MacD on Music: An American In Paris

Bennigan’s has been home of some of the best gigs in this town in recent years. Be it the late Parker’s album launch (‘Never Let This Go’, available now in Cool Discs. Grab it while you still can), the annual Not Really on Halloween, tessio’s Christmas show or Saturday evening jazz, there’s something for everybody.

Recently, it played host to two American folk artists, Korina Zambrano and Eli Waltz, who stopped in as part of their ‘Fairy Tales & Ghosts’ tour in support of Eli’s EP ‘Fairy Tales’ and Korina’s ‘Ghosts In My Room’. The intimate gig featured just them and their guitars and a mix of originals and covers across two sets.

I got chatting to the US-born and Paris-based Korina on her brief stop in Derry and she told me about her EP and her career up to now: “I was originally born in Pennsylvania and lived there most of my life, then I moved to Boston when I was eighteen to go to university where I studied economics and Spanish.”

“My start in music really happened when I was young. The first instrument I ever learned to play was the viola, but that only lasted a very short amount of time, and then I started playing guitar.

"I’ve almost had an on/off relationship since I was ten years old, and when I first started learning to play I was playing a lot of rock music that I couldn’t appreciate at the time. I was playing the Grateful Dean because my guitar instructor loved them and that didn’t interest my child-self much. Later, I picked it up and my hand still remembered the G and the C chord and from there I continued to teach myself again how to play.”

“I’d been in musical theatre for pretty much all of my adolescence, from age ten to when I finished high school at eighteen, so I’ve always loved performing. I started songwriting when I was sixteen but the songs didn’t really get good until I was about twenty years old. I’m almost glad I got all the really bad songs out of the way.”

“In Boston, just last year, I released my first official single and I also played my first show, both in January 2024, so the music career is just budding. It’s all very new, very exciting. I’m very green about the whole thing and still filled with lots of energy and lots of hope with regards to this career.”

Next, we spoke about her debut EP: “I started recording that around last March or April. I had a completely different idea for what I originally wanted. I thought, when I started writing music, that I wanted to release an album, but I think later, as time went on, I had a sense of having it be more typical to release something smaller as you’re getting started, so I just scrapped together what I thought were some of my best works.

READ NEXT: Bursary opens honouring Derry broadcasting legend Gerry Anderson

"I was working with this band and I would bring them the songs and they would accompany me. There was a bass player who doubled as a lead guitarist, and I had a fiddle player and a drummer, and, luckily, every single one of them could essentially switch out which instrument they were playing.

"I was in this band of really talented guys and it was funny to have them singing about my adolescent love problems, but regardless, we had a lot of fun together.

READ MORE: MacD on Music

"It was very D.I.Y. but that’s how the EP was really born. I had just started playing with these guys and I really loved how they brought my songs to life, and so I decided to start the EP with them. We did a recording process of, I’d do my vocals and my guitar with the producer at his studio and the rest we’d record at the drummer’s house. He had this amazing venue in his basement where he records live shows.

"He had the equipment there so we recorded the rest of the instruments. We did a kind of release show and farewell show in Boston a few days after it was released.”

And that’s it from Korina. Her music can be found on Bandcamp and all good streaming platforms. Personally, I’d recommend checking out her cover of Bob Dylan’s ‘It Ain’t Me Babe’ (on Bandcamp) and her originals ‘Semi’, ‘Suburbs/Silver Spoon’, ‘Monday’, ‘Ghosts In My Room’ and her newest single ‘Losing Number’.

Next week I’ll be talking to Eli Waltz but for now Korina can be found on Instagram @korinazambrano.