About Me
Hi, Thanks for taking a look at us, my name is Alan O'Leary and run an outfit called Copperplate. Which's aim is to promote good Irish traditional music. I was employed by a major US record label for many years, and when the time to part came, I was wondering what to do with the expertise I had accrued. Around the same time several friends were bringing out albums of their own, the beginning of the indie tag. So I gathered 10 titles together and set up a distribution company, Copperplate Distribution, which specialised in Irish traditional music. After a while it became obvious that nobody was going to buy CDs, unless they read about them or heard them on the radio or net, so I set up a promotional company, and called it Copperplate Consultants. This has proved very successful and we tend to cherry pick the best of the indie releases and approach the artist or company and strike a deal where we work on promoting their release. We also carry out promotional work for several recording labels and artists from all over the world, still specialising in Irish trad. We also sell CDs worldwide through our Copperplate Mail Order company, at our web site www.copperplatemailorder.com you can read details and reviews on over 100 top titles, along with sound samples on said titles. We are delighted with discovering some brilliant talent over the past 5 years, several of whom have gone on to greater heights. All of our musical ventures are governed by the musical quality of each release, this may seem niave, but that's the way we like it. We find we work a lot better if we are in love with the title. I am also a Irish traditional musician, and play a lot around London. I play flute, whistle and the fiddle (in private). I have musical friends all over the world. My life has been distracted and enhanced by the love of this music and it's musicians. I am lucky enough to work for the music and musicians I love. I also have been a radio presenter for the past 25 years, starting on Hospital radio, later working on CMR Radio and until last year, a very successful radio show called The Guest List on Spyda Radio. A three hour show which featured several genres of music, with several wonderful live guests, of the calibre of Ralph McTell, The Roches, Wes McGhee, Terry Clarke, Joe & Anne Burke, Wizz Jones, Jez Lowe, Jake Walton, Kevin Crawford of Lunasa, David Suff, Colin Irwin and several more. I intend resuming my radio work with a pod cast, so stay tuned with news of that in the immediate future. For many years I was a travelling musician and tour manager with many top flight artists, Christy Moore, Liam O'Flynn, Ralph McTell, Tom Paxton, Donovon, Arlo Guthrie, and several others, alos worked on many festivals with hundreds of artists. I also programmed the interval music for the Cambridge Folk Festival on all three stages, which entails working and remeeting up with many old pals and chewing the fat, late into the morning. Always good fun. So a full, busy and varied life all to the soundtrack of good music and good friends, a very happy man!
