It Hurts Me, Too - Rob Corcoran
Joining us as special guest at St Pancras Old Church in just over a week's time is our next LCM featured artist Dublin born singer-songwriter but now London based Rob Corcoran. Rob will be joined on the night by the very talented Barbara Bartz, who some of you might know already. As a very good introduction our LCM #TrackOfTheDay is a live version of 'It Hurts Me, Too' taken from an Oak Session last year. https://youtu.be/rJCw2Vzc-nk
It’s hard to categorize Rob Corcoran’s music by genre. He sings and he writes songs, but he's not the typical singer-songwriter. He is clearly influenced by vintage American and Irish folk but he’s in no way a folk singer in the traditional sense. He cites his father’s old vinyl collection which included the likes of Bob Dylan, Makem & Clancy and Simon & Garfunkel as the early gateway to a life long fascination with songs and his later obsession with the lyrics of people like Townes Van Zandt and Leonard Cohen as providing him with the tools to explore the inner, often shadowy core of things.
Those influences are in there, there’s no doubt, some more obviously than others, but Rob's music is something very distinctive. The voice is his own. The turn of phrase is very much his own.
Here are songs, well-crafted and instantly engaging, notable for lyrics that are direct, honest, conversational and at times dark, made to soar by Rob’s soulful and distinctive vocals and the added musical finesse of multi-instrumentalist collaborators Lyle Zimmerman (mandolin, bouzouki and uke-bass) and Barbara Bartz (violin and accordion) and featuring some guest vocals by Danni Nicholls.
“There’s some serious business in these songs. A lot of sleepless nights, tinkering and revisiting went into them, haunted by the fear that one throwaway or less-than-earnest line could diminish the integrity of everything. They mean a lot to me. The pay-off is the thrill of later finding out that people enjoy them and relate to them.”
'The Heart, Head and The Long Since Dead' is Rob's debut EP was released in 2015. A full band live album 'Live in Dublin' was released last year.