Lisa O’Neill started writing songs and music at an early age in her native Ballyhaise, Co. Cavan, Ireland. She moved to Dublin, aged 18, to study music on a full time basis. Early on she was welcomed into the folk and traditional scene in pubs and venues around the city where her singular voice, witty lyrics and observations on modern Irish life gained her popularity and set her apart as a unique talent. Her independently released debut album, aptly titled Has an Album, was launched in August 2009 and sold out throughout the country displaying her popularity not just in Dublin but nationwide. Her second album Same Cloth Or Not, came into the world on Song Seeds Records in October 2013. The album was recorded in a beautiful rented cottage in Wicklow in the winter months with David Kitt producing and Karl Oldum engineering and includes her band Stina Sandstrom (vocals) and Mossy Nolan (bouzouki) and some wonderful interventions from London-based string duo Geese (Emma Smith & Vincent Sipprell). This new record captures Lisa as an assured songwriter, as comfortable with lyrical pathos as she is comic turn of phrase. At times she is downright poetic, switching mood from forlorn love songs to shady tales of wheelbarrow smuggling. Her voice is a unique instrument in itself, subtle enough to execute the tender reminiscence of a song like Speed Boat but powerful enough to bring the house down on the rousing call-to-arms chorus on Come Sit Sing. Anyone who has already seen her play at Body & Soul or the Electric Picnic or an impromptu sessúin somewhere or other will testify that Lisa’s live performance are beguiling affairs full of banter and old-style folk intimacy. Following the release of Same Cloth Or Not, Lisa hit the road with Glen Hansard in Ireland and then to the UK with Scottish folk singer James Yorkston. Over the last couple of years she has toured North America, Canada, Europe Scotland & the UK, opening for David Gray, Mick Flannery, Angel Olsen as well as Glen Hansard and Sixto Rodriquez along the way.
