 a bridging car or a Brie car with Cologne Amara a track from her brand new album Song of the Sea that has just been launched or has just been released and I'm delighted that she is with me in the studio now. You're very welcome Brieje. Hi Jane, I'm delighted to be here thank you. And indeed I'm just getting a wee bit of feedback here from you just I think that's okay now yeah and so you're releasing your album you've been a busy woman what have you been doing since we last spoke well returning to school first and foremost so I spent most of the spring and summer I'm going to change your mic because I'm getting feedback from you so maybe if you if you bring over that one is it not nothing is as is good on life so try that one out we see if that's better better to work with children and animals that's better just spoil the enjoyment for all the listeners so you've been busy since we last spoke you've been artists in residence in our country door I was and you have a new album so tell us all about what you've been doing well I've had just a really really good year and began with the artists in residence in Ghidor and our clan with the team with the Enya and own and Manus and Paul and all the team it just meant that I was based in Ghidor in the theatre in Ghidor through Udhris and Alin you know Alin I guess basically I took on board then that when I was in the area because my mum's from Arnmore and I would have been in and out to Arn an awful lot and would have spent a lot of my childhood in Arn that I would use the opportunity to maybe explore more of the islands that are around the coast of Donegal I suppose coming out of lockdown and appreciating our own area I kind of really wanted to check out other places around the coast at Ghidor and on around Tory and Critch and all the islands and then I met with people that you know maybe shared their songs and shared the culture of the area that I may or may not have heard before and then went away and wrote about the experiences and it was a hard job picking the picking the songs because for every song that's on the album there's about another three or four sitting in the book at home that sometime maybe we'll get around to recording them but Jim my producer in Newton Studios he helped me pick and choose which songs would represent the year and the people that I met. So the album is a result of people that you've met throughout the year? Yeah yeah and I'm very fortunate that there's actually another album coming you know next year called Duets because some of the artists that I met and talked with wanted to maybe do a duet and work together on the song so this is kind of like what I wrote for myself as solo or what it translated and even Jim as I said one of the songs on there is the only one that's a cover is May the Grail of Muara is Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow it's a translation of that because Jim always loved that song and asked me and there and then in the studio it took literally about 10 or 15 minutes to let's do it for the fun and he did an amazing arrangement to it so I love it and I was very fortunate I had you know I went and set up meetings with one of the songs each song on the album has you know people behind it that I met as part of a conversation and a collaboration but I went away then with the ingredients and put down what I felt right and then before I released the album let everybody that was involved with each song here what I'd come up with and I'm really really happy I really am blown away that they all they all I liked it they all everybody from Gola Island to I had Charlie McGettigan and dad and me we all met I took my dad with me and we all met up in Bali Shannon for a couple of hours and I thought we were going to talk about all things you're a vision and instead he wanted to see my book and he picked just randomly picked a song from the book to work on so he's actually got going to record his version of what I've written as well so it's been very exciting so far. Fantastic and I often and all of the people who write the song in English but then to translate a song into Irish and to get it to get the right meaning it must be quite difficult or maybe it's easy when you know how I read it. I don't know but I think it's never directly translated it gets captures the essence of the song or you know in a way because to me the Irish language is way more poetic than you know for me to express myself I just think that you know they're just it's just so it's rich it's culturally rich and I love it and I'm very very fortunate that if Anya, Nicarin, Owen McGill of Leach and Colm Farreter, Rosheen Farreter or Rosheen Hegerty and a whole lot of people that I kind of they're my go to just to look over it because I'll still always be hesitant about you know grammar and vocabulary and whatnot but Dizon always says to me as far as Gaelic or British in a barrel of Cluster so that's my license. Fantastic and the songs there's Ban the Hillen my island's mother I think you're going to sing that first and song you're seeing there's a story behind them all. There's a story behind and actually that Ban the Hillen is actually and it's not that's the Gola Island one because when I went to Gola Island out with Saba and I met Eddie and Maureen and we had a walk around the island and I went away off of my own and came back with the you know as I was traveling I kind of had the notion that this must have been what our Moor was like maybe you know 50 60 years ago before tourism and whatnot and I just imagined my grandmother walking through the island and walking along the beach and you know the old school was there and you know it was just it was so quiet and just lovely and I felt very connected even though I'd never been there before so Ban the Hillen was the idea of it as you can take the girl from the island but you'll never take the island from the girl that's the theme of that song. And you were saying during the interview and I knew as well that you have a great affiliation for Arran Moor and you spent a lot of your childhood there and the islands and the whole song of the sea I think your album captures that. I would hope so it's a journey all right there's a there's a lot on there like we were very blessed when we were young that you know there were seven of us in the family and mum would just you know put us all into the car we'd all head off you know for weekends or the summer or if granny was coming up and doing her shop in a letter Kenny or and indeed have people telling me that they remember me hitching a lift with them to go in for the weekend or back out in the Union's bus or you know I was very very blessed very very lucky to have had that experience and you know it's fantastic now that there's so many from Donegal going into the Gailta and going in for weekends and it's really it's just a lovely place to be and I'm I suppose I'm very fortunate that I had Chapel Strand to play on all my on my youth really you know so that was very instrumental and you know a lot of the songs in that as well. And I suppose we have a time to go through the story behind all the songs but is there any song in particular besides white noise going to talk about that okay is there any one particularly that you have a favorite story behind. Probably the one that I'm going to sing tonight is my island mother that one I was actually in Arn and mum was up at a place you might have seen in the media recently that they are more pipe and went to Beaver Island in Canada so in Arnmore there's a monument to