BACKSTAGE@THEROYAL

presents

NICK KELLY

“The most visual songwriter Ireland has ever produced” – Hot Press

“Ireland’s most philosophical songsmith” – Sunday Independent.

“One of the most focused and soulfully precise writers in modern music” – Stereo Embers

“Uncompromised and ever-shining…precious” – NME

Nick Kelly first came to prominence fronting The Fat Lady Sings, the fabled ‘90s band responsible for such powerful singles as “Arclight”, “Drunkard Logic”, “Deborah” and “Dronning Maud Land”.

Nick’s debut solo album “Between Trapezes” was acclaimed “album of the decade” by Hot Press and led to Nick being voted Best Solo Artist at the 1999 Irish Music Critics Awards. His second solo release “Running Dog” was nominated for Irish Album of The Year at the inaugural Choice Music Prize in 2005. In 2009, Nick embarked upon a fresh musical chapter by rebranding himself Alien Envoy – “my way of being allowed to do things that are more collective, more experimental and more fun”. “Nine Lives” was a collection of songs performed and recorded live at Dublin’s Whelans with a variety of guest collaborators over the nine-month Gestation project. The first Alien Envoy studio album “Loads” spawned Irish radio hits “Nothing Left To Do But To Dance” and “Resolution” and was listed among the Irish albums of the year by both the Irish Independent and Hot Press. Nick was voted Ireland’s #3 Best Songwriter in the Hot Press’s annual Readers’ Poll 2015.

Since 2018, Nick has co-fronted The Unelectables, an occasional and not-too-serious supergroup of “former future rock stars”, with his friend and fellow-songwriter Sean “Doctor” Millar. With a set drawn from the noisiest corners of Nick and Sean’s combined back catalogues, The Unelectables won the accolade of Best Dressed Act in The Irish Times’ round-up of the 2018 Electric Picnic.

Most recently and seriously, Nick and Sean have been working together on new music as Dogs, the name inspired by a week spent in West Clare in October 2021 house-sitting for a holidaying friend and keeping his eight-month-old Alsatian fed, exercised and entertained. Despite – or perhaps because of – their onerous duties, Nick and Sean managed to write the four new songs which they later recorded and released as an EP, appropriately entitled “Tricks”, which produced a brace of Irish radio hits in Old Dog Young Dog and  Heartbeat. In June 2022, Dogs embarked on The Song Cycle to Glastonbury, with Nick travelling with all his gear by bicycle from Ireland to the world’s largest festival and Sean tracking his progress on public transport, playing a set as Dogs at venues along the way each night as well as two shows at Worthy Farm itself, in order to start a conversation about more sustainable approaches to live music. This summer Nick and Sean will be reprising The Song Cycle, performing at Carmarthen, Pontypridd, Newport and Bristol before two sets at Glastonbury’s Croissant Neuf bandstand.

In recent years much of Nick’s creative life has been occupied in making movies rather than music. Having been Oscar-shortlisted for his third short “Shoe”, his debut feature “The Drummer And The Keeper” won best Irish First Feature at the 2017 Galway Film Fleadh and subsequently snagged 17 more major awards on the global festival circuit. As well as writing and directing “The Drummer And The Keeper” Nick did contribute a few key musical moments to the soundtrack, notably the cornerstone song “Baby”, sung by Eddi Reader. He has also created a stage show called “See:Hear” which has been programmed at various music and film festivals, in which he mixes live musical performances and film clips to explain how rock’n’roll has taught him to make movies.

www.nickkelly.ie

PLEASE NOTE

This is a standing gig

Very limited seating available