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Our Song of the Day is a live acoustic performance from Seafoam Green, the brainchild of Dublin-born, Liverpool-based troubadour Dave O’Grady. The song Lowly Lou features on Seafoam Green’s forthcoming debut album Topanga Mansion and it ticks all the right boxes.
Dave met acclaimed producer, and musician Rich Robinson while O’Grady was recording in Nashville. The pair struck up a friendship, and O’Grady was invited by Robinson to open his US and European tour dates, and soon the pair began writing and recording in earnest, leading to their collaboration on the stunning debut album Topanga Mansion. The album was recorded at 4th Street Recording in Santa Monica, California, with an all-star cast of some of the most acclaimed and respected session musicians on the US scene. Topanga Mansion will be released in April 2017 on vinyl/CD/download via Liverpool label Mellowtone Records.
Growing up in South Dublin, O’Grady had his formative musical experiences on the terraces of St Patrick’s Athletic football club. He was inspired by his fathers’ classic rock records such as Creedence Clearwater Revival, Crosby, Stills Nash and Young and some bands closer to home like Aslan & Christy Moore. As soon as O’Grady was old enough to hold a guitar, he was playing one and started writing his own songs straight away. At 18 he moved to Liverpool on a whim and has been based there ever since, when he’s not touring the world.
Mixing up the classic Americana rock influence with the narrative storytelling of the music of the land of his fathers, O’Grady says “the thing I love about Irish folk music is the storytelling, the poetic phrasing that passes through verses like waves over sand or stones, no two verses are the same as they are telling a different part of the story and project a different image. Music is about painting a picture or landscape with your words and none does it better that Irish folk in my opinion”.
Alongside the more classic influences, O’Grady also takes great inspiration from many of the current Americana artists from both sides of the Atlantic, as he explains “Tedeschi Trucks are a force of nature, The Wood Brothers are just…well, they are just as real as it gets and Foy Vance is a merchant of hope”. Part of the Mellowtone Records collective of artists in Liverpool he is very much inspired by artists from the label, “my label mate Nick Ellis is a poet and just lives his art, he doesn’t put on a show, he just expresses himself, his ideas and his conception of what he sees”.
2017 is shaping up to be another great year of for O’Grady, playing, travelling and meeting people who want to share a real experience away from Facebook and YouTube. As he says, “to me there is nothing more special than people in a room together experiencing, sharing something with one another”.
Topanga Mansion is released in April 2017 on vinyl/CD/download via Liverpool label Mellowtone Records.
Photo Credit: Kooky