It’s January 2012… Nothing is on the airwaves for the Irish Music except mainstream songs played repeatedly. Frustration is everywhere! Radio is dull, dull, dull…but wait!! An idea has materialised…. A stew of hope, a bright flash of light in the darkness…and URadio a 100% Irish music radio station is born!

FAST FORWARD EIGHT YEARS…

It’s 2012… Everything is different. Thanks to URadio we have had 8 years of intelligent Irish radio, ever-fresh tunes, insane ideas, and an alternative to the mundane, the heartless and the creative wasteland that is all others.

Jack Burnman fronted the first broadcast of URadio on Sunday, January 1, 2012. His show began at 7am with a jingle announcing, “Eirewave. Today’s Best Irish Music.”

In July 2018, the radio station name has changed from URadio to Eirewave.

Okay, everyone…gather round, story-time is about to begin… Eirewave was the very first station to broadcast 100% of contemporary music 24/7.

Eirewave was started by an enthusiastic bunch – they wanted to give a voice to Irish music.

Every weekday from 8am to 6pm the presenters entertain and inform programme audiences. They act as the public face on various types of programmes. They are also the centre point for programmes, responsible for keeping it flowing at the appropriate pace, introducing and interviewing guests, interact with the audience and for providing links between segments that hold the programme together. Presenters, Music and high level of production makes Eirewave a real radio station.

The station is unique for its music mix. Eirewave is a destination station for listeners who want contemporary mainstream Irish music.
The station is built using many years of broadcasting experience and insight gleaned from extensive on-going market research, which is used to direct the station’s output.

Eirewave digital radio station has seen significant growth and engagement since launching in 2012.

With 350,000 listeners per month on the radio, 600 Irish Artists who already create their profile on eirewave.ie the radio station promote and develop the Irish artists in Ireland and abroad and helping them to tour more in the others countries. 50% of their audience on the radio is coming from abroad!

The ‘Eirewave family’ is already big on the digital platform eirewave.ie or as listeners on the radio.
Eirewave ensures that even more great Irish radio content will be available to the Irish Radioplayer audiences to allow them to tune in more and listen for longer.

Islander presents…

Live from Home

Featuring performances from Maija Sofia, John Francis Flynn,

Anna Mieke and Junior Brother

8pm-10pm, Friday 27th March 2020

Donations via GoFundMe are split evenly and go directly to the artists

This Friday 27th March, Islander: Live from Home will be streaming straight to you, directly from the homes of some of Islander’s favourite Irish artists. With sets from Maija Sofia, John Francis Flynn, Anna Mieke and Junior Brother, it will be a gorgeous showcase of some of the top musicians our country has to offer, all while in the cosiness of your own home.

Viewers are encouraged to donate whatever you can, if you can, to these artists who have lost weeks of work, with events cancelled and weekly gigs gone. All donations will be split evenly between the artists.

Tune in from 8pm this Friday from the links which will be posted on the Facebook event here: https://www.facebook.com/events/680481032722009/ or from the artist’s Facebook pages.

Schedule:

20:00 – Maija Sofia

20:30 – John Francis Flynn

21:00 – Anna Mieke

21:30 – Junior Brother

A new documentary following Irish band Cry Monster Cry’s journey through the Swiss Alps to play a sold out show in a clifftop cabin.

Originally set to premiere at the IFI, and then postponed due to the spread of Coronavirus, the band has taken the decision that now is the time when artists should do whatever they can to try to lift the spirits of those in self isolation, and will make the film free for all to see tomorrow evening at 7pm GMT. It will debut on their Website, YouTube and Facebook.

Brothers Richie and Jamie Martin have set up a Patreon account to support their own work with their sold out headline tour having been cancelled.

