Singer- songwriter Ciara Lawless told David Hennessy about her new album Divine Intervention and when something divine intervened to save her after an accident at just 6 years old.
Described as the Irish Kate Bush, Roscommon singer-songwriter Ciara Lawless (26) has just released her new album, Divine Intervention.
The title comes from an incident as a small child where had it not been for her guardian angel or something else otherworldly, Ciara could have been left paralysed or even dead.
From Castlesampson in Co. Roscommon, an accident on her father’s farm when she was 6 left Ciara unable to walk for six months.
However, it was also at that time that she found solace in music.
She considers her complete recovery to be nothing short of a miracle.
The Irish World chatted to Ciara recently on the very day of the album’s release.
Does it feel good to have it out?
“Oh, it just feels amazing.
“I suppose it’s been the last year and a half recording and writing, and it’s just been so exciting.
“It’s lovely to hear people’s feedback as well.
“It’s just an amazing feeling.
“It’s like a birth, I think, in some ways.
“It’s like I imagine it to be.
“You work on all this and then it comes out so it’s amazing, really enjoying the process.”
It seems like you’ve really quickly followed up your debut which was only last year.
Does it feel to you like it has happened very quickly as well? Has it been non-stop?
“You know what happened?
“I suppose during the pandemic, there was no live events and things like that so I pivoted into singing for funerals but I had so much creative time to write so I had this backlog of 50 to 60 songs that I’d written over the last three years.
“It was really a difficult process with the first album, I had so many different songs and it was trying to choose what will go that once I got on that role of recording and writing and releasing, I just wanted to keep going and going so I put out the first album but I was still working on stuff for the second album.
“I’m actually halfway through the recording of the third album as well which will be coming out next year.
“So I’m kind of just on this recording rant but I’m loving it and I feel very lucky to be able to do what I do.”
I want to talk about the title, Divine Intervention.
Tell us why that was the right title..
“I feel like in this album, and especially with interviews and things like that, I’m being very open and real about my why, why I do everything that I do.
“It’s derived from an experience I had when I was six.
“I guess when I was six, like most kids, I was very mischievous and when a kid wants something, they want it now.
“It’s not later, it’s now.
“So I wanted a swing.
“My parents were like, ‘No, you may wait now till Christmas and Santa will get it for you’.
“I totally just ignored that and at the time, I was watching a lot of Hi-5 and they used to have this hula hoop that used to hang from the ceiling.
“And I was like, ‘I could make that. I could make that swing’.
“So I grabbed my hula hoop and I climbed underneath the hedge at the back of the house with the skipping rope, walked up through the field.
“My dad had a quarry at the time which was a few fields away but at the very top of the field, they had gotten a delivery in (of screening washers) but they’re lifted in with machinery.
“Men don’t lift these in on their own.
“I saw them at the very end of the field and I went running up and I went to hook the hula hoop and the skipping rope around the first one and I brought the whole thing down on top of myself.
“It completely sliced right through my right leg breaking the tibula, the fibula and pretty much all the major bones.
“The only thing keeping my leg intact was skin.
“Everything was broken, everything.
“It’s a miracle I can walk actually, it’s unbelievable.
“I must have been unconscious, I reckon, for about 20 to 30 minutes maybe and then somehow I woke up and I’m looking around.
“I’m obviously calling and there’s nobody there but somehow I saw my granddad.
“Obviously I grew up on a farm but it was the very, very backfield.
“And at this time he was deaf as well.
“He did have hearing aids but he didn’t actually have them in that day either which is mad.
“He’s leaving the yard with the wheelbarrow and I start calling him, and he always said to me, ‘Ciara, I don’t know how I turned around because I never heard you’, but something made him turn and somehow out of the size of the yard, he just spotted me where I was and he came rushing over.
“He looks at me and goes, ‘Oh my God’.
“And obviously he tried to lift the gate. Couldn’t lift it.
“So he just looks up to the sky and goes, ‘Good God, give me strength’.
