C
Cruiscin
Guest
Pina + Special Guests
Sun 11th Sept @ 8pm
An Cruiscin Lan,
Douglas St
Cork
Tickets: €10
PINA
It's a long way from the classical music heartlands of
Vienna to Ardgroom, County Cork, as Pina Kollars well
knows. The Austrian singer/songwriter is reminded of
the fact each time she stands at her kitchen window,
her dark-eyed gaze taking in the rolling green hills
of Ireland's South West coast and the wild, windswept
seascape beyond. After four years as an ex-pat she has
grown used to the incessant rain and inclement weather
of the region; she says she finds lyrical inspiration
in its remoteness. But then contentment has only ever
been a song away for Pina, whose unique perspective
and intimate, conversational style is all the more
remarkable for her phenomenal voice. Feline and
powerful, heartfelt and hypnotic, it is wielded like
an instrument. As her debut album, Quick Look,
testifies, it's a voice which inevitably stops
listeners dead in their tracks.
Signing to Real World has been a Godsend, says Pina,
in a Viennese accent tinged with an Irish lilt. For
although music has always been her life blood, it
wasn't long ago that she had reluctantly toyed with
the idea of giving up performing all together, having
grown weary of striving for recognition in her
birthplace while lesser talents were being snapped up
in bulk elsewhere. Ironically, it was the Austrian
Government's rather cavalier attitude to creatives
which first sent her abroad. Pina and her then
husband, Helmut, an illustrator of children's books
and the father of her four-year-old daughter, Luise,
had found themselves financially adrift following a
law which demanded compulsory health insurance for
artists. Unable to save and with no professional break
in sight, they packed up and moved to Ireland.
There, slowly, things started to come together. A
veteran of music contests ("Most of my equipment I've
won"); Pina played at the Heineken Green Festival and
landed herself an amplifier. (She plays a mean Fender
Stratocaster as well as a K Yairi acoustic). The
manager of the Cranberries was sufficiently impressed
to sit down with Pina for a good three hours and phone
every musical contact he had on her behalf. Contacts
led to other contacts, including manager Steve Baker,
and soon Pina found herself supporting the singular
American chanteuse Ani di Franco in Glasgow,
Manchester and London. (She had already supported the
likes of Randy Crawford, June Tabor and the Oyster
Band back home). Arguably her biggest break came last
October, in the form of redoubtable Real World outfit
the Afro Celt Sound System. "They had co-written a
song with Heather Nova," Pina says. "I sang it and
they loved it." Her duet with Iarla Ó Lionáird, the
achingly beautiful Go On Through, was duly featured on
the ACSS album, Further In Time. "Then (Afro Celts
supremo) Simon Emmerson told me that Peter Gabriel
said it was his favourite song on the record. He asked
him who that voice belonged to."
Pina was 16 when she found her voice. Up until then
she had concentrated on developing her skills as a
classical guitarist, studying the medium at the Vienna
Conservatorium and, later, teaching it to make ends
meet. (She briefly studied law, and then medicine at
university, before being pulled back to music again).
But when she started writing her own songs, her
reference points were contemporary ones - the Doors,
U2, David Bowie, Edie Brickell and the Rolling Stones
among them - but her voice, of course, was like no
other. "It was always the songs, rather than the
artists, which made the biggest impression on me," she
says now. "And I've never been sentimental with my own
material, which is probably why I've lost so much of
my early stuff. I just see each song as a brick
towards the next."
Pina's unusual upbringing has always provided fodder
for her finely crafted, literate vignettes. "My mother
met my father when she was 13, and she was 16 when she
had me. Because she was still going to school, I was
brought up by my grandparents and mother and uncles
and aunts. It gave my life a bigger dimension; I was
like the sixth child and was spoilt rotten. My
grandfather had a big belly and a quiff like Elvis,
worked in a fairground and was very eccentric, but he
made me strong. He only ever wanted me to do music and
supported me the whole way through." The track
'Josephine' on Quick Look, she adds, is dedicated to
him. "He died a few years ago," she says with a
nostalgic sigh. "Just before he passed away I sang an
old war song 'Lilli Marlene' into his ear, and he
smiled."
