‘Island Bound’ with Bluesman Davy Knowles!
Back in July I wrote about working with a fellower Islander, Davy Knowles, who shot to fame as a Blues musician when still in his teens. Though Davy has made a new life for himself in Chicago, I’ve been friends with him for many years; we went to the same secondary school and it is to him that I owe much of my knowledge of blues musicians but also great folk and roots artists like Richard Thompson and Martin Simpson.
As part of ‘Island of Culture’ – the Isle of Man Arts Council’s year-long celebration of the arts during 2014 – Davy has produced a great documentary with a film company on the Isle of Man called DAM Productions, in which he explores Celtic music and the way that it travelled across the world to the USA. In ‘Island Bound’, Davy discovers more about the traditional music of the Island where he grew up, and featured in these sections are a number of Manx musicians including myself.
The film is oh SOOO nearly finished (hurrah!) and on 10th September, during the Isle of Man Film Festival, an audience at the beautiful Victorian Gaiety Theatre on the Isle of Man got to see a sneak preview of some sections! Myself and some of the other Manx musicians in the documentary also performed some of Davy’s new trad-inspired songs with him. Here we are all smiles after the show!
Island Bound film preview and gig at the Gaiety Theatre, Isle of Man
If you’d like to have a peek, I would definitely recommend checking out the trailer for the film by clicking here –> here <–
A few of my performances – such as my album launch in the Isle of Man in February 2014, and some gigs at the Festival Interceltique de Lorient – were filmed for Davy’s documentary. DAM Productions have kindly given me some snippets of footage, and I’ve edited one of the songs into a short video below. It’s a live performance of ‘Carval Chreneash’ – a contemporary Manx Gaelic song by Annie Kissack, performed by myself and Eoghan Ó Ceannabháin in an impressive, cavernous, ancient underground water reservoir (no longer full of water, thankfully!). I hope you enjoy it!