Diverse musical projects keep Mick right on track

Groove Tube with Cian O’Connell

It is fair to say that Mick Flannery’s music is truly his best means of expressing himself. The award-winning, double-platinum Corkman is as understated and modest as his sound would suggest and his upcoming, self-titled, sixth album is testament to the reluctantly brilliant artist he has become.

Mick plays the Róisín Dubh on Saturday, July 20, as part of the Galway International Arts Festival. It’s one of a number of Irish shows this summer to celebrate the release of Mick Flannery, an eleven-track LP that is arguably his most complete work to date. The album comes out on Friday, July, 5 and it is largely written from the perspective of an exaggerated version of the singer-songwriter – a musician whose fame has taken hold of his existence.

“I wrote Star to Star first and that’s one of those exaggerated ones I think,” Mick notes. “It’s talking about a fella who has achieved quite a deal of fame. I was trying to get an image of him at a big gig where everything is going well and all sorts of rock n’ roll-ish stuff is happening around him. I had a theme in my brain to kind of run through the album so that this person would set themselves on that path of ambition. Then, in the background, there are a couple of love songs in the middle where, in my mind, he’s losing touch with his partner because he’s getting too successful. There’s a rock song in there from the point of view of a roadie, illustrating how things can go a little bit nihilistic. It’s certainly not autobiographical.”

Mick is certainly at home in that narrative style of songwriting. While the album might not detail his own experiences, it delves wonderfully into the life of his protagonist.

“It’s the style of music that I grew up liking – Tom Waits songs and Bob Dylan songs. Tom Waits especially had character-driven stuff . . . he kind of felt like he was inhabiting certain people. Dylan as well with Blood on the Track . . . Tangled Up in Blue is one I liked a lot because it seemed to me that he was impersonating some character.”

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.

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