Listen to – Christy – Homegrown
Rising Star Christy Unveils His Debut EP ‘Homegrown‘ Bringing 5 Track EP
Bringing together songs of emotional frankness, delicately composed on piano and acoustic guitar, the EP is a remarkable introduction to an artist who has kept artistic integrity at the heart of everything. Speaking of the EP Christy said: “These songs are everything I have been through in the last few years…My first release needed to be real, genuine – either people like it or they don’t, but at least I have been 100% myself and I’m not sacrificing anything to be a popstar. They are sad songs but I wanted them to sound beautiful.”
Previous singles ‘On My Mind’, ‘Remember Me Well’, and ‘Pictures’ each capture a different element to Christy’s eclectic flavour of songwriting, getting bigger and bolder with each release, culminating to the strength and bravery of Christy’s last single ‘Dancing With Air’, and eventually finding a release in pressure with the new title track ‘Homegrown’, an upbeat pop number that brings the EP to a close on a high, a moment you can imagine Christy closing future festival performances with. “I can write music in any genre but this particular EP is about love and loss. For my next, I’ve got a big house song that is going to be a belter!”
The EP was recorded at Urchin Studios in London Fields, and tracks were co-written with the talented York singer-songwriter Benjamin Francis Leftwich (“We wrote without ego – it was completely honest and open”) and producer Matt Ingram, known for his work with Laura Marling. It features strings from Tom Hobden (Mumford and Sons) and jazz musician Nick Pini (Laura Marling), a high calibre of musicians whom O’Donnell says “saw his vision”.
Listen To – Homegrown by Christy – HERE
At twenty-four, Christy O’Donnell has already lived out several unlikely dreams. He’s busked the streets of Glasgow making £400 a day. He’s been in a boy band, acted in a Disney TV series, and even climbed Arthur’s Seat with Rufus Wainwright… But beneath the young Glaswegian’s many incarnations is a serious musician about to unleash his first EP. Though intensely personal, this is not simple, singer-songwriter territory: the effervescent O’Donnell counts Ray Charles, John Martyn and Chet Baker as among his biggest musical influences.
O’Donnell explains that he found his voice as a busker on Glasgow’s famous Buchanan Street as a teenager. He’d always wanted to sound like Jeff Buckley, imitating him in the shower as a child, but in front of the crowds of onlookers as a street musician, he learned to let his feelings run wild. “Singing is basically letting out your emotions in a weird wail,” he laughs. “And after all the busking, I know a good wail from a bad one.”
From age fourteen, he was writing songs on his phone using Garageband: his first was inspired by the death of a man in his local community and set up the signature sensitivity to be heard in his songwriting, which broadens experience out beyond the personal to explore the power of love and the way it lingers in the mind.
