Hello,

I am Aidan Comerford, a perfectly adequate singer, songwriter and lovemaker (although my wife says that the last bit is an exaggeration).

I learned how to play guitar from a Chris De Burgh songbook when I was a teenager, and then in a blatant attempt to get some below the equator action with members of the opposite sex I wrote a whole bunch of songs about not getting below the equator action with members of the opposite sex.

This plan did not work. I didn't even get any sympathy action. I think this was in part because I wrote some truly awful songs back then. I'd been listening to the sort of music that seems to echo straight from the torture chambers of a songwriter's broken heart, and trying to emulate that. Some people are really good at creating that sort of music. It turns out that I am not.

It took me quite a lot of time to figure that out though. I am originally from Carlow and I moved to Dublin in 1998 and played in various guises around all the usual venues, usually with my head down, my eyes shut tight and my bleeding heart firmly attached to my sleeve, but at some point it stopped being fun and I gave up on it for a few years.

While I'm still partial to the well the crafted angst of people like Conor Oberst, Villagers and Arcade Fire, these days I listen mostly to whimsical and witty songs by the likes of Jonathan Richman, Amanda Palmer, Ben Folds, Jonathan Coulton, Tim Minchin, They Might Be Giants and The Divine Comedy (and a bit of Lady Gaga). When I came back to songwriting in 2009, I found that I was writing songs that were a little bit off kilter like that, and that I'd never enjoyed songwriting more. I also realised that if I was going to perform those sort of songs I was going to have to unclench my ass a little and actually look at the audience, possibly even speak to them from time to time between songs.

Since 2010 I've been one half of a musical comedy duo called The Guilty Folk (www.facebook.com/theguiltyfolk), and we perform in comedy clubs all around Ireland, but there are a lot of songs I've written in that time that don't really fit in that act, and I made one of those foolish New Year's resolutions at the start of 2012 to get back to performing solo in singer-songwriter venues and see where that leads me. I would deeply appreciate your support to help me keep that resolution.

Places you might have seen me in various guises

The Sugar Club
Whelans
The Grand Social
The Zodiac Sessions - Bruxelles
The Black Box, Belfast
The Brown Bread Mixtape - The Stag's Head
The Glor Sessions/Monday Echo - The International Bar
The Ha'penny Inn
The King Kong Club - The Village
Sunday Roast - The Mercantile
The Fifty Cent Sessions

Contact: aidancomerford76@hotmail.com 087-9794187