Embrace the World has debuted at #1 on both the Irish iTunes Singles Charts and the Rock Charts. Straight to Number 1 on the music charts for Cork singer, songwriter, and musician, Kevin Walsh, who has released his debut single, Embrace the World, a song he sees as, “a gesture of hope for autism awareness in the community for Ireland and beyond.” The single also entered the Irish Homegrown Top 20 at Number 19 in two days of its release.
Kevin, who was diagnosed as autistic at age 5, has faced many challenges in his journey to becoming a professional musician, this single will not only launch his hard won career in music, but its success has the opportunity to offer inspiration to other autistic artists.
In this interview spotlight, I chat with Kevin about the debut release, challenges, adapting during the lock downs and more.
Full Q&A along with links and music below.
Where are you from and how do You describe your style of music?
I’m from Cork, Ireland. I would describe my style of music as eclectic. The one constant to it as that they’re all inspired by musical theatre and cinematic themes, but I like to go where the wind takes me stylistically when I sit down to write. One song could be a ballad, the next a rocker and one after that again could be country / folk. If you listen to the musical Joseph and the Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat (Andrew Lloyd Webber / Tim Rice) and how that goes from calypso to pop to Elvis, that’s the kind of eclectic range that I go for and it’s all unified by the sense of grandness that you get on the stage. I’ve been very fortunate that over the course of my musical training, I’ve explored many genres from opera, classical, Renaissance, art song and twelve-tone music.
How did you get here? As in, what inspired or motivated you to take on this journey through music and the music biz?
I could sing before I could talk! I have a diagnosis of Autism, and part of what that has meant for me is I missed the natural communication milestones that a child would go through during their developmental years. By the age of four, I wasn’t talking yet, but my mother would tell you I used to drag her to the local church and spend hours vocalising and making plosive sounds, just exploring the resonances of the space. It’s not a whole lot different to the daily drills I do now as an adult to keep my singing voice in shape. We actually went back to that particular church to shoot a scene for the Embrace The World music video and I still find the resonance of that space fascinating!
Then one day when I was five, I just upped and sang at the dinner table. I didn’t have a vocabulary yet but I could sing you the refrain of Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door as clear as day. Music is something I have this very deep, spiritual connection with and it is basically my main means of communicating with the world around me. I’ve seen it a lot with other autistic people too when I was growing up going to specialist schools, they mightn’t have the social wiring to make a basic conversation but get them singing and you’d hear words and sounds you wouldn’t think they’d have. All my friends are people I know through music.
How does your latest project compare/contrast with your previous release(s)? Were you setting out to accomplish anything specific, follow a specific theme, or explore different styles of creation?
This project is my debut release. I wrote it not long after I met my musical hero, the late Meat Loaf, at a virtual comic convention. I like to take characters and scenarios when I write music. Of course, I pick themes that I relate to emotionally and I aim to turn them into something fantastic but truthful. Kind of like Toy Story, we’re not action figures but we do experience love and pain and fear of abandonment so that’s the line of the fantasy that they are toys, but also the truth because of what they feel and experience.
So the power I felt from meeting my hero got me in the headspace of: “What would a hero say to someone who was at the beginning of their journey?” and “What sentiment do I really connect with that I can give to this hero character?” The result of that exploration was Embrace The World.
People were always encouraging me to advocate for Autism because of my own experiences, starting out non-verbal but going on eventually to get an MA in Music, but I didn’t believe in myself enough to go through with it. When you have a diagnosis like that, there’s always this fear that the label overcomes you in people’s minds, rather than your skills, your personality, or your values. Yet when I wrote this song, the lightbulb went off in my head – this was going to be my autism advocacy song. Believing in yourself, being your true self, facing your fears and going as far in life as you can go are the most important truths, I think anyone should believe in, no matter what walk of life you come from, autistic or not.
