BY EDISON JOSEPH GONZALES
Bradley Holmes once played Alipin, the Filipino alternative pop-rock band Shamrock’s hit, for his then-girlfriend in a van on the way to a gig.
Two decades later, he sings the same song as the band’s frontman, calling it a full-circle moment.
“Back in 2004, my wife and I were not yet married,” Holmes said on BNC’s “Sessions with Brian Yamsuan” program on Friday. “I told her, ‘Listen to this song. It’s for you.’ I never thought in my lifetime that I would be the one to end up singing it for the band.”
Holmes, now the lead singer of Shamrock, has spent decades building his career. His first inspiration came as a boy in the sixth grade, when he discovered the Filipino rock band Wolfgang.
“I watched the band and heard their album, and at that early age, I knew what I wanted to be,” he said. “So I made it my commitment to be a singer.”
By the late 1990s, he was playing bar gigs that barely covered his fare home. “We were a five-piece band and got P2,500 a night, that’s P500 each,” he said. “But it wasn’t about the money. It was always about the passion for music.”
That drive led him to The Voice Philippines in 2014, where his blind audition of the Doobie Brothers’ Long Train Running secured him a place on Team apl.de.ap. “I was totally blank back then,” he said. “I just went up there and sang.”
His next break came when Shamrock bassist Sam Santos invited him to take over vocals after Marc Tupaz moved to the United States. “At first I thought it was just inuman talk,” Holmes said with a laugh. “But the next day they said, ‘We have a meeting, a recording, this is real.’”
On Sessions, Holmes revisited the songs that marked his career. He performed Long Train Running, Alipin and Nandito Lang Ako, Shamrock’s 2006 theme for Captain Barbell. He added John Legend’s All of Me, dedicated to his wife and children, and Edwin McCain’s I’ll Be, which he described as a song of resilience, before closing with Van Halen’s Jump.
“I would give all of me, my whole life, who I am, everything, for my wife and children,” Holmes said.
He also pointed to a song that sums up his journey: After Image’s Mangarap Ka, later covered by Shamrock. “It all starts with a dream,” he said. “Lahat nagsisimula sa isang pangarap.”
Holmes named Rico Blanco – Filipino singer, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, and record producer – as his dream collaborator. “That man is a genius. His songwriting, everything, he’s the one.”
For Holmes, each performance is a reminder of the choice he made years ago. “You want it? Then do it,” he said. “You have to want it that bad.”
