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Eamonn McCormack

Ireland's Eamonn McCormack is an internationally renowned blues-rock guitarist, singer, and songwriter whose style crisscrosses the Celtic blues tradition popularized by Rory Gallagher and Gary Moore with a melodic rock attack. Equally adept at playing fingerstyle, slide blues, and riff-laden hard rock, McCormack possesses a gritty yet clearly enunciated baritone singing voice. Before beginning to record under his own name with 2008's globally acclaimed Kindred Spirits, he spent the 1990s touring as a sideman and as a headliner, and recorded three albums as Samuel Eddy. Since reclaiming his own name as a performer during the first decade of the 21st century, McCormack has established himself as a bandleader, solo performer, and headliner on the music festival circuit across the globe. Though he records infrequently, he plays more than 230 gigs annually. In 2021, he issued the acclaimed Storyteller, a collection of 11 originals that melded blues, hard rock, boogie, and acoustic fare. McCormack was born in Dublin in 1962. He began playing the guitar at age six after seeing his classmate Gerry Leonard perform. (Leonard went on a celebrated professional career working with David Bowie and Suzanne Vega.) McCormack's earliest musical influences included Cockney heroes Slade, Cat Stevens, Neil Young, and countryman Rory Gallagher, with whom he would eventually collaborate. By age 12, he was playing in church and assisting his guitar instructor in preparing new students. As a teen he procured his first electric guitar and joined a local cover band. He also began to study guitar stylists ranging from Jimi Hendrix and Eric Clapton to Brian Robertson of Thin Lizzy and Thijs van Leer, guitarist and leader of Dutch progressive group Focus. At 16, McCormack won a national high school competition playing his own songs, and he performed live on national radio. After graduating high school, he worked as a guitar slinger for hire, and toured Europe with several bands until leaving for the United States in his early twenties. He worked odd jobs from Boston to New York to Los Angeles. In California he also crossed paths with Rory Gallagher, and they became close friends. McCormack found an in with many working musicians. He played gigs and studio dates as a session musician for four years before returning to Ireland as Samuel Eddy. Back in Ireland, he taught guitar and wrote songs. By the end of the eighties, he formed a band and hit the road. He spent six months in Amsterdam, where he became the busiest blues-rock guitarist in Holland and Belgium. During that time, he played more than 150 concerts and released his self-titled debut album for Virgin Records. It featured the late Dutch singer/songwriter Herman Brood on piano. McCormack signed to SPV for 1995's Strangers on the Run. Its guests included Gallagher and Jan Akkerman, as well as noteworthy session saxophonist Keith Donald. The title-track single made the European Top 20. Following the release of a self-titled live album, Samuel Eddy went back onto the road and stayed there until fate intervened. After opening an Amsterdam festival gig for ZZ Top, McCormack left the stage and seemingly vanished. Weary from a decade on the road, the guitarist spent 18 months in complete seclusion. During his self-imposed retreat he honed his songwriting and arranging skills and studied to expand the reach of his playing. Afterward, he traveled internationally. He played blues with locals in Detroit, worked with nomad guitarists in Morocco -- where he met Robert Plant for the first time -- and jammed with local musicians in Mexico and Hong Kong, soaking up everything he came into contact with. Upon returning to Dublin two years later, McCormack set up an indie label and became a producer. He began developing younger artists and assisting them professionally and financially in releasing their first recordings. The guitarist officially ended his hiatus when he was invited to play a French music festival, and he received a five-minute standing ovation from the massive crowd for his set. McCormack began working under his own name, formed a road band, and recorded the breakthrough Kindred Spirits. It was released by True Talent in 2008 and featured Gallagher (in his final recorded performance), Akkerman, and Donald in guest spots. The set charted in Ireland and the Netherlands; it established McCormack at radio and as a touring headliner. In 2012, he signed with In-Akustik, which remastered and reissued Kindred Spirits, and a studio album entitled Heal My Faith. In addition to ten McCormack originals performed by a power trio, it also included covers of Phil Lynott's "A Night in the Life of an Old Blues Singer" and Gallagher's "Shadow Play." It would be five long years and hundreds of thousands of road miles with Johnny Winter, Robert Plant, Walter Trout, and many more before McCormack released the double-length studio outing Like There's No Tomorrow for Germany's Sireena label. In addition to 15 originals, including the autobiographical set opener "From Town to Town," the guitarist also covered Lynott's "One Wish," Gerry Goffin's "It's Not the Spotlight," and a solo acoustic version of Jimi Hendrix's "Angel." While the album didn't chart, it did garner rave reviews around the world and established McCormack and his band on festival main stages and as sell-out attractions in large clubs and theaters. In November 2019, immediately after wowing tens of thousands of fans at Rockpalast in Germany, McCormack hit the studio. He emerged with Storyteller for BEM in April 2020, showcasing the guitarist's new trio with bassist Edgar Karg and drummer Max Jung-Poppe. Though McCormack was unable to tour himself due to the global quarantine response to the COVID-19 pandemic, he enjoyed some of the most laudatory reviews of his career from the United States, Canada, South America, Europe, and Asia. It peaked in the top spot on blues streaming charts. In October, he performed a socially distanced solo acoustic gig in the Netherlands at the 15th century Oude Calixtus Church in Groenlo. McCormack didn't stop writing or recording during the pandemic; in April 2021, Storyteller was re-released in the U.S. Still unable to tour, he announced he had completed Truth Be Told, his next studio album, which was set for release in early 2022.
© Thom Jurek /TiVo

Discografia

6 album • Ordinato per Bestseller

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