It don't mean a thing if it ain’t got that swing.
Fortunately, the latest Irish Stew guest has that swing. He’s transatlantic Irish jazz singer Austin O’Brien, out of Malahide, County Dublin, where Irish Stew co-host Martin Nutty calls home,
Co-host John Lee saw that this Irish jazz artist was playing at Gibney's, the New York outpost of the Malahide bar. He contacted Austin, who invited him out to New Jersey for his recording session at the legendary Van Gelder Studio, where some of the greatest jazz albums were recorded.
Irish Stew Podcast co-host John Lee (L) with Austin O'Brien.
In this episode, the globetrotting crooner looks back to his Irish roots, saying, “I grew up in a very Irish family. There were like eight boys and two girls. And my granny had a shop, and they lived on Francis Street, which is like the belly button of the Liberties."
He also recalls his challenges pursuing music. "I was very shy, timid, and dyslexic, so I felt insecure. I actually hear music like a picture. I can hear and see a finished song just from an idea,” he says.
Like many artists, Austin felt the pull of Paris, where he now lives. “At clubs in Paris people come to dance; here in New York people come to sit and listen. It's like they say, if you can sing in Paris, you can sing anywhere,” he joked.
He recounts an almost mystical experience he had performing there in one of those clubs.
"I was singing in a very famous club in Paris called the Caveau de la Huchette, and I could feel a mistake coming. Then it was like my dad was behind me, and he went, ‘You're going to be okay,’ and I was able to get through it.” It’s a bittersweet memory for Austin as his father never heard him sing professionally. “He was meant to come to a concert, but he died a couple of weeks before,” he says.
Recording at the Van Gelder Studio, following in the footsteps of John Coltrane, Miles Davis, Herbie Hancock, Sonny Rollins, Wes Montgomery, McCoy Tyner, and more jazz legends, was a career highlight.
"My drummer, Jonathan, says, 'Hallowed ground, we're in Disneyland for a jazzman.’ The studio has stayed the same since 1959. They bow to nobody," he says.
Austin O'Brien.
Austin shares another heartfelt personal goal, to bring jazz and other kinds of live music into public school systems where there is need. Four times he’s brought his programs of live jazz and Irish music with Dave Brown mixed with motivational messages to the Cordero Community School in Hamilton, NJ, and is now building a team to develop the funding sources and organization needed to make the program grow, with schools in Englewood, NJ showing strong interest in this outreach.
Jazz may not mean a thing if it ain’t got a thing, but what does it mean to Austin?
"I found out jazz is not a music, it's a culture, and that it's not how you play it, but how you interpret it"
You can listen to Austin O'Brien on the Irish Stew Podcast here:
Next week on Irish Stew: The secret sauce of Irish tourism, with CIE Tours International managing director Stephen Cotter.
For more information, visit IrishStewPodcast.com. You can listen to "The Irish Stew Podcast" wherever you get your podcasts.
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