What a Garden Shed Does to a Record: Alan Donnelly and the Session One EP
Four Lockdown Songs Written, Recorded and Produced Alone, Then Mastered in Limerick
Alan Donnelly recorded his EP Session One in a garden shed during lockdown. Four folk rock songs sit on it, each built around an acoustic guitar. He wrote, recorded and produced every track himself. The only other name in the credits is Richard Dowling, who mastered the record at Wav Mastering in Limerick.
Alan Donnelly’s opening track The Flood sits in the playlist below. Every feature on the songwriter so far is listed on the Alan Donnelly artist profile. Session One came to this desk through PopHits.Co Music Charts, which verifies independent artists and places their releases across its network of music news desks. Press play on it, then keep reading to see how the EP came together.
Alan Donnelly Made the EP in a Garden Shed, With an Acoustic Guitar Setting the Terms
The constraint came first. Session One had sat on the back burner for some time before lockdown. When Donnelly finally made it, he made it in a shed at the bottom of a garden. One person handled the writing, the recording and the production. The Other Side Reviews reported the shed detail when it covered the EP in November 2020. That was a few weeks after its release on 30 October.
A room like that sets limits. There is no band to fill out a thin arrangement. There is no outside producer to push for a bigger chorus either. Every part on the record is a call Donnelly took and then had to live with.
The setup produced songs that start from the guitar and work outwards. Other parts arrive only where a song needs them. Nothing sits there to cover for a weak idea.
The Flood opens the EP and shows the method plainly. An acoustic guitar line runs through the whole track. Deeper tones rise underneath it as the song moves on. The subject is leaving everything behind to work out who you are. That suits a record its author made on his own.
On Bandcamp, Donnelly describes himself as a solo artist from Limerick who now lives in Wexford. The credits there are short. The mastering went back to his home city, where Dowling finished the four tracks. That is the whole chain: one songwriter, one shed and one mastering engineer. Donnelly put the EP out himself.
The Bluesy Middle of the EP Leans on Sixties Harmonies and an Unhurried Guitar Solo
When You’re Gone changes the mood. It sits second in the running order and carries a bluesy melody with a vintage feel. The Brazilian site Os Garotos de Liverpool included Donnelly in a December 2020 round-up of new independent releases. Its writer heard sixties pop in this track and pointed to The Beach Boys and Cream.
Those two names explain different halves of the song. The Beach Boys built their records on stacked harmony parts. When You’re Gone uses a backing vocal in the same spirit, to widen a simple melody. Cream brought blues phrasing into rock guitar. The solo here takes a similar route at a far slower, more relaxed pace.
It is a love song, though not a straightforward one. The lyric is about loving someone with everything you have and then missing them. The older-sounding arrangement gives it a warmth that sets it apart from the three tracks around it.
Childhood, Leaving and Being Left Behind Run Through the Lyrics on Session One
The songs on Session One draw on moments from childhood through to the present. On his Bandcamp page, Donnelly promises darker melodies and lyrics. He also promises some playful, tongue-in-cheek material. The EP holds both moods without forcing them together.
Mirror Mirror carries the childhood thread. It looks at the future people picture as children. Then it follows how the years bend that picture until it no longer resembles any plan. A steady groove drives the track, which gives a heavy idea a lighter step.
Rain closes the record from the opposite side of The Flood. The opener is about leaving. The closer looks at what leaving does to the one still here. It starts on gentle acoustic guitar and keeps a sad tone throughout. Deeper beats come in later in the song. The arrangement grows heavier as the subject does.
Four Songs From a Planned Album Called The Shadows Make Up the Alan Donnelly EP
The structure explains a lot about how the EP hangs together. Donnelly’s Bandcamp listing presents Session One as four tracks from an album then in progress, The Shadows. Heard that way, the EP works as a sampler from a larger body of songs.
The running order supports that reading. A song about leaving comes first. A love song about absence follows, then a song about childhood. The last song deals with the one left behind. Each track takes a different angle on change and distance, and the sequence moves from departure to aftermath.
The release carries the tags alternative, indie rock and acoustic guitar. Those tags describe the balance between folk rock songwriting and an indie rock frame. That balance is why the EP still holds up six years on. It suits listeners in Ireland, the UK and the US who follow guitar-led songwriting and small, independent records.
The Other Side Reviews and Nexus Music Blog both covered Donnelly around the release. Os Garotos de Liverpool added a Brazilian audience a month later. He has kept recording at home since. His Spotify catalogue now also carries Always Near, a single from July 2025.
From the BestRock.News curator team: “The detail that stays with us on Session One is how late the low end arrives. Donnelly lets the acoustic guitar run Rain for most of its length. He brings in the deeper beats only once the song has said what it needs to. A producer working alone could easily have rushed that call, and he did not.”
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