Duke Special on poetic roll with latest musical project

Groove Tube with Jimi McDonnell – tribunegroove@live.ie

The inimitable and dynamic performer that is Duke Special comes to Monroe’s Live on Friday, June 16. Duke will be showcasing songs from across his career – from hit singles like Freewheel to the theatrical projects he has gained a reputation for, and also the songs of Ruby Murray, the Belfast-born singer who had seven top 10 UK hits in the 1950s.

As Duke answers his phone in Belfast, he is just preparing to go in to the studio and work on songs based on the work of Northern Irish poet Michael Longley.

Given the varied nature of Duke’s work, is it hard for him to put a set-list together for a concert?

“No, not really – it’s fun, actually,” he says. “You can kind of judge it – I’d normally have a whole list of songs. I’ll try some new songs, but then I feel in my bones that I need to do something that people might know – ha! But I do judge each gig totally differently.”

Duke made an excellent documentary on Ruby Murray that aired on RTÉ in 2012. He has also performed concerts based around the work of Harry Nilsson, the troubled figure who wrote the smash hits Everybody’s Talking and Without You.

“There was something compelling to me, or that resonated with me, about them,” Duke says. “What I love to do at concerts is maybe take people on a journey that I’ve gone on myself and act, humbly, like a guide into some of these stories. Things that have captured me or interested me, and being able to convey those things with enthusiasm.”

Duke Special has set himself another big task, interpreting the work of Michael Longley, a friend and contemporary of Seamus Heaney who has won the TS Eliot and Whitbread poetry prizes.  No pressure, then!

“It is nerve-racking a bit, because you go ‘oh my God, I have all these songs to write’, but you just put your head down,” Duke says. “It’s like climbing a mountain – you’re better focusing on the few steps in front of you, then you can look back and see the distance you’ve come.”

As his own songs like Sweet Sweet Kisses, Freewheel and No Cover Up illustrate, Duke Special can write songs with melody and hooks. Working on the Longley project, is it difficult to work around someone else’s words?

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.