Lisa O'Neill

On April 29th, Newport Live welcomes Irish singer-songwriter Lisa O’Neill, who will debut her new album, All of This is Chance, from Rough Trade Records. We’ve got a pair of tickets to the show to give away – just e-mail Ken Abrams at mrabrams11@gmail.com by 5PM Thursday April 27 for a chance to win.

More on the show:

Newport Live will be presenting Lisa O’Neill at the Colony House on Washington Square in Newport (site of the Colonial Legislature, the filming of Amistad and The Gilded Age) on Saturday, April 29th at 7:30 PM. General Admission tickets are $35 and available through EventBrite and via the Newport Live website.

Last week, Lisa was featured in the New York Times Music section in an article called, “What’s Driving a Fresh Wave of Irish Music?”

“What’s Driving a Fresh Wave of Irish Music? Tradition. Lisa O’Neill is a cultural hero in her own right” – Will Hermes, The New York Times, March 2023

O’Neill won Best Original Folk Track with “Rock the Machine” (from her album Heard a Long Gone Song) at the 2019 RTÉ Radio Folk Awards and was nominated for Folk Singer of the Year, Best Traditional Track, Best Original Track and Best Album at the BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards in the same year.

“Lisa O’Neill is a part of the new wave of Irish contemporary folk artists, one that encompasses the likes of Lankum, Ye Vagabonds and John Francis Flynn, all of them putting their albums out on Rough Trade, which makes the venerable English Indie label something of a centre for what the present and future of Irish folk music sounds like.” – The Arts Desk

YouTube video

All Of This Is Chance takes Lisa’s inimitable voice to greater heights, or depths, depending on which way you look at it. Following 5 BBC Folk Awards nominations and a designation by the Guardian as Folk Album of the Year in 2019, it is fair to say that Lisa O’Neill is one of the most evocative songwriters in contemporary Irish music today. Fresh off 2018’s collection Heard a Long Song Gone for the River Lea imprint, The Wren EP in 2019 and an adaptation of Bob Dylan’s “All the Tired Horses” for the final scene of epic TV drama Peaky Blinders, O’Neill now returns with her latest album, and first for the Rough Trade label, the beautiful, resonant All Of This Is Chance.

Perhaps the biggest boost to international outreach has been the attention of Rough Trade Records, founded by Geoff Travis; the label was known for signing post-punk acts like the Smiths and the Raincoats in the 1980s. Help us celebrate Lisa’s Rough Trade release.

A raconteur in the truest sense of the word, every story starts somewhere and O’Neill starts this extraordinary collection here on earth, on Irish soil, hands in the land. The album is full of both orchestral masterpieces like the ambitious and cinematic “Old Note”, inspired by the great Monaghan writer Patrick Kavanagh’s prescient meditation on The Great Hunger as well as stirring meditations on nature, birds, berries, bees, and blood that ring out over a clacking banjo, dusting and devastating all those in its wake.

O’Neill’s first album, Has An Album, was released in 2009. In 2011 David Gray invited her to open for him on his American and Canadian tour and she was also part of his touring band for a time. Her 2013 and 2018 albums were nominated for the Choice Music Prize. In 2016, O’Neill made an appearance on the debut album by the trio Yorkston/Thorne/Khan, Everything Sacred. In the album’s liner notes, singer James Yorkston reveals that the possibility of calling the group Yorkston/Thorne/Khan/O’Neill was discussed, but that she saw herself as a guest. In 2017, O’Neill was featured in the film Song of Granite, in which she sang The Galway Shawl.

Beer and wine will be for sale thanks to sponsors at Ragged Island Brewing and Newport Vineyards, and nonalcoholic beverages and light snacks are also available.

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