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"ON THE TOWN" with TARA O'GRADY: "A CELT IN THE COTTON CLUB" CD LAUNCH

CD Cover FINALCome join AWoW member, Tara O’Grady, for her A Celt in the Cotton Club CD Launch Party – Thursday, May 23 at Mary O’s, 32 Avenue A at 7:00pm. This is the third album from the New York singer-songwriter whose voice can only be described as a Celt in the Cotton Club. Tara O’Grady swings original songs as well as some traditional Irish tunes and re-baptizes them to sound like Billie Holiday is back! 

 

 

ogrady-in-black-hrThe title of Tara’s third album comes from a bass player in Nashville who upon hearing her sing in the Tennessee recording studio, tweeted the current title to describe her voice. Her original songs were inspired by Irish people she met from Belfast to Butte, and everywhere in between. And she throws in a few favorite Irish traditional tunes for good measure – a swinging rendition of ‘Go Lassie Go,’ a smoky version of ‘Black is the Color,’ bossa nova style, and a blues inspired ‘Too Ra Loo Ra,’ the famous Irish lullaby that in no way lulls the listener to sleep. Inspired by Belfast native Van Morrison, her brother Tom O’Grady composed the music for ‘To Be Missing the Sun’ and ‘La Dee Da,’ and the featured saxophonist/clarinetist Michael Hashim co-wrote ‘That’s What the Miners Would Say,’ a tribute to the Irish immigrants who died in a historic fire in Butte, Montana. Tara’s Celtic connections are woven throughout every inch of this musical tapestry, including a tribute to Billie Holiday in the song ‘Gardenia Girl,’ revealing Lady Day’s Celtic bloodlines.

 

 

photo-fullThe band will be swinging live at Mary O’s, a favorite New York venue of Tara O’s.  It’s owner, Mary O’Halloran, a Roscommon native, is one of the friendliest restauranteur’s in town. No cover, no minimum. Just music and merriment. And a signed copy of Tara’s new CD. 

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COLIN BRODERICK and JOSH BROLIN: BOOK LAUNCH TONIGHT at BARNES AND NOBLE in TRIBECA, NYC

‘THAT’S THAT” Official Book Trailer

 

Colin Broderick and Josh Brolin
Colin Broderick and Josh Brolin

Join us tonight at Barnes and Noble’s Tribeca Store, 97 Warren Street, 7pm, for the official launch of Colin Broderick’s That’s That.  AWoW member Broderick will be introduced and interviewed by his friend, actor Josh Brolin. The event is also being filmed for what will be the final scene of the long awaited biographical feature documentary based on Colin’s first book Orangutan. Following the launch, everyone is invited to the after party at Scratcher’s, 209 E. 5th St, in the East Village. It’s sure to be a great night!

 

Here’s a short excerpt from That’s That: 

 

“Seen from the window of a plane Ireland is a patchwork quilt, little square fields of green stitched together by thin rows of thorns; spring green, fern green, forest green, pine, sea and shamrock green. From above, she is clean, mystical, magical to behold. That is her first great act of deceit, her lush, rolling beauty the first betrayal of her truth, for on the ground, and deeper still, buried beneath that verdant lawn is her pain; underneath, there is blood.

 

Colin Broderick
Colin Broderick

I assume you’ve heard bits and pieces of the history of Ireland already, some of the landmark atrocities that have made international news over the years, or perhaps you’ve heard snippets grumbled over small glasses of amber in the dim light of a smoky tavern in the Bronx, stories of the long and bitter hatred between the English and the Irish, of heroic young men in balaclavas, petrol bombs being hurled into the dark night, monuments of flame on the claustrophobic streets of Belfast, the ghosts of skeletal boys, naked and excrement-smeared, starving themselves to death in the cold cells of the H-Block. And if you did receive your Irish history lesson in a bar from some furtive creature with a brogue, then as the night wore on, you surely heard about his mother also, for every drink poured in an Irish bar leads back to the mother. As you may well know, there is no mother like the Irish mother, and there is no love more wounded and fierce than the love between an Irish mother and her son.

 

In honor of that age-old tradition I, too, will start with the history. (The mother I will get to in just a little bit.)”