In August, around the time I was busily organising the shoot for my music video for SHAKE, I got a message from my songwriter friend and former boss, Peter Baxter. He’d played this great songwriting festival in Lithuania last year, and the Irish Ambassador there was looking for recommendations for someone to do the festival this year - would I be interested? The answer was, of course, HELL YES.
So that was how I found myself on a Ryanair flight to Vilnius last month, stressing about my very limited Lithuanian, but very much looking forward to meeting the Irish Ambassador and a few days of pure music making. It was late by the time I arrived, but within minutes of arriving I was yapping away with the Ambassador and his wife like we were old friends. That famous Irish welcome - it’s hard to beat. :D
By 9am the next morning, I was on a bus to Gargždai with five other musicians: three Lithuanians, a frenchman and a Belgian. Within about 10 minutes we had started writing a song. Jozef Sercu from Belgium was playing funk on a ukulele, Frédéric Bobin from France was finger picking on his guitar, Justas was working on a grant application in the back of the bus, whispering softly to himself in Lithuanian and occasionally making suggestions for lyrics, Ilona was politely pretending we weren’t crazy and contributing harmonica solos, Agne made sure we were on schedule and also jumped in on some backing vocals. The song’s subject matter? A crocodile car (based on a poor sketch I did of a limousine that went by). The craic? NINETY.
After we’d each done our sets, we played our newly written work in the Cultural Centre there that night as an ensemble, with some rap in Lithuanian explaining where in the name of god our crazy song had come from. Gargzdai cultural centre just so happens to have three pianos available, so naturally we were happy enough to settle for a Petrof for the night’s performance...no big deal (read: a huge deal).
I’m a great believer in the idea that when you’re exactly where you’re supposed to be, doing exactly what you’re supposed to be doing, magical things start to happen, and I had a great experience of this around 1am on the way home from the gig. We’d stopped in a petrol station. A huge bus of people next to us were also stopping for a cigarette break, and they started gesturing at us because we were playing music. So I hopped out of the bus and sang “You belong to me” for them with my ukulele. Turns out this huge bus of people were A CHOIR just coming home from a concert themselves and THEY SANG FOR ME in return. A private concert outside a petrol station by an amazing choir at 1am. WHAT IS MY LIFE?!
The next morning, it was another relatively early start, because Jozef, Frédéric and I decided we wanted to see some more of Vilnius. In practice what actually happened is Frédéric slept in, and Lina let me and Jozef into St. Catherine’s Church - our venue that night. We spend a solid few hours in there fussing over yet another Petrof piano, singing some Jazz, swapping folk songs and having a look around the church. It’s one of the most beautiful venues I’ve had the good fortune of playing in. Check it out.
Here it is from the outside:
From the inside:
And again, once the genius lighting technician had gotten it all going:
Photo by David Noonan.
The Litunanian audiences were so sweet -they applauded every time I tried to use the little Lithuanian I had. It was almost comical - but Lithuanian isn’t spoken very widely outside of the country so they tend to be really appreciative when you make the effort. It was a fantastic gig - so many amazing acts that I might not have heard otherwise, and special shout outs have to go to Kujeliai and Mindaugus Breidis :D
Photo by Mindaugus Briedis
Naturally we had to round it off by singing to the people of Vilnius about the Crocodile Car.
Photo from Tai-as Facebook page
As you can imagine, the after party was just as fun as the gig :D
I rounded off my trip by delivering some workshops; a vocal masterclass with and a songwriting workshop with a group of kids from the local schools, and I brought them into the venue when we’d gotten something together so they could perform their music in a fantastic space. There are some great writers up and coming in Vilnius, that’s for sure.
Photo by Cliodhna Noonan
Having lost our beloved Jozef to his homeland that morning, me and Frédéric went for a spin to Trakai with our friend Vygantas, and we chatted in french about music, gigging and Lithuania. Then - naturally - when we got back to Vilnius, there was a another party. An amazing young songwriter I met there, Liucija Vaicenavičiūtė (pictured below on the Kazoo), taught me how to line dance. There may have been video evidence of this.
Liucija, Frédéric and me enjoying the session!
Note: Lithuanians definitely know how to have a session. Seek one out if you go there!
On my last day, I spent some more time looking around Vilnius with the Ambassador, and then I was hanging out at his house with the family - an amazing bunch of very talented people who really work to help others create and express. I can say hand on heart, we are lucky to be so well represented abroad.
I think I may have one or two videos of live performances from my Lithuanian adventure on the way, and I’ll post them here when I get them. In the meantime, thanks for reading - I hope to see you all at my next gig on NOVEMBER 18TH in Volt Studios in Dublin - my last full band gig of the year. Earlybird tickets are going now but there aren’t many so GO FOR IT!