“I took a deep breath, wiped the sweat from my brow, and grasped the rusted metal bar that had been drilled into the rock face. Above me, my brother Richie had just disappeared over the top of the mountain. My heart was hammering. The mandolin in my backpack shifted slightly as I put all of my weight onto the makeshift ladder. Before us, the milky glacial lake glinted in the sunlight. We were on our way to The Gaulihütte, an alpine base built in 1895. Ten hours of hiking lay ahead of us. The crowd was waiting. The gig was sold out. We could not fail.” – Jamie Martin

Last September, Dublin brothers Richie & Jamie Martin (Cry Monster Cry) travelled to Switzerland to play one of the most challenging shows of their career. The journey to the venue (a traditional Swiss mountain cabin dating back to 1895 that sits on the edge of a cliff) saw them hiking for 10 hours, instruments on their backs. Rising before dawn and setting off under a blanket of fog, they journeyed through forests and meadows, over rocky ridges and steep ravines, climbed over precipices and dipped their heads in a freezing glacial lake.

Led by guides René Reusser and with Mirjam Huber, the band completed the journey to play a show for a crowd of hikers who had also made their way to the cabin.

The new documentary, “When The Snow Falls I’ll Be Gone” was produced and directed by Elijah Egan of Seven Figure Films, and tells the story of the lengths that people will go for their craft. The brothers’ story weaves into that of René and Mirjam, whose passion for music, creativity, artistic expression and shared experiences is explored during the 30-minute documentary.

Folk singer-songwriter Padraig Jack releases ‘Streetbed Ridden’ on 13^th March, the first single to be taken from his forthcoming album, Making Sand out on 24^th April. ‘Streetbed Ridden’ touches on the subject of homelessness, a topical issue in today’s Ireland. The song has a driving melody with powerful lyrics, exploring how it is that someone can slip so easily into homelessness in our modern society. Padraig developed a music video for the song which is a computer game representation of  the song where a stickman character moves up and down the social ladder .

 Padraig explains, ‘While imagining the mental anguish that must be felt by someone living on the street, this song also ponders how easy it can be to fall through the cracks from a comfortable middle-class life into homelessness. The section at the end of the song asks that we interrupt our non-stop lives and remember the inherent kindness in our being and rethink our willingness to support those at the bottom of the ladder.’

Padraig Jack is from a musical family from the Aran Islands, ten miles off the west coast of Ireland. His dad is bilingual songwriter Barry Ronan and he is the nephew of the Irish poet and Aosdána member Mary O’Malley. Like his father, Padraig is proudly bilingual and writes music in both Irish and English. With influences ranging from James Taylor and The Eagles to Van Morrison and Shane McGowan, Padraig admires strong songwriting with a distinct point of view.

 Irish music bible Hot Press has called Padraig ‘one of Ireland’s most exciting emerging folk artists’ and Padraig’s live shows are demonstrating exactly why. Career highlights to date include multiple tours with Sharon Shannon playing venues such as Whelan’s, the Liverpool Philharmonic Theatre, Poole Lighthouse Theatre and the famous Cecil Sharp House in London. He has also opened for many legendary Irish acts including The Saw Doctors, Donal Lunny, Mick Flannery, The 4 of Us and John Spillane, and has appeared at numerous festivals including Electric Picnic and the SOMA, Shorelines and the Skibbereen Arts Festivals.

Padraig takes to the road both in Ireland and Europe this spring and summer, introducing his new album Making Sand , which has been produced by John Reynolds (Sinead O’Connor, Damien Dempsey). As well as his own headline gigs, Padraig is supporting Damien Dempsey in April in Ireland.

Headline shows:

16 March         Bridge St, Castlebar,

14 May            Cobblestone, Dublin

16 May            Asgard theatre, Arklow

21 May            Crane Bar, Galway

April shows supporting Damen Dempsey:

3^rd April            Bantry, w. Damien Dempsey

4^th April            Drogheda, w. Damien Dempsey

5^th April            Ratoath. w. Damien Dempsey

17^th  April          Dunmore East, w. Damien Dempsey

18^th  April          Newbridge w. Damien Dempsey

Balancing high-intensity raps with considered spoken word, Willzee electrifies audiences with his fast flows and relentless social commentary. Willzee is part of a musical movement that brings his hometown Limerick to the top of the Irish rap scene, side by side with his pack members Dyrt, Frantic Ant!x, Size and MCB.

In collaboration with singer song-writer and producer delush, Willzee has released a powerful single “Dear Friend II”.