Beaver Island and you know the people that moved over there and there's a lot of greens in that and that was my mother's maiden name in Beaver Island as well so I went up for a walk and mum was up there at the island memorial at the lake and she just looked so happy and so content before she saw me that I just thought you know this is her happy place as well and I imagined her when she was very very young with her two sisters and the fun reason I love this one is because when I wrote it and I rang my aunt in London anti-mage and I rang Auntie Annie in Galway her two sisters and played it for them at the piano and they loved it they both really really loved it and then I played it for mum for Christmas I took the keyboard up and set it up in the kitchen and mum and dad sitting and myself and even that was a big deal for me because I found it so much easier to sing you know to a crowd than to sing to my own family it's it's funny but that was a big that was a big for me and mum loves it so the whole album is really you know this is mum's album and white noise you had great success with that and you had a very prestigious award for it I did I'm very lucky I just it was the international song of the year contest and to be honest I didn't know I was in it because I entered the UK and songwriting contest I've been very lucky in that recently you know and they forwarded when I won you know a category event in that they sent it on to the international song of the year and next thing the news came back then that it had got runner-up in the international contest and they're so so simple because white noise is the only one that I didn't do in studio and we did it at the end of the second lockdown at home you know and Yvonne Fahey who is a good friend she plays on Trad and the proms we were in college together back in the day so Yvonne is absolutely she's an insanely talented every instrument you could imagine Yvonne plays it so she arranged it and put it on and next thing before you know it it it was just it was just meant to be it was a song about you know and not understanding a nonverbal child you know and hoping that you were able to help the nonverbal child and that you were you know reading through gestures and physical you know and physical gestures facial expressions and just knowing the child and being around the child that you're doing the best you could for them but you never really truly knew so that's what the theme of the song was will I ever hear the sound of your own voice or you know is it going to be white noise so that's beautiful yeah I do like it's one of my favorites to be honest yeah and looking at the album cover now the artwork is fabulous so are you responsible for that I take these mad notions so the back of the album cover I was just saying cheerio to my good friend and Betty she's got a fabulous song coming out soon too so we were she was out just saying cheerio to her open the front door and the moon was just sitting beautifully above the swillie it just happened to think oh that's a lovely photo to take took the photograph and you know without a filter anything again or a good old Donnie Gaul countryside it just looked beautiful and then that gave me the idea for the front of the album I was in Tory with then Betty and we are going to be allowed back again I heard and we took dad as well it was great fun but when I was there and took a crack in photograph of me on the road to Tory that's then a friend of mine that's all into her art or graphic art I told her I wanted rocks I wanted to see and I wanted to look like it was dwarfing me but that I was part of it and Kayla my daughter is not really really impressed with the footwork in it because any moment I look like I'm going to slide off the rock if a wave comes but I think I like that so the album was released there on Friday night with it Friday night with no fuss no fanfare and myself and Kayla and end it we just my husband we just chilled out that we went myself and Kayla went for a bite to eat and I went down home to his parents and it was out and I kind of was relaxing after a week at school because I've got third class and Lurgy Brack and they're keeping me on my toes so I just wasn't just chill and acting and next thing all the emails and the messages all started to come in that you know because I just shared it and I think I shared it in Facebook and made sure did on Instagram that's it and people are just organically reaching out and I'm really really pleased about that you know it's an itch I have to scratch Jean I just I just love writing and I love recording it and then I just like to send it out and if it flies it flies and if it doesn't I just I still feel fulfilled that it's something that I've done for me and my family you know and where can we get the album reading and you can get the digital album anywhere and at the moment it's on all the platforms you know iTunes, Spotify, Geeser all the rest of them and then I'm having a special night on the 4th of November in Lefford Courthouse along with some of the Wild Atlantic women and guests and that's for the hospice and I'm going to have some hard copies there and then also planning a very very informal couple of launches that's going to be family and friends so that hard copy will be available then from the end of October on. Brilliant and you're going to sing your favourite track from the other for us now and fantastic so take it away you see. Well as I always say I always write and sing my own songs because whenever it goes wrong nobody ever knows really. Oh and then my keyboard just turned off when we were waiting so we're all having technical hedges tonight Jean. It must be the full moon of the weekend is it? Maybe there's a gremlin here. Something like that. Here we go. Resting by the lake with her face towards the sun. Breathing in the beauty of the heather. She listens to the gentle ripples kiss the quiet shore and closing her eyes she hears the laughter. She sighs as she remembers simple childhood days. Smiling at the memories buried deep within this place. She smells the fire burning sees her sisters at the door and her heart is full of yearning for those yesterdays once more. And mother strong and silent she's a fighter. Through the struggles of her life she emerges she survives how I love her my island mother walking to the lake I see her waiting with a smile. Deep in prayer I hardly dare disturb her. She's lost in her own reverie though I'm right here by her side and I catch a glimpse of all who walked here with her who she was when she was just a girl running through this mountain site this island was her world sitting in the evening sun she whispers up above and she hopes someday she'll find a way to share her mother's love and she's a fighter through the struggles of her life she emerges she survives how I love she emerges she survives how I love fantastic bridging fantastic enough a few wishes in your best wishes free from all the lads in the heart to be banned oh and also brilliant in refuging with the wonderful bridging and love the song island mother best wishes with a new album as you don't need good luck love from Rosie and Brendan and family and John Wallace says please wish bridging car good luck and all the best with her new album and wants to say hello to all his friends as well so thank you so much bridging for taking time out and every success with the album thank you so much and thanks to John Wallace too of course can help you achieve a cozier healthier and more energy efficient home and one with