Sing us a Song: Brian McGrane's music choice pays off

It's not all sunshine and glamour being a full-on, professional musician - Brian McGrane knows that. There's the touring for starters. That can be wearying especially when the tour goes on for months at a time.

The lack of sleep, the interminable travel, the changing from one hotel room to another can all combine to give the sense that he is living in what he terms " an unreal world."
It can be challenging all right but the young Walterstown man is sure of one thing - the life of a musician is the life for him. It has always been that way - and you suspect always will. And now after playing as a back-up musician for years he's looking to push his own songs which he has started to release in recent years. 
As he talks down the phone from London, where he had gone for a brief stint, he outlines a moment in his life when he stood at the crossroads, looked into his heart and took the route he knew he had to take.
That moment came in 2011 when he graduated from the Dublin Institute of Technology with a degree in product design.
"When I came out of DIT I got offered about three or four different jobs but I just said no to them, I had no interest really. I really wanted to do the music thing and pursue that," he recalls.
"There is a lot to be said for a making career choice and becoming an engineer. You have your €50,000 or €60,000 a year and you're sorted but I never felt that would satisfy me. I always felt I would be bored sitting in an office, I'd probably be thinking about a song which is what I did when I was in college anyway so I didn't see how that would change with me sitting in an office."
Nothing has happened since to suggest to him he had made the wrong choice. He's not long back from Australia where he toured with the famous Celtic Tenors, which he describes as his 'job', but there are other projects he is working on, as he plots a new path. 
He has has just released another single - 'Still With Me'. It's his fifth original song he has released on a variety of social media platforms such as Spotify and Apple Music since last October. He has another tour with the Celtic Tenors in the pipeline, as well as a cruise around the Caribbean when he will be playing alongside none other than the great Phil Coulter; something he has done for the past two years.
Then there's a album he plans to release perhaps later this year. There also two shows with Susan McFadden pencilled in for the Asgard Theatre, Arklow on Friday 9th August (sold out) and Saturday 10th August. 
There's a lot happening with the 29 year-old who no doubt would agree with that old saying: "Without music, life would be a mistake." 

WALTERSTOWN

Brian McGrane is not exactly sure where his great grá - and his rich talent - for music came from. He just knows it was always there. Born to Sean McGrane (who runs a well-known butcher's business in Navan) and his wife Ann-Marie, Brian is the is the second oldest in a family of four that also includes his brothers Kenneth, Colin and Ronan. 
"Both of my parents love music and mam sings in the choir in Johnstown but as regards the ability to play musical instruments, I'm not really sure where it comes from, it's just something I love. There was some music on both sides but not in my parents generation, it was my grandparents' generation." 
As a six or seven year-old Brian recalls getting little keyboards from his grandparents. "I played that on the windowsill of the livingroom just listening to all the music that accompanied the adds on TV." 
He attended St Patrick's Classical School and was a noted Gaelic footballer for the school, his club Walterstown and Meath minors. He studied music under Paul Byrne in Navan, Aoife Greene in Dunsany and later Sr Ciaran in the Mercy Convent in Navan and served for a time in the Navan Silver Band. He was still at national school when he was offered his first public performance - in Walterstown Church. 
"It's over 20 years ago since I started playing in Walterstown Church. I remember being in third class in Lismullen and a girl coming over to me in the yard and asking me: 'Mam wants to know will you play at Mass?' I said yeah, yeah I'd love to. My mam and dad used to take me to Walterstown Church with my keyboard under one arm, and the keyboard stand under the other. I would have been around 10 or 11. It was the first time I would have played before people."
From about 13 on Brian started to write his own songs, experimenting with melodies and words; putting into some shape the notes that were swirling around in his head; constantly. 

CELTIC TENORS

For a time after he completed his degree Brian played in a cover band - Overdue - and worked on individual projects in a small studio he had set up in his house, but there didn't seem to be much happening. Gradually, however, things started to take off. In 2011 he started to play gigs with the likes of Brian Kennedy and Sharon Corr then he got a big break. 
"I was gigging with a cover band up and down the country and then in 2013 I did an audition for the piano player with the Celtic Woman, a large Irish music show touring in the US and Europe," he recalls. Before long the young Walterstown man was offered a full-time position with Celtic Woman as they toured Europe and America. 
"I was only 23 at the time I was told, pack your bags, you are going to Germany for a few weeks and it was a super experience, we played in the US in massive shows in super arenas like Radio City in New York, Red Rocks in Colorado and many other locations around the world. I did that for three-and-a-half years to four years then in late 2016, early 2017 I decided to come off the road."
He did a handful of gigs with Jake Carte, then the Celtic Tenors recruited him to be their musical director, piano player and guitarist. He has found the Celtic Tenor set up very much to his liking with the shorter tours one of the pluses in working for what is now a well-established Irish musicial phenomenon. 
"The Tenors are on the go 20 years this year. We recently just got back from a five-week tour of Australia, it was very full on, we had about 23 shows over five weeks and it went really well. They are already planning another tour for next year in Australia." 
It was while doing a gig in Newcastle some years ago Brian met his girlfriend Lauren, a mental health nurse who has assisted him and given him plenty of advice on how to withstand the rigours of a business that can be very demanding. 
"Back in the 1980s and '90s a lot of bands were heavily drugged up, alcohol, and so on. Because you are on the road and you do shows, there's such an adrenaline rush but I've noticed a lot of bands are extremely health conscious these days, Coldplay and Chris Martin for example, they don't even drink on tour, they are really health conscious, they realise the slippery slope they can fall into. 
"I know exactly what I want I know what is good and bad for me and I've no interest in it, to be honest. I know the things that work for me and I know the things that don't work for me so I stay completely away from all of that." 
What does work for Brian McGrane is making and playing music. 
He knows the business is not all glamour and glitter but he was never after that. For him it's all about the music. Always was, always will be.

 

BRIAN McGRANE ON ...

...WRITING SONGS 

"I've always written songs since I was in a band in St Pat's, Navan. From about the age of 13 I've always written stuff although never really seriously until 19 or 20, that's when I really started to get my head into songwriting but it is only in the last three year or so I've started to record my own songs and really believe I could do this on my own as opposed to being a session musician or a back-up musician to somebody else.
"I'll probably listen to the songs I'm putting out now in 10 years time and think 'Ah I could have done this or that better.' You're constantly learning, you'll never stop learning. The songwriting thing is really a craft you need to work on. Good songs can come out from time to time but if you don't actually work at it you won't be consistent and to be consistent you need to be writing all the time." 

...ON THE CHALLENGES OF PERFORMING LIVE

"The only thing that makes me nervous are new songs that aren't embedded into my system yet, it wouldn't matter if I was playing to five people or 5,000 people if I'm really comfortable with songs, and I know exactly what I am doing, it doesn't really bother me. 
The nerves come from unfamiliar songs, unfamiliar music.  

...LIFE AS A MUSICIAN 

"I am not a millionaire but I'm earning a living and doing what I love. It's a great feeling being a full-time musician. I have played with so many great musicians, Phil Coulter, Celtic Woman, Celtic Tenors, Brian Kennedy, Sharon Corr. 
I've played in the RTE Concert Orchestra alongside Gavin James, with Aslan, so many different people. I wouldn't trade what I do for the world." 
 

https://open.spotify.com/album/7a5edjJEzE5sQsXp23KIMA?si=AMpbEfD_TE-kgrzKTsI_lA