Mike aims to hook new fans with Market Plaice

Galway-based singer-songwriter Michael O’Connor will be in Galway’s Town Hall Theatre Studio next Thursday, June 29, launching his third album, Market Plaice.

Mayo-born Mike left school aged 16 and spent 20 years as a butcher, many of them in Colleran’s on the City’s Mainguard Street.

He always loved music and pursued it in earnest 2002 after suffering a back injury. He bought a guitar and began learning Irish ballads, followed by the songs of John Prine, Steve Goodman, Johnny Cash and Roy Orbison. Then he started writing his own material, finishing his first album Octopus Tattoo in 2006 and second album in 2013.

Mike did the Access Music Programme in 2009 and a FETAC English course at night, followed by an Access Course. That led to the BA Connect in NUIG. He graduated in 2016 with a degree in English, Philosophy, and Drama, and decided to return to music.

The new album’s title track Market Plaice is based on how a fish feels, breathing its last breath in a market stall and relates to animal cruelty. Another song is Sanctimonious-ness, for which he won the John Arden award at NUIG when he wrote it as a poem. It’s based on religion – Mike goes to Mass chiefly for the music but has “good time for God”. Pet Named Lyrics asserts that the music business is more cut-throat than butchering.

For more, read this week’s Galway City Tribune.