TADHG COOKE - WAX AND SEAL
21st January 2006
* Tadhg is pronounced like "TIGER" without the R.
UPDATE : Live At Saint Kevin’s is the new live album from Irish recording artist Tadhg Cooke. Recorded live in a living room in Dublin’s inner city, this record captures the intimacy of a living room concert, in the vein of the now well-established house concerts in the US. Accompanied by Lorcan Cosgrave on violin, Clare Finglass on vocals and David Geraghty on vocals and guitar, Live At Saint Kevin’s is one to savour. It’s out now.
Tadhg Cooke should be making a small fortune in applied computational linguistics. Instead he has opted to apply his linguistic charms to music. The result: Wax & Seal, the debut album from the twenty five year old Meath man, released independently in record stores across Ireland in March 2005. Cooke is a songwriter of clear talent. The twelve-track debut features tales, both tall and true, buoyant lyrics that remain at arms length from melancholia and a gentle, uplifting voice, which carries throughout the material on offer.
Hailing from Dunboyne, Cooke began his musical adventures at fourteen with the purchase of a guitar and a few lessons. He claims the tender age of sixteen as the year he wrote his first real song. Through the Junior and the Leaving, Cooke continued to write and play, form bands, suffer artistic differences and take the lonely solo route. He found himself a few performance slots in various songwriters’ havens and honed his musical skills to a mixed audience of peers and oul fellas at the bar. With the Leaving Cert out of the way, and a place in Dublin City University wrapped up, he headed to Germany for the summer with a few mates. It was here that he met with producer Shane Brady, an uncle of a friend. Shane had holidayed in Germany in the 70’s and never came home, working there as a musician and producer. Spurred on by his friends, Cooke asked Shane to listen to some of his bedroom recordings. Shortly after the gang had returned to Ireland, Shane was in receipt of two jammed pack ninety-minute Maxell tapes, nearly thirty songs in all, that Tadhg had written over the course of his teens. Shane immediately recognised the potential and invited him to come to Germany to record an album.
On the non-optional ‘advice’ of his parents, Tadhg deferred his trip to Germany and headed for DCU, where he managed to learn how to build a computer. Nine lonely months spent in Paris during his third college year provided him with much musical inspiration : he lived in a small flat in the Chinatown district of the city, and with only the movies to go by, Cooke was convinced the Triad were living next door. Summer breaks were spent in the bars and clubs of New York and Long Island, playing his way through the months, learning to sing over drunk punters and giant TV screens. After his second summer trip to the States, Cooke returned to Ireland determined that if he was willing to put the hard graft in, he might, just might get an album together. Heading into his final year exams, Tadhg did what every self -respecting computational linguist would do, and went and recorded his debut EP. With the help of BellX1’s Dave Geraghty, The Sparks EP was recorded in a flat in Dublin’s Docklands and immediately became an A-List hit on Dublin’s indie pirate, Phantom FM.
With college over, Cooke spent just over a year establishing himself on the Irish live scene. He is a seasoned performer, having shared the stage with the cream of the Irish crew : Damien Rice, Glen Hansard, Mundy, Ronan O’ Snodaigh, Damien Dempsey, Jerry Fish et al. He even managed to blag a number of supports in the UK with Jem Finer, ex-Pogues man and co-writer of Fairytale of New York and a nationwide support tour with BellX1.
Finally with a bit of cash together, Cooke headed for Freiburg, Germany, where he put a new band of red hot musicians together and recorded Wax & Seal, his accomplished debut release.
Since releasing the album, Cooke has appeared on two prime-time Irish television talk-shows (Saturday Night with Miriam and Ardan) and two other shows (Sattitude and POP4). His other television performances include BBC’s An Stuif Ceart (The Right Stuff) and Phil Coulter’s music show "Coulter & Company" with The Troggs, Paul Carrack (of Squeeze, Ace and Mike & The Mechanics) and Paul Jones (Manfred Mann). Prime slots at the Hard Working Class Heroes, Bud Rising, Tennents Intro and Birr Vintage festivals alongside many Irish legends only served to highlight Cooke’s rapid rise to the top in Ireland. Daily spins on Gerry Anderson’s morning radio show on BBC Ulster led to a huge upsurge of support in Northern Ireland and led to regular live slots on various BBC radio shows. In February 2006 he was the special guest performer at the 2FM Perri Song Contest at Dublin’s Vicar Street.
Tadhg recently lent his vocals to "Flame", the latest single from BellX1’s Irish #1 album "FLOCK".
Cooke's "confident impressive debut" (HotPress), Wax & Seal, was well received in Ireland and led to a host of TV appearances, national and local radio sessions and excellent press coverage throughout 2005. Cooke’s jazz-tinged acoustic pop has been described as "eminently likeable, utterly enviable" by The Irish Times.
www.tadhgcooke.com www.myspace.com/tadhgcooke www.cdbaby.com/cd/tadhgcooke
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Design and maintenance copyright of Tadhg Cooke 2007