West of Ireland homecoming for singer spreading her wings

Groove Tube with Cian O’Connell

Maria Kelly is a singer/songwriter whose music combines delicate vocals and fingerpicked guitar with hi-fi – often orchestral – production. Her second EP Notes To Self is set for release on November 16.  Hailing from Westport and now based in Berlin, Maria has supported major artists like James Vincent McMorrough, Paul Noonan and KT Tunstall while amassing hundreds of thousands of plays on online streaming site Spotify.

She returns to the West of Ireland on Wednesday week, November 14, to support close friends All The Luck In The World in Galway’s Róisín Dubh.

“I didn’t really know them in Ireland,” Maria recalls. “But they have a whole group of friends here, a whole group of Irish creatives, and they kind of just took me under their wing.

“I’d been hanging out with them over summer and doing a bit of writing and then they were doing their tour in the autumn-winter time and they invited me along.”

Maria’s time in Dublin was spent honing her craft in BIMM – the national music college or the British and Irish Modern Music Institute, to give it its full title.

Those years of development saw an impressive rise and eventually, a desire to move on.

“I moved over in June. It’s definitely given me more space to do things. I’m living with my producer and label-head Matt Harris so obviously it’s a good environment for recording and working on new stuff,” she says.

“Berlin is amazing, there’s so much happening here – it’s just a fresh new scene. I felt maybe I’d hit a wall in Dublin because it’s so small. It’s kind of great to be in a place where nobody knows you again.”

The mention of Matt brings back memories of an early Galway experience.

“I supported Matt’s band in the Róisín Dubh four years ago,” she recalls. “They were doing an Irish tour and someone put me in touch… Our music is really different but they needed someone from the West of Ireland. We stayed in contact and started working on some stuff – it went really well and I’ve been with working him since.”

His role goes beyond that of most producers. Maria’s roots in acoustic folk are omnipresent in her work, but Matt’s influence as a collaborator, particularly in newer releases, is heavy.

“With Matt, he has a very particular production style and it’s really influenced how the sound came together,” she says.

“We do all the tracks together and he has a pretty big role in them, in how they end up – because I’m terrible at recording! I’ll bring the base of the song and he helps me arrange it and build it.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.

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