Willzee first collaborated with delush via the Berlin based label Welcome to the New World, where he starred as an actor in the “It’s Alright” music video. Appreciating his raw talent and energy, they signed him to the label. Willzee also channels his talents into spoken word and script writing. He won the 2019 Virgin Media Discovers Short Film Competition with his story of a young deaf Traveller boy’s love of his horse and the freedom he feels riding him unsaddled. This stands in stark contrast to the world he knows when he turns on his hearing aid, a world of toxic masculinity, bullies, and his deep insecurities with the people he loves, who see him as different, a poor “auld innocent boy”. The film premiered last weekend (February 29^th 2020) at the Dublin International Film Festival.

His new video Dear Friend II, plots a different potential course for Limerick, but moreover, for communities in need of care all over the world. He urges us to “let the past be the past, but take it further.” The music is written and produced by his collaborator and fellow Welcome to the New World artist delush. The short film, directed by Dave O’Carroll, is a beautiful call to rise as a community from the shackles and pain of a difficult past. 

The story of Willzee is the story of rising from adversity, struggle and hardship. 

He grew up in a family divided and affected by alcoholism and domestic violence. In the travelling community, one is expected to harden oneself to endure such difficulties rather than seek help for them, and harden he did. He had to face losing both his father and his beloved mother as a child. He experienced losing a brother to accidental death, and yet another to one of the violence that once overshadowed Limerick. He waded through a tumultuous run of foster homes and was discriminated against for his traveller background before finding the family with whom he lives and calls his own today. 

As a young man, Willzee was angry at the world. With a contempt for authority and an inner turmoil he found himself lost in drugs, crimes, and bad places. A series of moments shed light on another way to live. Willzee discovered music as a way to express his true self freely. He began to dream about turning everything that shaped him into something good that could help the next man or woman. He found rap and spoken word and film and immersed himself in it. 

Inspired by the raw and expressive UK rappers such as Mic Righteous, with whom he just finished writing a track and by local artists in the Limerick scene, he set out to work to inspire others and shed light on the different sides of life, the harsher sides that one doesn’t see too often. Even or perhaps especially those sides can show us that despite anything we can be okay. 

Alice Lynskey returns with her latest single “Love to Heal”,  an upbeat and catchy tune with a poignant tale to tell.  In a world where social media, media outlets and our peers, can sometimes seem to dictate their idea of how our lives “should be”, it can seem very isolating to forge your own path. “Love to Heal” is a song dedicated to those people we all need in our lives, whom we can always count upon for unconditional love and support.

Alice has recently been named as a semi-finalist in the world renowned International Songwriting Competition , with her 2018 release “Lovesick Rollercoaster” and has fingers crossed in hope of being a finalist!

Alice Lynskey is a brilliant, fresh sounding singer songwriter from Dublin and now lives in Wexford. Her music can be described as pop sometimes with little hints of country and rock. A strong melody is always central to each and every song!  She has released 4 wonderfully received singles to date.

Early in 2018 she released her debut single “Devil In Me” gaining a lot of airplay including being EIREWAVE playlisted , and receiving great reviews from Hot Press and Remys blog/playlist and to name a few.

This was followed by “Lovesick Rollercoaster” which again was greeted with great reviews.

Later in 2018 Alice released “Obscene Dreams”, again receiving brilliant reviews and was included on The Acoustic Yard CD .  In May of 2019 Alice released her rock anthem “Souls” .

Last year Alice played The Acoustic Yard Festival in Westport, The Folly Festival in Laois (Irelands first gender balanced music festival) and The Playing Fields Festival in Kildare.

In 2018 Alice performed at the “Wexford Spiegeltent festival ”, “Dublin goes Country Festival” and “The Little festival at the Big House”. Alice is classically trained and has sung on many stages including The 3Arena, The Olympia, The Helix, Whelans, and Enniscorthy Castle.

Alice has played support to many great acts including The Stunning, The 4 of Us, Declan O’Rourke, Paddy Casey, Little Hours, ELLYD and Don Baker and Rob Strong and alongside Wyvern Lingo and Hermitage Green.