Conor Mulroy - Conor Mulroy – The Last Circus Act

Accomplished composer, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Conor Mulroy comments in an upcoming interview with AXS.com that “the lyrics were the most important part” of his new record The Last Circus Act, now for sale in digital stores worldwide. 

Completely different from his approach to making  his well-received mandolin-driven and purely instrumental 2012 release “Foxfire,” indeed, from start to finish.

Mulroy adds, “the accompaniment was important as well, but it had to tell the story I was attempting to convey.  And the instrumentals were almost like silent movies in that they told the same story of the concept of the album-just without the lyrics.  In a sense The Last Circus Act is about time and our inability to understand it.  Everything has to have a beginning and an end, and that’s clear and we understand that, but how we fill the time in between that and give it meaning is open to interpretation.”

The Last Circus Act  is a spiritually-led musical  journey in its entirety – one that was prompted by an unexpected, near-death skiing accident that left Conor in an ICU for 5 days and with a broken hip.  This happened in the Beartooth mountains of Montana. He draws the lyrical material on The Last Circus Act from this experience, using a different lens from his well-received 2012 mandolin-focused release “Foxfire.” 

Inspired by the raw honesty of Leonard Cohen and Nick Drake’s writing, he turned to music to process his experience and to heal on all levels.  He brought his banjo, his mandolin, an old Ribbon microphone, and a sketchbook of material with him when he made his way from his New England home to Lake Arrowhead, CA with longtime friend and producer Michael Feingold (the Roots, Eryka Badu and Prince). Engineer Damien Lewis (the Wood Brothers and Rihanna) joined them to run the sessions. 

They set that old Ribbon microphone up in the middle of a converted cabin living room-recording studio for what became ten days of recording and what became The Last Circus Act.  Six tracks were laid down immediately: “Old Country Road,” “In Winter’s Wind,” “The Distant Tower,” “Brown’s Island,” “Norwegian Eyes,” and “Struttin’ to Some Granola.”  Then the search for more material began.

Flipping through his sketchbook Mulroy played songs he had originally thought were throw-aways.  From this material came “The Last Circus Act,” a song in 6/8 that turned out to be the closing track for the record.

The result is a singer/songwriter record with a natural, eclectic, roots feel to it all the way from its name to the featured woodpecker chirping on that closing track too. 

Er’ the adventurer in music and in nature….. for Mulroy (Feingold and Lewis too) the most exciting part of the process was having little idea at the beginning what the final result would be when they began recording. The process was just as rewarding as the result.  The same could be said for Conor’s approach to life these days too.

The Last Circus Act features keyboardist Patrick Warren (Bob Dylan, Tom Waits), pedal steel/dobro player Dave Easley (the Brian Blade Fellowship), vocalist Lindsay Paige Garfield and drummer Tom Arey. Feingold also wrote string arrangements for the record. Lewis mixed The Last Circus Act and Lurssen Mastering put the final touches on it.