Mark Conway has his head buried in the books when I call. He’s just in the door from an arduous and, I’m sure, ‘enlightening’ day spent in D.I.T’s library. Despite his tiredness, Mark’s passion and drive comes shining through as soon as we get talking about music.

Needless to say, he comes from a musical background and started playing guitar at a young age after his father showed him his first few chords. His family play traditional Irish music and so did Mark… for a while at least. He says “I was learning music in school and didn’t want to take part in all those things you learn in school like tin whistle”. Although he had aspirations to learn the electric guitar, he stuck to the acoustic and honed his skills before starting to play, firstly, in a cover band and later as a session musician. This experience was paramount to helping him become the artist that he is today. He says, “I was playing with players who were older and more experienced than me. I really had to up my game. They really helped me and gave me a lot of advice… taught me what it takes and about different genres of music.”

If one thing is clear from our short conversation, it’s that Mark wants to give the acoustic guitar a new lease of life and the attention it deserves. He not only wants to knock the dust off it, but give it a scrupulous Mr. sheening. “I want to bring it back to the fore front. Usually people think of the acoustic guitar as the rhythm and the backing. People want to write big riffs on electric guitar. I’d like to bring that idea to the acoustic guitar. Using different techniques like finger picking and stuff. Structuring all of the songs from the acoustic guitar and adding other instruments to it as a secondary thing.”

“That’s the thinking behind it, that a song can stand up and be performed whether it’s with a full band or with just guitar and voice”

Mark’s music has this philosophy written all over it. His guitar playing has got more going on in it than a pre-festival head shop. He speaks a new language with his guitar by fully utilizing every trick and technique in the book. Guitar licks are given an adjective flair using hammer ons, pull offs and the like while slapping gives a nice rhythmical full stop to his phrases.

The Tullamore musician likes to “dabble” in other instruments also but this, again, only builds on his guitar technique. He takes the rhythm from the drums and bass riffs from the bass guitar and throws it all into his acoustic mix. He say’s “if I see an instrument I try to play it. I’ve played in a few other bands and I’ve always pissed off every drummer at one stage or another by just sitting down and banging at the drums. I love playing drums. I’m probably not good enough yet but I love playing drums. I’ve been recording session basses as well so bass is something I’d do as well. Bass and guitar are my two main instruments but I learned the drums to improve those two instruments in terms of rhythm and stuff. In my acoustic guitar playing there’s a lot of bass riffs. I’m always mixing bass playing and guitar playing into one. That’s the thinking behind it, that a song can stand up and be performed whether it’s with a full band or with just guitar and voice. It’ll always work no matter what kind of format.”

Mark writes very personal lyrics and has had to work hard in order to get past his initial stage fright. “What inspires me is life events. I suppose I write autobiographical stuff. I write from my own experiences. A lot about relationships with friends and family, people I know and people who are in my life like… At the start I found that really tough, that would be what made me nervous at the start, writing my own songs where as before when I was playing with cover bands it was the fear of messing up songs, making mistakes. When it came to writing my own songs I found a new kind of nervousness. I realized that I was putting myself out there and my own inner thoughts. That really choking thing at the start I had to really work to get past that. I used to really freak out about that. I used to get really nervous a lot but I think that passed with time and experience. I like when I get nervous sometimes because it’s not often that I do now… I like putting the songs out there and seeing how people react. If they can understand it and draw a parallel with it.”

It’s clear that this singer songwriter loves to perform live now and his main objective is to please his audience. “When I’m performing I’m always thinking about how I’m connecting with the crowd… It’s nice to be able to share it with people and have people appreciate it and comment on it as well because it’s an added bonus. It’s about performing for people and making sure they have a good time and make sure they take away something from it for themselves… Some personal interpretation of what they’ve heard.”

Mark’s ambitions for the near future are firstly to “get myself out of this four year contract that I’ve got myself into!” After that, the world’s his oyster. He plans to record all of the songs he’s written so far, now that he’ll have more time on his hands. He says “I’m going to start off with a single release and a music video for that, put it out for mid summer” and then “plenty of gigging across the country”. He also hopes to release an album at a later date.

This multi-talented musician was among the top three finalists at last year’s Soul Picnic where he played live in Merrion Square in front of thousands of people. He’ll be performing live TONIGHT, Thursday 27th, in Meeting House Square as part of the Rising Star’s Competition. He proves to be an emerging talent not to be missed.

By Aine Gilligan

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