“And he reaches down and he lifts it up off me and pulls me out and goes running out of the yard.
“I often think about this.
“There’s nearly three miracles in that.
“One, I can walk.
“Two, How did he turn around?
“And three, him lifting it up because the next day, Dad’s staff went into the yard to try and lift up this in the field, they couldn’t lift up any of them.
“They had to get the machines to bring them out.
“They were strong men, Grandad was in his late 70s when that happened.
“One thing I forget to mention sometimes is that when he was lifting up that gate, I felt something was with us.
“I can’t explain it.
“It was just a feeling like there was a presence there with us.
“I didn’t understand how to convey that for a long time.
“But I felt it whether you call it the Holy Spirit, whatever you want to call it, I felt that presence there that day and I don’t think I understood that for many, many years after.
“The next six months was obviously in and out of hospital, serious operations and recovery.
“My grandmother was a great influence on me because she loved music and she used to play the accordion.
“She came down and tried to introduce me to music and it just opened me up to the possibilities.
“I got this real sense that I’ve been given a second chance but I also discovered in that time what I felt like I was here for.
“It’s been a journey ever since then of just following the music.
“Divine Intervention is that moment where something of a higher power intervened in my life to save my life.
“When the gate was lifted.
“That’s the theme.
“There was amazing hospital staff.
“I had pins and plates and stuff put in but then I had my last operation when I was 11 years of age.
“I think the difference is because I was young, I had the ability to grow and to recover whereas if it happened to someone in their 30s or their 20s their rate of growing had stopped or their height had stopped growing, then I don’t think they’d be able to walk.
“So I was very, very, very lucky. Very, very lucky.”
It is refreshing to speak to someone of your age group who is so unashamedly religious. It’s also kind of rare now..
“If you look at mental health in Ireland, there’s a lot of themes arising there.
“A lot of young people are struggling.
“Often times you can get very overwhelmed with the world that we’re living in with social media where we’re constantly in this world of comparison, my faith has grounded me.
“It’s given me a sense that actually there’s something else that’s bigger than me taking care of everything.
“I have a lot of friends that have similar beliefs as me.
“In school I was quite isolated.
“I wouldn’t have been someone who was very popular at all, I was really shy. Really, really shy.
“But once I hit my 20s, that all changed for me.
“Up until that point, I was the shyest person in the school.
“I’d be sitting in the corner saying nothing but I feel like going into your 20s and finally embracing and expressing myself fully, I’ve attracted friends with similar interests and similar beliefs as well in faith.
“I also think the world of the social media day is quite shallow.
“I think a lot of my generation are seeking something else.
“We’re seeking a belief in something that’s outside of ourselves in many aspects but connects us to ourselves more.
“I don’t feel any embarrassment or shame when I say that I believe and I think as well, it takes away anxiety.
“It takes away fear when you have that sense of belief.
“It guides me and I have just been shown, from the universe, proof time and time again that there is something out there that’s looking after me.
“But I think we all have a sense of it.
“I definitely have a belief that there’s something out there that’s greater than us.”
You described the accident and seeing the damage to your leg, did you understand being so young how bad it all was?
“I think if he didn’t find me in time, I probably would have just laid there and God knows what would have happened.
“But it’s interesting, I had no pain and that’s because I had literally broken it.
“For some reason, I had no pain.
“I remember in that moment, whether that was adrenaline or whatever it was, I had absolutely zero pain.
“That’s what really I remember stood out to me.
“I guess I was in shock but also in that moment, I was just trying to get help and trying to scream and trying to make noise.
“That’s one thing that always stood out to me, I had no pain.”
It must have also all been a great shock to your parents..
“It’s mad, I wouldn’t have many memories of childhood but that whole day is so vivid in my mind that it’s like yesterday.
“Grandad actually carried me in his arms running through the fields to the back door of our house.
“He obviously started shouting and screaming.
“He was like, ‘Come out. Help. Help, help’.
