Alan Boyle

Alan Boyle is an Irish singer-songwriter who now calls Australia home. As a Brisbane-based emerging artist he’s been busy building a reputation as a powerful live performer with notable appearances at the Woodford Folk Festival, Greenfest, Queensland Multicultural Festival, Brisbane’s official Australia Day 2009 Celebrations, The Planting 2010 and has supported great Australian acts like Wendy Matthews, Ian Moss, Dragon, Daryl Braithwaite, Mental As Anything, Ben Salter (Gin Club) and more recently Irish folk-country legends The Sawdoctors during their sell-out Australian tour.

Before moving to Brisbane, he began his career in Dublin singing in Keith Walker’s (Power Of Dreams) Tapestry in the early nineties, performing at Eamonn Doran’s and the legendary White Horse and then as a solo artist at venues like the International Bar and Vicar Street supporting the late Herb Dade. He spent an entire winter busking on Dublin’s Grafton Street, earning cigarettes from students, abuse from junkies and a tenner from Bono (once). While living in Italy, he has played on stages in Rome, Venice, and at the Festa Della Musica in Florence.

In 2005 Alan débuted a five-track EP called Shallow Heart, partly recorded in a single session at Pulse Studios Dublin, augmented by beautifully austere home-recordings with the bare bones of each song poking through.

His 2009-released EP, Oxygen came together over two sticky Brisbane summers with producer Andrew Kennedy and stellar local musicians including Emma Dean and Shannon Booyens and has had tracks respectively nominated in the Vanda and Young Songwriting Competition shortlisting and for a QSong Award, where Alan was also selected as the recipient of the Billy Thorpe Scholarship Award as chosen by Arts Queensland and the Thorpe family.

Oxygen is a dense and emotive work, drawing on a rich celtic music heritage, incisive lyricism and a unique vocal style that is warm, worn, jagged and intimate. Lush strings and stabbing brass arrangements interwoven with chiming guitars and beautifully stratified bass frame a voice that very much wears it’s fiery heart on it’s sleeve.

Returning to his home country at the end of last year to undertake his first national Irish tour, Alan shared a stage with indie-folk darling Fionn Regan and performed live to an astounding 290,000 listeners on RTE Radio 1’s Today show. 2010 sees Al pushing further on with national and European touring, Australian festival appearances and preparations to record his debut album.

For music and further information please visit:

www.myspace.com/alanboyle

www.sonicbids.com/alanboyle

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