…and I’m as hungry as can be”, as the wonderful Greg Brown once wrote in his song “Brand New Dodge”, which appears on one of my favourite albums, ‘The Poet Game.”
And whatever happened since I last wrote here, just before I was getting ready to travel to a few gigs at the end of July?
I was just about to start the first gig of that short run of shows, when the devastating news broke that Glen Hansard had died, in the early hours of that 26th of July. I played 5 gigs from that Wednesday till Sunday, and I sang my lungs and heart out.
On the Monday, I flew to Dublin and attended Glen’s wake and funeral mass. It was my way to deal with a loss that was completely unexpected, and considering that I had no personal connection to him I was utterly surprised on how hard it hit me.
The rest of the summer was a bit of a blur. I continued to play shows by the seaside, “Folk by the sea” as I liked to call them. I played mostly covers, something I had promised myself I would never go back to. But the circumstances surrounding The Red Van and the enormous amount of money I needed to generate in order to get it back on the road left me with no choice.
The weather turned bad right at the end of August. With that came the end of Folk by the Sea. I headed to Berlin to work with Claudia Nentwich on her new releases, and together we played another lovely run of shows.
I left Berlin in mid September and started finishing the new Transatlantic Trails release, ‘The Galway Waltz‘ which I am happy to say has finally seen the light of day on Bandcamp Friday, November 6, with all other platforms to follow on Friday, November 13.
This is the link to pre-save the song to your preferred streaming platform. I hope you will make good use of it.
I will write more about the song in a separate post soon.
In the meantime, would you please consider signing up for my newsletter? With the current changes to Facebook and other unsocial media platforms, I am looking for different ways to connect with my bubble.
Feel free to root around and make yourself at home.
For booking inquiries, please write to: andre@martinpraetorius.net
Thank you for visiting,
Martin Praetorius
