Gemma Hayes
Sun 21 Apr 2024 (note: this event has already taken place)
7pm
€25
Beloved singer-songwriter and national treasure Gemma Hayes announces her Spring 2024 tour dates across Ireland as well as her new single ‘Feed the Flames’, which is set for release on Thursday, 25th January, 2024.
‘Feed the Flames’ is the second single off Gemma’s highly anticipated album, due out in Spring 2024 to coincide with her cross-country tour.
The award-winning musician says of the track: “I originally began writing the song after watching Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf with Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton. Knowing a bit about their relationship off screen I was really taken by the depth of their connection, it was a living, breathing free. What I got from delving into their relationship is that you can love something or someone so much only for your human fallibility to come along and destroy it.”
‘Feed the Flames’ follows Gemma’s exceptional single ‘High & Low’, her frst new music in nearly a decade. Music tastemaker Tony Clayton-Lea declared ‘High & Low’ an “emotional gut-punch of a
song,” and it has racked up over 1 million radio impacts in Ireland alone since release.
Over the last year, Gemma has been busy touring, bringing her stirring live show to crowds that span generations. Gemma spent Autumn playing to audiences solo as well as with fellow living legends Lisa Hannigan and Paul Noonan. She recently sold out London’s Omeara and Dublin’s Whelan’s as part of a UK and Ireland tour. Gemma has been a cornerstone of the John Prine Celebration Shows at Dublin’s Vicar Street and she performed the legendary artist’s song ‘Summer’s End’ on RTÉ’s The Tommy Tiernan Show.
Gemma Hayes’ debut album Night On My Side was released in 2002, for which she won Best Female Artist at the Hot Press Awards and a Mercury Prize nomination. Since then, she has released four critically acclaimed studio albums and a limited-edition live album. The Business Post recently praised Gemma as “a songwriter whose work pivots between serious life experiences and an indie folk/rock style infuenced as much by Nick Drake as My Bloody Valentine.”
Gemma is constantly in demand for flm and tv placements – she has just contributed to the soundtrack of the upcoming flm adaptation of Roddy Doyle’s Greyhound of a Girl. Her version of Chris Isaak’s ‘Wicked Game’, recorded for the US TV series Pretty Little Liars, now has over 21 million streams on Spotify alone.
Her upcoming TV appearances include a performance as part of the renowned Fanning at Whelans on Virgin Media Two and Virgin Media Player on Saturday, 9th December, 2023 at 10pm. Of late, she’s played for the TradFest: The Fingal Sessions hosted by Fiachna Ó Braonáin (Hothouse Flowers) for RTÉ / PBS / European Broadcasting Union. Her collaborative show for Other Voices flmed at Cahir Castle with Lisa Hannigan and Bell XI’s Paul Noonan was live streamed worldwide on 18 May and aired on RTÉ 2 in June this year.