“And so they come running out and he’s literally just holding my leg in his hand, it’s crazy, and me in the other arm.
“My parents actually grabbed the keys of the car.
“They went to the car and dad was so nervous getting into the car, he broke the car key so we had to go in the other vehicle.
“These are other parts of the story.
“We were lucky we were only 15 minutes away from the hospital and when we got there and mam handed me over, she collapsed after. She fainted.
“She had just anxiety and fear.
“She just got me to the destination.
“She fainted.
“I remember all these mad things happening but it’s an awful fright for parents to get.
“My dad, in a sense, probably blamed himself because he felt bad that those were up the field but they weren’t accessible by me, this was me breaking out under the hedge going up.
“You’re not expecting kids to be that mischievous.
“That was my fault.
“But he obviously felt really bad for months on end about it and still does.
“He can’t talk about it at all. Not at all.”
Ciara chose to devote herself to music.
She trained in classical and opera at the Academy of Music in Tullamore.
Beginning her career as a funeral singer, she describes the role as both an honour and a profound way to connect with people.
Ciara has received support from 2FM, RTÉ Radio 1, Newstalk, Red FM, Beat 102-103, Galway Bay FM, Highland Radio Shannonside, and Northern Sound as well as Hot Press Magazine.
Known for her soulful voice, she has also earned recognition as a dynamic live performer.
“I’ve always kind of known that music’s what I’m meant to be doing.
“Obviously the pandemic happened and it was the best thing ever.
“It was a blessing in disguise because I was able to pivot into singing for funerals which I actually really enjoyed.
“I had amazing experiences.
“One time I had a butterfly come down and land on my microphone.
“And it was a special time too because funerals that time sometimes only had six people at them so to be part of that, I felt very lucky and to be able to celebrate somebody’s life so it’s been an amazing time really.”
You have been referred to as the Irish Kate Bush and hearing your stuff, I can understand why. Are you happy to be labelled as that?
“I’ve always been a huge fan of Kate Bush.
“I would have trained in classical and opera before I kind of found pop and musical theatre and all of that.
“I think what I loved about Kate Bush’s music was she mixed that pop with classical.
“She goes up into those higher notes and she makes it cool, you know?
“I loved listening to her music growing up.
“So to me that’s a mega compliment.
“I’m very inspired by Kate but there’s only one Kate Bush, there’s only one Ciara Lawless.
“That’s the way I’d see every artist but I’m highly inspired by her.
“I always say to my mam, ‘I would have loved to have swapped eras with you because for me the 80s is the best era of music’.
“Today something I’ve been observing is artists look to other artists that are making it and they try to copy that or emulate that because they think ‘that works’.
“If you look at the 80s, every artist is so different and maybe it is because they didn’t have social media so it is the ones then probably that just stood out or were slightly quirky or strange that people went, ‘Oh, that’s interesting’.”
The song Dreams, on the album, was inspired by sad news received by a friend of Ciara’s.
“Dreams is inspired by a conversation I had with a friend who’s terminally ill.
“She’s 26, she got diagnosed before Christmas and we had a conversation about your dreams.
“You never think in your 20s that you’re going to contemplate maybe not living.
“It’s not something I feel anyone at this age should be contemplating but that’s where she’s at in her journey.
“It’s encouraging the listener to go follow their dreams while they can, while they have their health, while they have all these passions in life, to follow them and not let anything stop them or deter them.
“That’s what my friend said to me, ‘Ciara, go for your dreams. Don’t let anything hold you back’.
“And that’s why I probably have been doing the album every year and plan next year as well to do the same: Because I have this passion right now and while I have nothing holding me back, I have to do it and honour that.”
Divine Intervention and the single Unbreakable are both out now.
Ciara Lawless plays Wishes Festival, Glastonbury on 3 August, Star of the Kings, Breaking Sound, London on 6 August, Spice of Life Soho on 9 August. More dates to be announced.
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