Wexford singer ‘Acko’ to release new his second solo album

Former member of Grasshopper and The Revelator Orchestra Acko releases his second
solo album Easy Journeys to Other Planets on the 16th of August…

Read Acko’s story and the meaning behind his new album below:

After I finished my first album my thoughts turned to the last batch of songs that I wrote before pretty much giving up songwriting for about a decade. I had demos sitting untouched on a hard drive, all in various stages of development.

After a couple of weeks, out of a possible twelve I had eight that I wanted to pursue. I used the demos as the foundation. I replaced almost everything with a few exceptions like some of Noel Quaid’s bass tracks, Simon Good’s guitar parts on two songs (How Would You Know and Best I Can) and Iain King’s guitars on “Walking On The Water” .All of which were part of the original demo recordings.

I decided to resurrect a couple of old Grasshopper songs (Captain Incredible and Superman is Dead ) so it made sense to call on Brian K. Adams and Dan Straight to play on them, and with Cursed Murphy already a part of Born On Earth it seemed like a good idea to get them to play on that one as well, a sort of “Soft” Grasshopper reunion. Dan did the bass parts for the first two remotely from New Zealand and the last one in my studio when he was here on holidays. On that same day all four members of Grasshopper had coffee together for the
first time in 27 years.

Brian lives in Dublin so it was easy to get him to come down and do his parts on all three. I called on the always reliable skills of Iain King to do new guitar parts on a few songs. My son Jags plays bass on a couple and my old busking and work friend Les Keye adds bass to one.

Top of The World which features Colm Mac Con Iomarie on viola was originally going to be a part of my first album but I just couldn’t get it to fit.

I’m not much one for explaining the meanings of songs. Mostly because sometimes it can take years for me to figure out what they’re about. My last album was very much about friendship, I don’t think there’s any great theme to this one. There’s songs about mortality and what happens next, songs about just getting through life and even a couple of “Love” songs (Kind Of), but ultimately all my songs are about me…..mostly.

Acko also shares a heart-breaking story about the sudden loss of his daughter, Sita, and states that his new album is dedicated to his late daughter.

In March of this year, me and my family suffered a great loss when our eldest daughter Sita passed away suddenly. When something like this happens, you get a lot of perspective from it. You kinda realise what’s important and what’s not. I’ve worn a lot of hats in music over the years. I’ve been a busker, a lead singer in bands, a live and studio engineer, a tour manager and backline tech and now a solo artist. And I’ve decided what I really want to do is record and release music. So, I’ve already started the next album.

Easy Journeys to Other Planets is dedicated to Sita”