|  |  |  |  |  |  | | | | | | Bio of the Artist | Conor Buckley was 13 when he first picked up a guitar in the costal city of Cork.It was ironic that 15years later he would pick up a guitar again in Cork following a few years of hardly playing at all and begin his most creative peroid which comprises the 14song album After The flood.
Conor has said during the writing of the album he was at his most discplined often working six hours a day on songs, trying to sum up his experiences in his songs and spending a few hours a day learning to play slide guitar.
During the writing of the album he began to think of what music meant to him again and realised that most of the musicians he admired had been destroyed by the music business and in retrospect the best musicians he had played with were generally behind in their rent and always had their instrument in the pawnshop and were not in the music business and didn`t ride around in limousines!He wasn`t too interested in the charts or the music that was coming out and reasoned he had been around some of the finest musicians in the world in his years abroad.The early years in The Czech Republic were a riot of late nights and performances often given in places of illrepute and he learned to play live in the often intimidating atmosphere of the Praha nonstop bars playing acoustically learning to project his voice over the hecklers and psychos.It was in this atmosphere that the Daybreak album would be written in this time mirroring his life playing here and there in search of god knows what a man far from his home whose eyes burned by the lights of a strange city.Conor would say"I suppose now i look back and say did i learn anything in that peroid.I left Ireland around this time with a bag a guitar and 30quid, certainly there were times i played with four strings, times i was starving broke and other times i got paid very well, times i thought i should have stayed in Cork got married and taken a mortgage but then i would never have recorded all this music so i am very glad i didnt ,times i liked teaching english and times i did crazy things , i remember the great musicians i saw play i mean great the word great is abused a lot, i got a few black eyes and maybe gave one or two myself! i suffered a good deal at that time a large amount due to myself but i learned an awful lot about music in fact most of the little i know i learned in that peroid watching listening learning, but i think that peroid hardened me in a lot of ways toughened me up to life it taught me to play well because i had to play well live.Five years later you get to Old town square and you have a seven piece band playing before you who don`t want you playing solo on the same bill with a semi acoustic because well?That would happen to me constantly over the years no one wanted me coming along in Czech or Irish music, if my downfall came at anytime it was everywhere i played and everytime i finished playing because then you were suddenly very noticeable and fell victim to all the jealousy, false expectations and bullshit its difficult when you are very young but it was a very steep learning curve.
I am glad i was in that city at that time and i met the people i did.The Daybreak songs written in that peroid i wouldn`t record until 6 years later in a friends small studio and produce myself with Rene Starhons help. i spent a year on it and i was glad i didnt forget the chords and lyrics,during that time recording daybreak i would go every day to a cafe to write down what had happened during the early years so it became a book. To be honest by 2010 as opposed to 01 the Prague i knew seemed touristy i was puzzled by the amount of Irish tourists, a lot of the great characters had vanished and it seemed from about 91-2003 was the Golden era, the rest seemed to belong to people searching for a scene that had already died."
He carried a guitar with him everywhere and was always ready to play and once survived for a three month peroid by busking alone on a street for an hour in the evening and would earn more busking than teaching English. Around the corner from this streeet was the famous Old Town Square Staromak and Conor found himself playing on the famous landmark for St Patricks day 2008.Conor could say he played across the city of Prague everywhere from cafes,pubs large and small venues to gambling houses hellholes shitholes and once for a judge to get his guitar back who had confiscated it for busking and Conor loved busking.Its Prague where Conor found his music far away from the narrow jealousy of the Irish music scene.The early years in the Czech Republic would definitively shape his worldview.The difficulty of making a living playing original compositions would bring him to fall back on teaching English a constant companion to his many years in the Czech Republic.Students were often given a morning performance if teaching business English was too much for the Irish teacher.He would jam with some amazing musicians at this time and would play with two of the most famous Czech underground bands Psi Vojaci and Garage in these years and make numerous mistakes. The man who sat in Frankfield Terrace close to Cork City a few years on would realise the only thing that would be remembered was the music.
