Shirley Grimes

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Shirley Grimes (born Shirley Ann Grimes in Killaloe, County Claire, Ireland, 11 October 1972) is an Irish singer-songwriter who has been based in Bern, Switzerland since the summer of 1991. She says, “Like Many young people, I wanted to travel and see a bit of the world but above all else, I had a real urge to leave Ireland. I was a gullible 18-year-old, had very little money in my pocket but I had my friend Sylvia with me, a guitar on my back and knew, that if all came to all, I could busk for my keep.” Soon after arriving in Switzerland, she met two musicians, Bänz Oester and Gilbert Paeffgen. By the end of 1992, they had released their first album, Songs of Seas and Ferries, which proved to be a great success. Grimes continues to perform regularly but has also been active with Kultur am Bettrand (Culture at the Bedside), a foundation that makes it possible for people who are isolated due to illness or other social conditions to have known performers come to their locations, at no cost to the listeners. She was named Bernerin des Jahres (Bernese Person of the Year) in 2024 for her humanitarian work.

Career

Shirley Grimes was born in Killaloe, a small town in the southwest of Ireland, where she grew up with her parents and her twin sisters. She borrowed a guitar when she was 15 years old. She says, “I went to a couple of classes where I learned my first chords but most of my learning was done amongst friends, some of which had started to play the guitar around the same time as me."

With her friends Hyper and Chris, she formed a band called Everything But the Gear and they soon had a regular gig in the smallest pub in the village. It proved to be a formative experience. She says, “We let the music ignite us, get inside us and let it do its thing. When you are sixteen and the walls of your hometown begin closing in around you, making music can be a lifesaver.”. In the summer of 1989, she met two excellent traditional musicians, Martin (Murt) and Brid Ryan from Newport in County Tipperary. In the two years that followed, she played with them and other Irish traditional musicians, honing her skills as a singer and guitarist

In 1991, she left Ireland and after passing through Rennes and Paris in France and Amsterdam in the Netherlands, she found herself in Bern, Switzerland’s capital. A Swiss woman Shirley had met in Ireland introduced her to musicians Bänz Oester and Gilbert Paeffgen and the three immediately began to play concerts. “Within a year,” she says, “we were invited to play the main stage at the Gurten Festival, a next to impossible gig to land”. By the end of 1992, they had recorded the album Songs of Seas and Ferries, which was a resounding success, and led to extensive touring at prestigious venues. At around the same time, she met a young Australian woman named Nik Hanlon and the two started busking in Bern. “We were causing traffic jams. I remember massive crowds gathering around while we two teenagers belted out all the songs we loved.”

The rapid development of her career in Switzerland meant that Shirley was living a life around making music which, she says, she hadn’t expected happen so quickly. She says, “I wasn’t ready for all the buzz. Performing started to totally stress me out. I just wasn’t enjoying the experience anymore, so I quit and stopped playing music completely for over two years, publicly for four.”

When she quit working as a musician, she became part of a government funded Youth Project called “Via Felsenau”. In a period of social unrest among Switzerland’s young people, a number projects were initiated by local government. One of them was a project that provided land on which they could build a communal living space. The result was Europe’s largest clay house, which was divided into with six five-bedroom apartments with a communal living space. Shirley says, “After the completion of the house, the basement lay empty. Money was tight and we knew that we had to find a way to make use of that space and we decided to open a club.” She was one of a five-person group that did, in fact, open Bern’s first techno club. “I spent four years as part of this team. “They were exciting, wild times,” she says, “which were full of learning experiences.”

In 1996, musicians Gilbert Paeffgen and Joe McHugh lured Shirley Grimes back into music when they invited her to sing on their album Offshore. Gilbert mentioned to Shirley that he had met a bassist named Wolfgang Zwiauer, whom he thought would be perfect support for her songs. “As soon as I met Wolfgang,” she says, I knew Gilbert had been right. Little did he know, though, that Wolfgang would not only go on to become a longstanding music partner but also my life partner and father to both my children.”

When Shirley recorded her second album, Ode, in 1998, she scraped together the money necessary to fly to Ireland, along with Wolfgang, Joe, and Gilbert. The album was released on her own label and marked her debut as a songwriter. “I was very nervous at its release. I had no idea how people would react to it. At the time that still really mattered. I was 24 and had convinced myself that I could and should conquer the musical world!” Ode was a critical and popular success and, as Shirely says, “It was an important album for me on every level.”

In 2001, Shirley recorded New Waters. It marked a departure from her previous recordings. Support was provided by Zwiauer but also by drummer Fabian Kuratli and electric guitarist Oli Hartung. The album was produced by Mat Callahan, who had recently moved to Switzerland from his native San Francisco. Shirley says, “At that point, I was drawn away from acoustic music towards a rockier, poppy kind of sound. Mat gave me extreme confidence in my writing and supported all the changes I felt I had to make.”

She continued the path with Inside (2003), which “took me farther away from folk than I had ever been." On the strength of its success, she was invited to tour in support of Bonnie Raitt and Van Morrison. She received numerous other offers to join others as a “side woman” and for years, performed, recorded and toured with a wide range of artists. In 2007, she released her fifth album, Sweet Rain, which was, she says, inspired by many of the musicians she had been working with. During the release tour, though, she realized that it was time to reevaluate her musical life and decided it was time to return to her Irish roots and in 2011, The Long Road Home enjoyed her greatest success since her first album, which had been released some 20 years earlier.