I extended that too to the musical arrangement. I wanted it to be a supergroup because for one, I think supergroups are really cool and two, they’re the closest you get to having a musical theatre ensemble number in the popular idiom. I was also very specific about reflecting Autism as a spectrum in my choice of voices. For example, I can function quite independently and would only need supports in managing my social and emotional health, but then you might have someone who isn’t able to talk and needs constant 24/7 care, you might have someone in-between, like someone who can’t talk but can write college level poetry. There’s as many possibilities as there are people, which is why you have these textures of soul, rock, classical, folk, pop and theatre on the song. If you imagine Temple Grandin, Anthony Hopkins and Elon Musk – all prominent autistic people – as musicals styles, you’d find something very different but very beautiful. No one style is any more or less valid than each other, just as no person is any more or less valid than each other.
Name the biggest challenge you faced as a creative during these unprecedented? How did you adapt? How have you kept the creative fires burning during all this?
Being honest with you, my life prior to Covid was not much different from my life during Covid. I was training to be a music teacher and it was just work and then home. I didn’t really have a circle of friends or a musical network per se and I felt I was just not keeping up the social pace with my peers anyway, and that was really bothering me. I did have my leisure amenities, and it wasn’t nice losing those, or the possibility of improving my social life but it’s not like I lost touch with anyone.
It turned out quite helpful. Having that social downtime helped me to reflect and accept living life at my own pace and gain confidence in my own values without feeling like there was this big social world race that I wasn’t keeping up with, or that I wasn’t doing what the cool people were doing. I learned more about myself.
In saying that, it did get tricky at times finding the inertia to sing and write when there isn’t that scope for putting it out there. I was looking forward to doing more open mics and musicals and stuff that would’ve kept me practicing at the time, but I benefitted so much from the social confidence gained I feel it was worth the time off. Then I had that virtual meeting with Meat Loaf. He was very personable, and we spent a good deal of time talking about a previous musical I had written two songs for semi-professionally, as the posters were up on my wall. That was the real eureka moment of “This is me. This is what I want to do. This is what I want to put out into the world and now I’m going to really commit to doing this regardless of what other people may think of me”.
What was the last song you listened to?
It would be remiss at this stage if I didn’t mention Meat Loaf given how much I’ve spoken of him, last song I listened to was I’d Lie For You (And That’s The Truth). It’s such a sweeping, powerful song with an amazing production, lovely guitar, and piano parts and not to mention, the music video is just epic!
Which do you prefer? Vinyl? 8-tracks? Cassettes? CDs? MP3s? Streaming platforms?
I’m a big geek for Vinyl. There’s just something about it and how everything is very considered. You really get a sense for the artwork, the order of the songs, how specifically they were chosen and with the way a lot of those older records were produced, you feel like you are actually in the recording studio with the band, listening to the performance. Growing up in the 1990s was awesome because you had so many technological changes in such a short space of time. I remember being a child in my parents’ car listening to the cassette tapes. I remember the switch to CDs. I remember the early days of MP3s through those certain applications that we won’t talk about, but everyone and their dog used them. I remember when iTunes first launched. I think all the mediums have their place and I’m delighted now that there’s a balance of stuff out there for the people who enjoy the latest technology, and us retro-oriented folk.
Where is the best place to connect with you and follow your journey?
You can find me on Facebook and Instagram primarily. These links are here: https://www.facebook.com/Kevin.Walsh.MusicIRE, https://www.instagram.com/kevin.walsh.music
Embrace The World has its own social media pages where you can find out more about the other collaborating artists. You can check these out also:
https://www.instagram.com/embracetheworldrsvp/
https://www.facebook.com/embracetheworldRSVP .
I really appreciate Your time. Anything else before we sign off?
50% of all proceeds from the single and its related merchandise will be donated towards AsIAm, the national charity providing a one-stop shop for the Autism community in Ireland. They are very much a self-advocating charity as their CEO, Adam Harris, and a majority of the board members are autistic. That’s what makes that charity so meaningful to me, they’re at the front and centre of autism advocacy in Ireland and they are deeply connected with that cause themselves.
Embrace The World will be released on April 13th via Bandcamp and all digital streaming platforms. If you download the single on Bandcamp, you will receive an exclusive B-Side (I told you I was retro!) for the single. You can find the link for that here: https://kevinwalsh.bandcamp.com/album/embrace-the-world
