Clodagh Simonds
| Clodagh Simonds | |
|---|---|
| Birth name | Clodagh Simonds |
| Born |
16 May 1953 Banbridge, County Down, Northern Ireland |
| Instruments | Voice, piano, keyboard, Harmonium |
| Labels | Deram, Janet Records, Die Stadt |
| Associated acts | Fovea Hex, Mellow Candle, Mike Oldfield, Steven Wilson |
| Website | Official Website |
Clodagh Simonds (English pronunciation: Clo-da) Clodagh; (born 16 May 1953), is an Irish musician, songwriter and singer. She was born in Banbridge, County Down, Northern Ireland and raised and educated in Killiney, County Dublin.
At the age of eleven, she formed her first band, Mellow Candle, with two schoolfriends, Alison Bools (later Williams, later O'Donnell) and Maria White. They released their first single, "Feelin' High", on SNB Records in 1968, when she was 15. Three years later, and with an expanded line-up, Mellow Candle released their only album, Swaddling Songs, which made little or no impact beyond Ireland until around twenty-five years later. The group disbanded in 1973. Between 1972 and 1975, she guested on Thin Lizzy's second album, Shades of a Blue Orphanage, and two Mike Oldfield albums: Hergest Ridge and Ommadawn, helping Oldfield to coin the title of the latter. She also appears on Oldfield's Amarok album, his 1990 spiritual sequel to Ommadawn. Between 1976 and 1986, she lived in New York where she worked in a band with Carter Burwell and Stephen Bray, as well as writing music for two theatre productions at La MaMa ETC, and occasionally working for Virgin Records.
Working within the recording industry had a negative impact on her career aims, and subsequently she resumed her long-abandoned studies of piano, and began studying music of other cultures. In 1992, Simonds relocated from London to West Cork to focus on writing music. In 1996, her mini-album Six Elementary Songs was produced by Tom Newman and released on the Tokyo-based label Evangel Records. That same year, the album Virgin Prophet—consisting mostly of recordings for Deram by a pre-drums line-up of Mellow Candle—was released by UK label Kissing Spell. It also featured two even earlier solo demos, written and recorded by Simonds at the age of 16.
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