‘Where Am I' CD for TEAM selling well, say volunteers
Sales of the 400 CDs Ronan Leonard presented to TEAM (Temporary Emergency Accommodation Midlands) have been strong since it was launched at the Atrium in Áras an Chontae on February 28.
A large number were shifted that evening as Ronan and his band played a concert to launch the CD, and they have been popular items at the TEAM shop on Mount Street in Mullingar since, according to the volunteer staff on duty there last week.
Speaking to the Westmeath Examiner as he and the band warmed up for the launch concert in the Atrium, Ronan introduced the other members and explained his thinking and motivation when he wrong the song that features on the CD, ‘Where Am I’.
“Garvin Gallagher is here with me today (he produced the song we’re doing for TEAM, ‘Where Am I’, and the album), along with Trevor Knight on keyboards and piano and Jason Fox on drums,
“They are on the album with me too. It’s coming out in about two months, and it’s called Forbidden Fruit. The songs that people will be hearing here tonight are from that album, and it’s the one we did the single off.
“When it [the charity single] was originally written I was involved in a soup kitchen in Navan. I used to go over and play a bit of music around Christmas, and at different times, and I got to know the people there.
“The song is a questioning song, and I suppose it’s about – ‘where’s our part in this?’. Any of us can end up homeless very easily, it’s scary how easily it could happen.
“Most people that I met, the last thing they wanted to be was homeless, and that’s where organisations like TEAM come in.
“Because sometimes people just need a little bit of assistance, even how to manage their money. Over there in Navan, that’s what they were doing, just giving people a hand to budget, how to pay their bills, even where to pay them, how to get into the system because sometimes these people are out of the system so long.
“They just need a little bit of help and it’s amazing what a little bit can do.
“You find that they, themselves, want to give back, they want to then assist others, assist in the running of the thing.
“The song came from that, it was one of the first songs I wrote for the album.”
Ronan said his experience with the Navan soup kitchen led to him thinking about the work TEAM do and he decided to release the song to honour that work.
Musicians who feature on the charity CD with him as well as those mentioned above are Stuart Crampton and Dylan Crampton.