Thinking this way gave the twenty nine year old a freedom he decided that he would dedicate a large portion of these years to his music for himself and his fans whatever the result and not be too interested in the talk and pretension that accompanies music.The most important thing to him was his music.It was a time where he saw very few people and was completley focused on his music.He would run a few miles a day to improve his singing voice and began to do special exercises to strenghten his hands so he could play slide better.
Conor`s treatment at this time in his hometown, he referred to as i knew i had committed the biggest crime you can commit in Ireland to become very good at something yet its mainly why he would spend so long outside his own country.
The young man who began playing in nonstop bars in Eastern Europe was a different man to the one who spent evenings in /Frankfield Terrace where the album was largely written and Conor lived/ working by the fireside trawling through the earliest slide recordings trying to perfect the tunings and techniques on a semi acoustic guitar. Conor even went back to research ancient gaelic rhyming schemes to help his lyrics and Conor has a great love of the Irish language and culture.His major regret when he sat by the fireside was the recording time he had not made use of in the famous Barrandov studios in his early years and wished for a second chance which was granted to record After The Flood.
Conors first concert attendance had been to see a performance of Rory Gallagher the finest guitarist Ireland has ever produced and Conor would say Gallghers slide playing that day made a lasting impression on the 13year old and he declared from then on he wanted to play the guitar.
The songs Linda Brown, Travelling Blues and The Barrandov Blues show the promise of a good slide player. New Day is a powerful protest song, the ballads Morning Tune and Maidin Seo show the mark of a great vocalist which is really the essence of Conors music his vocals, the guitar playing merely distracts from the singing.
Songs like Aisling, Talk Down To Me, Cordelia, Frankfield Terrace Talking Blues, Cordelia, End of the Affair, Wasteland take you on the journey with Conor. The album goes through the highs, the lows the conflicting emotions and is splattered with great lyrics of a seasoned songsmith who has crafted this 14song album through the eyes of experience .You are there for the sun then the rain ,then the flood and 14songs later it is After The Flood.The album is completley live 14 of the finest acoustic recordings that have surfaced in recent years and was written between 2006-2009.The album is available on Itunes Cd Baby, Amazon,Tradebit, Napster and Mavaru.com/conorbuckley.
The album is co- produced by Conor Buckley and Ivo Heger formerly of legendary band Toyen and one of the top producers in the Czech Republic.Conor Buckley is not only a songwriter; he is also a producer in his own right and is the main producer of all his music. Conor is also a writer and has written a memoir based on his life and travels which he hopes to publish at some stage.He is also a qualified English language teacher and a good one by all accounts and has a degree in English and a CELTA teaching qualification.He is currently working on the follow up to the After the Flood album entitled Daybreak which he will produce.
You could mention Conors work around the financial crisis at this point or his humanatarian work whether it be Haiti Earthquake victims, The Israeli Paelstinian conflict or issuses like equal health care in Ireland or his vocal myspace oposition to Irish Primeminister Bertie Ahern to secure a better government. Conor would refer to his myspace venture as "pretend madness to get rid of a mad Taoiseach/Primeminister,i knew the Taoiseach was a fan so i went up there to voice my opposition in a very insane way the pretend insanity worked and it got him out within nine months and i quietly disappeared! " but that is surplus to requirements, what you have as Conor describes himself is a nice quiet fella who writes a few songs who has done quite a bit in his life. JH
Following recording consistently for three years 08/09/10 during which he recorded The Daybreak and After The Flood albums and many recordings up here that were the beginnings of a fourth album Conor would go to see a bad dentist and develop a serious jaw injury as a result which has left him unable to sing for a year and in chronic pain.The jury is out at the moment whether he will be able to sing again. although in the midst of his dental night mare in considerable pain he recorded and produced there is your answer, drifting,lonesometravelling blues ten.5 in a 4hour session.If the man has one thing its guts. He lives very quietly in a small town in Cork City Ireland. | | |
|
 | |
