music to drink tea by

once upon a time in dublin there were three singer/songwriters (as they hate to be called) and they were all three of them tired of the solo thing. so, on a rainy night in the temple bar music centre, aidan posed the idea to benjamin that they and saidhbhín and whoever else from the scene get together to learn each other's songs and henceforth be a more interesting (for band and audience alike) performance.

the idea was stuck in the chrysalis for a while, as musicians' ideas tend to do, though after our first jam session we knew it was a good idea to do it more often. not only was it fun, but people listen to a group with less hesitation than they do a single sorry solo act... not that that was a problem for any of us, at all, at all....

the resulting project is TEA. playing gigs is much more fun with other people on stage to mess around with. adding things to your friends' songs that you've become familiar with over time is even better. and, even better than that, is the feeling of BIGness that comes with three-part harmonies - especially in songs of your own that were possibly (i'm not admitting anything) starting to sound dull....

the existing cure for dullness is as follows: aidan sings and plays guitar (occasionally) and djembe and makes his best efforts to play the clarinet, but mostly just strangles it 'til it screams like a dying animal; saidhbhín sings and plays guitar and plays violin until we tell her to stop; benjamin plays guitar (more often than he'd like to) and sings and plays djembe when aidan lets him and plays harmonica when he's not too poor to replace the broken reeds... and we have a metallophone, too!

we'd like to thank the gardaí for being as apathetic about our lifestyle as we are about their music.

tea recorded 3 songs ('waves' by aidan, 'good girl' by saidhbhín and 'wait' by ben) in 2004 which are floating about. worth a listen if you can get your hands on them!