Shirley Grimes says, "My 2011 release was toured extensively. So extensively that I ended up sick in bed for over two months after the tour ended. It was a good but harrowing time. It was enlightening, in every sense of the word. I learned a lot about band dynamics, about what it means to be a band leader, about what it means to have two small children and tour extensively, about how important it is to remain true to who you are, about how important it is to look at your weaknesses and accept your strengths. The Long Road Home was the album that forced me to grow up. I was 39 when it was released. It was about time."

In the summer of 2013, Grimes started work on her seventh album, Lovesongs. She says, “It was my first grown up album where I no longer felt I had to prove something. I no longer felt the need I had to fulfill something. I recognized writing songs and singing as the most natural thing in the world.” Following the album’s release in 2015, she toured in support of it with drummer Samuel Baur, violinist Stefanie Aeschlimann and bassist Wolfgang Zwiauer.

Shirley Grimes released her eighth album, Hold on . . . in 2018. The previous year, she had taken the decision to record using only acoustic instruments and no drums. She was pleased with the result and said, “It’s probably my favorite album to date. It’s mature and musical and it’s full of songs that I still feel good about." She toured in support of the album with guitarist Tom Etter and her husband Wolfgang Zwiauer for over two years and, in fact, performed in Ireland for the first time in nearly 30 years. She says, “Going home was one of the most important steps I could have taken. I still feel the sensation I had when I entered that pub in my hometown to see it filled with faces I remembered from my youth. I’m grateful to have had the chance to experience that feeling.”

The River Project

In May 2017, Clíodhna Ní Aodáin approached Shirley Grimes and expressed her dismay at the global refugee crisis. She said “Shirley, we have to do something” and the two of them came up with a concept, which involved communicating a message of unity, respect, tolerance and love to everybody, and not just to those who were in agreement with each other.

Their vision was to bring hundreds of voices together, from as many different nations and creeds possible to join their voices and instruments in a single song. The response was overwhelming and people with widely differing backgrounds spent a day together learning the song – “One River”, written by Shirley – and getting to know each other. Shirley’s band accompanied the assembled choir, which was conducted by Clíodhna Ní Aodáin and the moments, both during the rehearsal and in performance, were captured on video. To make the song – and the movement – as accessible as possible, they released an mp3 audio track of the song for downloading as well as the recordings of the choir parts, an instrumental playback and the vocal score, all free of charge. Shirley says, “And that is exactly what happened. We had an amazing day with hundreds of people.” The videos are still available on YouTube and other streaming platforms.

The Covid years and playing with Hank Shizzoe

As was the case for artists around the world, Shirley’s performing and recording plans were interrupted by the Covid pandemic and during that time, she spent time with her family and worked on some practical skills. “I learned how to make a bed, a table, how to plane wood and do a clean cut,” she says.

When the situation allowed it, she started getting together on a regular basis with Hank Shizzoe, a renowned Swiss roots-music artist. They had long spoken about playing music together but their busy schedules and made it impossible. When the clubs and concert venues were closed, they realized that they had time to spend time together and to “play each other our favorite songs, songs that shaped us, songs that made us.” In March of 2022, Hank and Shirley started touring with a program called “The Songs That Made Us”, which stemmed from their casual living room sessions. They had planned to do a month-long tour but popular demand led them to add some additional dates in November of that year. Shirley has written that she would like to thank “popular demand” for making the project so successful and memorable. She adds, “Making music with Hank has helped to get me through the madness happening in the world. I am grateful for every moment spent together.”

Kultur am Bettrand (Culture at the Bedside)

When Shirley turned fifty in 2022, she founded Kultur am Bettrand (English: Culture at the Bedside), a charity that brings musicians, authors, and poets into the homes of people who are isolated due to illness or circumstance, where private performances are offered free of charge. Her visibility in Switzerland has also made it possible to arrange performances in hospitals or other institutions where people are cut off from the world

In the British music magazine RnR, Shirley was quoted as saying, “Isolation is a central theme for me. I know how it can ruin or nearly break you. I have a lot of history with isolation so it’s a subject about which I can speak with confidence.” The Kultur am Bettrand concerts address social isolation at the ultimate grassroots level. “I just wanted to create a space where I can call talented artists and say ‘Can you visit so-and so?’”, Shirley explains. “These musicians know it’s not about publicity or how many people are coming. It's you and your instrument, in one of the most real situations you can imagine.”

Personal life

Shirley Grimes married Swiss/Austrian bassist/composer Wolfgang Zwiauer. They have two children, Sophie and Dylan.

Discography

• Songs of Seas and Ferries (1991)
• Ode (1998)
• New Waters (2001)
• Inside (2003)
• Sweet Rain (2007)
• The Long Road Home (2011)
• Lovesongs (2015)
• Hold On (2018)

External links

Official Shirley Grimes website, https://www.shirleygrimes.com/

Kultur am Bettrand website (English version), https://www.kulturambettrand.ch/en

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