Album Notes

Seán Lightholder is an Irishman from the San Francisco bay area.

In 1998 he created the Bay Area Open Mic Calendar to support the bay area music scene. His band, Kerbside, got some radio airplay with their EP \"Next April\" in 2001. The duo moved to Ireland and released their album \"Anything Strange\" to extensive critical acclaim and some European radio airplay, allowing them to tour Ireland and the UK following its release.

Seán founded songwriter.ie in the same spirit as the Bay Area Open Mic Calendar and began to explore Irish traditional music with the bodhrán (Irish drum) and mandolin.

In September 2008 he recorded \"True Story,\" his first solo album. It sold out in less than 2 weeks - prior to its scheduled October \'08 release. The album is a collection of original, narrative songs that range from the whimsical to the melancholy. \"The Ballad of Lou McKenzie\" talks about a Modoc Indian logger in the Sierra foothills, \"Baghdad by the Bay\" is set in San Francisco during WWII, \"The Tippler\" is an Irish pub fight gone hilariously wrong while \"Mary Jane\" illustrates the, um, hazards of marijuana consumption. Add in tracks such as the heartfelt \"Leaving Athlone,\" and the album covers a lot of ground.

Recorded in just 12 hours, \"True Story\" was recorded in Lakeland Studios in Glasson, County Westmeath, Ireland. In addition to Seán\'s bodhrán and mandolin accompaniment, engineer and former Alphastates drummer Mike O\'Dowd rounds off the album with some excellent, understated drumkit playing on several tracks.