Groove Tube with Cian O’Connell

Singer-songwriter Tom Portman has had a high-yielding end to the year. His fifth studio album, Train to Nowhere, was released just over a month ago and it is already set to be succeeded. Though he has been performing regularly in various guises in the interim, these two offerings, arriving so close to each other, are the first projects Tom has put out in his own name for seven years.

Eb & Flow will reach Bandcamp and Spotify and December 16. It sees the multi-instrumentalist veer in another musical direction, leaving the country and folk ballad territory of Train to Nowhere in favour of an intricate, atmospheric instrumental LP that showcases his ability as a guitarist. The songs were collected through improvisations Tom worked on in his Menlo home.

“I was recording an album a few years ago,” he recalls.

“During the process of that, in the evenings or whenever the mood took me, I’d put on the microphone and just play. Paul Doyle, who is a luthier in Galway, had an apprentice making an instrument called a Weissenborn guitar and they’re kind of acoustic, Hawaiian guitars that people used back in the twenties.

“I got a loan of this, and I just got home and had an hour to record with it. I recorded a few tracks and that’s what ended up being on the album. Another good friend of mine lent me a National guitar which is like the Mark Knopfler cover but with an older design and three metal cones inside of it. It has a bell brass body and a beautiful resonance, so some of the tracks were recorded on that.”

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.

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