First hand experience is intrinsic to Pina's
songwriting, which goes some way towards explaining
her unaffected, self-contained style. It has been said
that Pina seems to be singing to herself, although
each listener might also argue that she is singing to
them and them alone. "I need to have lived something
myself to be able to sing it to an audience or a
person," she says. "And I have to really love and
stand behind the lyrics." Written over the last two
years, the ten songs on Quick Look traverse such
themes as heartbreak, motherhood, debt, love, loss,
life and, er, heartbreak. Pina, it seems, doesn't just
wear her heart on her sleeve. She lays it, bleeding,
on the table. The pain of the split with her
ex-husband is palpable. "I was unable to accept it for
about one and a half years," she admits. "I was
fighting to keep my family together." So, naturally
enough, she wrote about it. In no uncertain terms. But
forget folk's maudlin wallowings; the details of
Pina's break up are fired by a bittersweet fury that
gives each track an alternative, adrenaline-fuelled
edge. The album's opener, 'I Loved The Way' (a hit if
ever there was one), nigh on shakes her ex by the
scruff of his neck; 'Cold Storm', which demands that
he take a good hard look at his own faults, is pure
Patti Smith does Jumping Jack Flash. Pina performed
each song to Helmut before recording the album. Rather
than either of them reaching for the carving knife,
they are now, she insists, good friends. "It's
happened only recently," she says, beaming. "There's
still a lot of anger on both sides but it's hidden. It
only comes out now and then."
When it does, you can be sure that Pina will write a
song about it. These days, however, she is sharing her
life and her Ardgroom home with her new love, a lanky
drummer and guitarist named Andy Hogg. "I fit in his
armpit," she grins. The two met when Pina sang at a
club called McCarthy's, up the road in Castletownbere;
Hogg's not inconsiderable musical talents can also be
heard on Quick Look. "I love living in Ireland," says
Pina. "I appreciate the openness and calmness of
people here. I love being in a place where people are
so excited about music. I've tried doing other things,
but nothing else interests me. And now I know," she
adds fiercely, "that I'm going to keep on doing music
until I'm old and grey."
Sun 11th Sept @ 8pm
An Cruiscin Lan,
Douglas St
Cork
Tickets: €10
PINA
It's a long way from the classical music heartlands of
Vienna to Ardgroom, County Cork, as Pina Kollars well
knows. The Austrian singer/songwriter is reminded of
the fact each time she stands at her kitchen window,
her dark-eyed gaze taking in the rolling green hills
of Ireland's South West coast and the wild, windswept
seascape beyond. After four years as an ex-pat she has
grown used to the incessant rain and inclement weather
of the region; she says she finds lyrical inspiration
in its remoteness. But then contentment has only ever
been a song away for Pina, whose unique perspective
and intimate, conversational style is all the more
remarkable for her phenomenal voice. Feline and
powerful, heartfelt and hypnotic, it is wielded like
an instrument. As her debut album, Quick Look,
testifies, it's a voice which inevitably stops
listeners dead in their tracks.
Signing to Real World has been a Godsend, says Pina,
in a Viennese accent tinged with an Irish lilt. For
although music has always been her life blood, it
wasn't long ago that she had reluctantly toyed with
the idea of giving up performing all together, having
grown weary of striving for recognition in her
birthplace while lesser talents were being snapped up
in bulk elsewhere. Ironically, it was the Austrian
Government's rather cavalier attitude to creatives
which first sent her abroad. Pina and her then
husband, Helmut, an illustrator of children's books
and the father of her four-year-old daughter, Luise,
had found themselves financially adrift following a
law which demanded compulsory health insurance for
artists. Unable to save and with no professional break
in sight, they packed up and moved to Ireland.
