a trusted pen, he will embark on a journey that sees him play on a different Irish island each weekend throughout June and July, releasing a new track written and recorded at each location.
As he undertakes his projects, Marty Ryan will be keeping us up-to-date with all his goings on through his ‘The Islands Diary’. Each of the new tracks will be available to download via the official Anna’s Anchor website every Thursday.
To find out what went down in weeks one and two, check out Part One, but without further ado, here are the adventures from the third and fourth week.
Week Three – Inishturk
This week was one that I had been both extremely excited and nervous for, for a long time. This island had to be rescheduled to a Sunday night because I had the privilege of supporting Andrew Jackson Jihad in Dublin on the Saturday night. It was an amazing gig I’ll never forget. AJJ were the nicest band and were really interested in The Islands project. Dublin is at the most easterly part of the country and the following night I was playing at the most remote westerly part.
Inishturk Island has only 50 inhabitants. When I was booking the tour, I wanted to do something different so I felt like I’d be doing a disservice to myself if I didn’t go to one of the most remote, rugged and harsh environments our country has.
Right after the AJJ gig my friend Oscar from Never Meant Records and I drove west to a city called Galway where we crashed on a friends couch to get 4 hours sleep before we were up again to catch the morning ferry out to Inishturk. I said previously that I’ve been actively searching for the feeling of “What the hell am I doing here” and as Oscar and I pulled up to the small pier, that’s exactly what we were thinking.
The sea was violently crashing against the pier. We could see the ferry arriving and I knew we were in for it. For just under an hour it felt like myself and Oscar were in an episode of deadliest catch. At points the small ferry was nose diving so far into the waves of Clew Bay that all you could see was sky looking out the back of the boat. I only narrowly avoided throwing up on two occasions by focussing on the horizon which settled my stomach.
With about 15 minutes until we arrived, I had gotten a notification on my phone. The journal.ie had published an article on the project. For those of you that are unfamiliar, it is the Irish version of the Huffington Post with a pretty large readership. I was looking down at my phone for a number of minutes until my stomach gave up and I had to rush over to the side of the boat. This one had gotten the best of me.
Stomach contents left behind, we made our way to the venue to drop off the gear and set up. It was a lovely new community centre with a bar. Everyone was extremely welcoming. The first thing I noticed was that everyone, without fail said “You’re very welcome to Inishturk” to us, which I thought was a nice sentiment; something I should bring back with me and use in Limerick.
While we were setting up this mist/haze came down about one mile out from shore. You couldn’t see the mainland anymore; it was a distant memory at this point. With the gear set up, it was now about 1PM; high time to go and explore the island. It was amazing how unspoilt it was. We hiked up to the looking point of the island where there was a monument for each family looking out onto the Atlantic. I sat there for about 4 hours guitar in hand whilst Oscar went away filming for the documentary we’re making of the project. The time honestly felt like a couple of minutes and like that, the song was done.
We then headed back to the community centre and waited to see how many of the total population of 50 would show up. Tonight was different because it wasn’t in a noisy bar. There was a charge on the door and the people that would be there would be for the music. All in all 30 people showed up including 10 lovely tourists. Everyone was dead quiet for the hour and a half and was genuinely interested in hearing about the stories behind my songs. You could hear a pin drop for the entire set which is something I wasn’t expecting at all.
Everyone was really appreciative that I made the effort to come out and were all curious about the song that I’d be releasing. I almost felt like I had a responsibility to write a song that had significance to them and that they might be proud of which was a nice and daunting prospect. A man who probably had a pint or two too many to drive, or at least the wall he clipped on the way would say so, brought us back to where we were staying for the night.
When we woke up the next morning I had a tonne of notifications on my phone. Three national radio stations, one large regional radio station and two newspapers were all trying to get in touch with me. It was crazy, I spent the early hours talking to producers of the biggest radio shows in the country that had read the journal.ie article. They all wanted an “exclusive” and wanted me to talk with them and not their competitors.
I had been emailing all these shows previously with no avail but I got that bit of luck. I ended up agreeing to go on the John Murray Show on RTE Radio 1 because they were willing to give me more time and play half of a song. That show has 300,000 listeners, in a country which has a population of around 4 million. In short, massive exposure!
They tried to get me on the show while I was on the ferry home which clashed with the show. My phone line gave way just before I was to go in. We were so bummed! Luckily enough they agreed to have me in the studio the next day. The notifications on my phone from people wishing me luck/well and talking about the project was crazy. I still find it both amazing/funny that someone from our scene could get onto a huge daytime radio station like that. I felt proud of taking it that far because the DIY ethos is something I value so much and that’s the kind of exposure some asshole in a suit in a big wig PR company would struggle to get. Lesson of the day: DIY Till We DIE!
The song I wrote was about how I can’t remember the last time I allowed myself a few hours to sit down and not have my mind preoccupied on something else. A chance to sit down and take it all in. Something I may not allow myself to do again either but I’m grateful that Inishturk allowed me that. The look out point had this monument with a poem on it, I took some of the significant words from that poem and used them in the second verse of the song.
Week 4 – Clare Island
The media whirlwind was starting to die down from the week when it was time to hit the halfway mark of this crazy experience. Again, Oscar from Never Meant was in tow and we headed out on the short calm ferry to Clare Island, which was out in Clew Bay near Inishturk. It was one of the bigger islands that’s more popular amongst tourists. I was playing in a small community run bar.
After setting up, Oscar and I rented bikes and went off to see what Clare Island had to offer. We had bumped into a couple of locals along the way and some tourists and stopped to chat and tell them about the gig. They had said they had heard about me on the radio and in the journal which was mad! We checked out this fantastic lighthouse that was on a super sketchy but equally spectacular cliff.
We headed back to the venue where a traditional session amongst a few kids that were related to the owners had started. They were fantastic and really entertaining, first time traditional dancing has supported acoustic punk/emo probably! There was a nice crowd at the gig – maybe 40-50 – some of which were part of a family get-together that the people who were running the bar were a part of.
The large family weren’t very interested in the music which was cool but the rest of the bar was and the lady running it asked me to turn the P.A down. That was a little annoying because it wasn’t really loud enough as it was and when I did turn it down, the other people there were telling me they couldn’t hear me. Caught between a rock and a hard place but what can you do. You have to take the good with the bad. We caught a midday boat back and by late afternoon I was back to the familiarity of my hometown, Limerick.
When I started the project, I wasn’t leaving any restrictions on myself in terms of what to write the songs about. They don’t have to be about the islands as such but regardless, they had been providing a perfect platform to write about and I wrote a song about something that had been happening personally during the week. I probably wouldn’t have been able to write a song as personal and honest had I not been out there which is something I was delighted about.
Clare Island was home to an old clan that ruled the bay it was situated in hundreds of years ago, almost like pirates. Their ruler was called Grace O’Malley and she was known as queen of the pirates. The song title is an ode to that and there’s a track bed of a guy talking about her underneath the song which definitely is relatable to what the song was about.
There’ll be more antics in two weeks time!