Lisa O’Neill (Ireland)

“My viewing point is from the planet earth and my perspective is influenced by my environment and emotional experiences. My perceptions are as individual, debatable, ever-changing and as unimportant as anyone’s.” say Lisa O’Neill. “The more I learn the more I’m moved. My life is tiny in the greater scale of things. If a star blinked, it would miss me.”

These words are not what you’d think to hear from a young woman who is, to many, a up-and-coming bright light on the international folk music scene. Now on her third much praised recording, the 30-something singer-songwriter from Ballyhaise, Co Cavan, Ireland has been turning heads for a while now, but as one biographer points out: ” O’Neill has an air about her that will forever be rural Irish; she may have left home at the age of 18 to study, live and subsequently work in Dublin, but city life hasn’t eroded her sense of her roots.” Nor, apparently, has praise swelled her head.

So come and listen to her gloriously singular voice, her smart as a whip lyrics and observations on life, her banter, and something else that comes through: a true sense of place, a real sense of tradition, and an utter lack of pretention.