There, slowly, things started to come together. A
veteran of music contests ("Most of my equipment I've
won"); Pina played at the Heineken Green Festival and
landed herself an amplifier. (She plays a mean Fender
Stratocaster as well as a K Yairi acoustic). The
manager of the Cranberries was sufficiently impressed
to sit down with Pina for a good three hours and phone
every musical contact he had on her behalf. Contacts
led to other contacts, including manager Steve Baker,
and soon Pina found herself supporting the singular
American chanteuse Ani di Franco in Glasgow,
Manchester and London. (She had already supported the
likes of Randy Crawford, June Tabor and the Oyster
Band back home). Arguably her biggest break came last
October, in the form of redoubtable Real World outfit
the Afro Celt Sound System. "They had co-written a
song with Heather Nova," Pina says. "I sang it and
they loved it." Her duet with Iarla Ó Lionáird, the
achingly beautiful Go On Through, was duly featured on
the ACSS album, Further In Time. "Then (Afro Celts
supremo) Simon Emmerson told me that Peter Gabriel
said it was his favourite song on the record. He asked
him who that voice belonged to."
Pina was 16 when she found her voice. Up until then
she had concentrated on developing her skills as a
classical guitarist, studying the medium at the Vienna
Conservatorium and, later, teaching it to make ends
meet. (She briefly studied law, and then medicine at
university, before being pulled back to music again).
But when she started writing her own songs, her
reference points were contemporary ones - the Doors,
U2, David Bowie, Edie Brickell and the Rolling Stones
among them - but her voice, of course, was like no
other. "It was always the songs, rather than the
artists, which made the biggest impression on me," she
says now. "And I've never been sentimental with my own
material, which is probably why I've lost so much of
my early stuff. I just see each song as a brick
towards the next."
Pina's unusual upbringing has always provided fodder
for her finely crafted, literate vignettes. "My mother
met my father when she was 13, and she was 16 when she
had me. Because she was still going to school, I was
brought up by my grandparents and mother and uncles
and aunts. It gave my life a bigger dimension; I was
like the sixth child and was spoilt rotten. My
grandfather had a big belly and a quiff like Elvis,
worked in a fairground and was very eccentric, but he
made me strong. He only ever wanted me to do music and
supported me the whole way through." The track
'Josephine' on Quick Look, she adds, is dedicated to
him. "He died a few years ago," she says with a
nostalgic sigh. "Just before he passed away I sang an
old war song 'Lilli Marlene' into his ear, and he
smiled."
First hand experience is intrinsic to Pina's
songwriting, which goes some way towards explaining
her unaffected, self-contained style. It has been said
that Pina seems to be singing to herself, although
each listener might also argue that she is singing to
them and them alone. "I need to have lived something
myself to be able to sing it to an audience or a
person," she says. "And I have to really love and
stand behind the lyrics." Written over the last two
years, the ten songs on Quick Look traverse such
themes as heartbreak, motherhood, debt, love, loss,
life and, er, heartbreak. Pina, it seems, doesn't just
wear her heart on her sleeve. She lays it, bleeding,
on the table. The pain of the split with her
ex-husband is palpable. "I was unable to accept it for
about one and a half years," she admits. "I was
fighting to keep my family together." So, naturally
enough, she wrote about it. In no uncertain terms. But
forget folk's maudlin wallowings; the details of
Pina's break up are fired by a bittersweet fury that
gives each track an alternative, adrenaline-fuelled
edge. The album's opener, 'I Loved The Way' (a hit if
ever there was one), nigh on shakes her ex by the
scruff of his neck; 'Cold Storm', which demands that
he take a good hard look at his own faults, is pure
Patti Smith does Jumping Jack Flash. Pina performed
each song to Helmut before recording the album. Rather
than either of them reaching for the carving knife,
they are now, she insists, good friends. "It's
happened only recently," she says, beaming. "There's
still a lot of anger on both sides but it's hidden. It
only comes out now and then."
When it does, you can be sure that Pina will write a
song about it. These days, however, she is sharing her
life and her Ardgroom home with her new love, a lanky
drummer and guitarist named Andy Hogg. "I fit in his
armpit," she grins. The two met when Pina sang at a
club called McCarthy's, up the road in Castletownbere;
Hogg's not inconsiderable musical talents can also be
heard on Quick Look. "I love living in Ireland," says
Pina. "I appreciate the openness and calmness of
people here. I love being in a place where people are
so excited about music. I've tried doing other things,
but nothing else interests me. And now I know," she
adds fiercely, "that I'm going to keep on doing music
until I'm old and grey."
