Tia Burke, Spinning in Circles
A former pupil of Kilcullen’s Cross & Passion College will be setting what she hopes is the next stage in a music career this week, with the launch of her debut single, writes Brian Byrne.
Tia Burke, from Kildare but who did all her secondary education in CPC until she graduated this year, is setting a new milestone in her life with ‘Spinning In Circles’, one of her own compositions. It launches on Spotify on Friday 17 July.
In what was a strange graduation time for Tia and her classmates, the event can be summed as one of the non-Covid normalities in her life this year. The song’s theme is normal too, honing in on the evergreen themes of friendship, love and loss. A powerful piano-backed ballad, she is backed on Spinning In Circles by bandmates Diarmuid Faherty on piano and Cillian Deegan on guitar.
Putting the production together in Dublin’s Camden Recording Studios was a significant step away from her beginning to learn the guitar back in First Year in CPC. “My Dad always played guitar and he was always on to me to learn, but I refused,” she remembers. “But when I started in CPC I decided it was time to maybe do it.”
Time, opportunity, and support all came together in the musical ethos element of the college, and Tia is very appreciative today of the teachers and friends who all came together to make music. “The school was brilliant, especially Miss Lawrence and Miss Foxe, the First Year Choir, the Open Mic nights that gave me the boost in confidence to get up on the stage. They were the roots of it. I think it’s very important that young people should have music or drama, some way of expressing themselves, and that’s where my passion came from.”
When it came to the TY year she played Miss Sunshine in the year’s production of ‘Chicago’. "I really enjoyed it, it was really good fun."
She says she always sang, ‘though I wasn’t very good at the beginning’. “But I kept practicing, and I think my voice has now matured to something that I’m happy with,” she says, unconsciously confirming the old mantra that a hundred percent success is 99pc hard work.
Tia’s musical inspirations include Kate Bush, Nick Cave and Aurora, and her own take on Bush’s ‘Running Up That Hill’ is one of the showcase pieces on her Youtube channel. Writing her own songs goes back a long time, though she didn’t realise that the poems she has been penning since about Fourth Class in primary school would eventually develop song material.
“I loved writing them, they gave me an outlet to express myself. Gradually some of what I was writing became songs.” Like most songwriters, she finds it difficult to articulate just how the thing gets together, but it does. “It’s about getting words and experiences out of your head and down on paper, then creating something.”
She says she's not shy about getting up in front of people and performing, and that helps. It also means that even while still at school she was making a name for herself on the Dublin circuit, including the Underground, Fibbers, and once in the famous Whelan’s venue, 'which was really great'. There was also an unplanned ‘international gig’ in Lexington, Kentucky, two years ago when she was just 16.
“I was on an exchange, and I happened to be there for the July 4th Festival, and they let me sing at it. It was fantastic, but it was 40deg and so hot after being more used to playing in Irish weather. I felt really tired afterwards.”
Back home, Tia won both the Edenderry Busking Festival and the June Fest Busking competition last year. She and the band also played Electric Picnic, including a session at the Hot Press tent. The weekend gig experiences, standing up in front of people she doesn't know, have built up her skill in working out what kind of songs are connecting with people on any night and what isn’t.
After this week and the debut single, ‘the plan is to keep releasing music and move forward and see where it will go’. She has signed up for a Dublin-based course in Music Business, which will give her a foundation in all aspects of today’s music industry, including booking and management which interests her. That should also help her network through the development of her own music writing and performance.
There are other songs in preparation, but not at any production stage yet. One chord at a time, and from that the music builds.
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