In 2009 Northern Ireland singer/songwriter Ciaran Gribbin made the decision to move on from the band Leya he had fronted for several years and embark on the path of a solo artist as Joe Echo to give him the freedom to write, record and perform his owns songs in whichever musical format he chose, alone or with a full band.

Performing live has been very important to him and in the past three years he’s played countless shows and festivals with many artists including The Script, Paul McCartney, Stereophonics, Powderfinger, James Morrison etc and shows in Australia with Paolo Nutini.

Songwriting is his other passion and in this area he’s achieved considerable success as he’s steadily built on his own now extensive and diverse catalogue. Following writing stints with many various artists including Paul Oakenfold, Groove Armada and William Orbit to name just a few, 2010 ended with a Grammy nomination for Madonna’s worldwide hit ‘Celebration’ which he co-wrote with Madonna and Paul Oakenfold. His songs have also appeared in TV programs from a USA Newsweek series to Australia’s ‘Home & Away’ and ‘Neighbours’.

He also wrote, recorded and co-produced all of the original songs for ‘KILLING BONO’, a new movie based on the Neil McCormack’s memoirs of his years at school with Bono and U2 and his own rather less successful rival band as they went through the 1970’s.

Described as an ‘Irish music-based comedy, the movie, through Paramount, opened in over 300 cinemas across the UK and Ireland in April 2011 along with a Sony Music soundtrack album and is scheduled for release in USA theatres in November 2011.

His other film work includes recording, co-producing and performing the songs in Philp Ridley’s award winning dark fantasy movie ‘HEARTLESS’ starring Jim Sturgess and was released in the UK to five star reviews along with a Universal soundtrack album.

Another song ‘Waves’ appears in the film ‘Wild Target’ starring Bill Nighy and Emily Blunt and two other songs he wrote and performed feature in ‘Love and Suicide’, the first American movie shot entirely on location in Cuba.

He recently remixed tracks for Thailand’s multi-million selling artist Tata Young.

In November 2009, through mutual friends in Sydney, Ciaran met INXS band member and songwriter Andrew Farriss. They immediately hit it off and have kept in touch ever since and met up again over Christmas 2010 while Ciaran was on a family holiday in Australia. Finally this year they decided to get together and quite simply ‘write a couple of songs and see what comes out of it.’ They wrote more than just a couple and their friendship and mutual respect was firmly sealed during this very creative and productive ten days session and a commitment to ensure they keep their new writing partnership going.

To help achieve this Ciaran has relocated to Sydney with his wife and new son for six months and as he says ‘Expect the birth of a bunch of new Farriss/Gribbin songs and we’ll see what happens from there.’

He recently completed the recording of his first solo album but has decided to put this release on hold while focusing on the rest of 2011 in Australia.