Mark Geary - Irish Artist Of The Week
Irish singer-songwriter Mark Geary left Ireland with a one-way ticket to New York and a heart full of hope over twenty years ago. There, in Sin-é cafe, Mark honed his craft and sang alongside the best of them, including the late Jeff Buckley. Time Out NY said, “His delicate songs about love and defiance recall Richard Thompson and John Lennon.”
Geary has featured on bills with musicians as diverse as Glen Hansard, John Prine, Joe Strummer, Elvis Costello, The Pretenders, Coldplay and The Frames amongst others, plus extensive headlining tours in Europe, the US and Switzerland. He has composed the full score for three films - Loggerheads (2005), Steel City (2006) and Sons of Perdition (2010) - and has had many songs featured in films and TV programmes.
In 2022, he completed a sell-out month-long residency in the new Little Whelan’s in Dublin where, with his band, he welcomed special guests each week and personally curated the shows. 2023 saw Geary tour the north and central regions of Italy as well as Ireland, selling out Whelan’s (upstairs), Couglan’s, Phil Grimes (Co. Waterford) and Castle St. (Co. Mayo).
His latest album, In The Time Of Locusts, was released in February 2024, and was recorded in his cottage in the forest with the help of Ruth O’ Mahony Brady, Glen Hansard, Dave Hingerty, Dave and Karl Odlum. Following his acclaimed 2024 album, In The Time of Locusts (4 stars, The Irish Times), Antebellum is an intimate six-track EP bound with tender acoustic instrumentation and the familiar warmth of Geary’s sincere vocals and reflective lyricism.
Recalling, vulnerability and enduring hope, the EP reflects Geary’s creative response to one of Ireland’s stormiest New Year’s on record. He says, “I stared out to a January of rain and cold and thought, ‘I need to get back to my desk’. If I stayed watching the news, or in a cycle of streaming shows, I’d crumble. I threw out my telly and set up a writing room by my bed. Tuned all my guitars and would jump out of bed and sing. These songs are what came of it: Fear, regret, love, romance, terror, and the weather forecast.”
Navigating moments of reposeful contemplation to passages of trepidation, Geary reflects on the human condition within a more concentrated run time, where each track emerges as a resonant meditation on fear, love, regret, and hope.
With six studio albums, three live albums and what will be his second ever EP release with Antebellum, writing, touring and live performance remain Geary' s lifeblood. Treating Antebellum with trademark Geary honesty, his lyrics slice right through to the core, revealing a life laid bare of human emotional frailty, failed relationships, tenderness, hurt, making amends, desire and parting. His treasured guitar collection is always close at hand, each set up in a different tuning and ready to capture any emotion.
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