Singer painting pictures in more ways than one

The Groove Tube with Cian O’Connell

He’s an artist on a number of fronts – but first and foremost, Pa Reidy is one of Galway’s finest singer-songwriters, painting pictures with words. Only now he’s also literally painting pictures to accompany those words too as part of the process going into his upcoming album.

Soft-spoken and unassuming, the Clare native tends to take a narrative approach to his work – his songs are rich in imagery and originality, at once highly descriptive and grounded in human experience.

With a new album set for release in the New Year, he recently launched a sophomore single.

Special is Pa at his most hopeful. The track remains rooted in quiet vocals and delicate acoustic guitar but lyrically it is undeniably optimistic.

Recorded with Canadian producer Robert Kelly, it is one of a number of tracks he recorded over the past year or two. It’s been resting in his head for longer still.

“I wrote the song a couple of years ago,” Pa recalls. “It’s about my best friends… I was really struggling to write it.

“Sometimes songs are effortless and they come out so easily but for this one, I was going over it again and again for almost a year and I couldn’t quite get it right. I couldn’t find the words to describe it so I decided to make the friendship an object for the song and write about being protective of the object and finding somewhere safe to keep it.

“It’s a little bit different to most of my songs… Most of my songs are stories but this one was a strange little anecdote about holding onto an object that you don’t want to let go of.”

Friends can be difficult to write songs about.

There’s an intensity to a romantic relationship that lends itself to the singer-songwriter genre and Pa is no stranger to songs about heartbreak.

“Like 99% of songwriters, I usually write about love or the lack thereof but I was single for a long time so I decided I’d have to think outside the box a little bit.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.

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