Rising folk singers take centre stage at Kelly’s

Contemporary folk music will be in the spotlight on Thursday, February 26, when The Certain Three tour visits Kelly’s in Galway City. The three acts performing at the Bridge Street venue are Kentucky songwriter Joan Shelley, Pennsylvania’s Vikesh Kapoor, and John Blek, who hails from Cork.

The Kelly’s show is part of an eight-venue Irish tour, and will feature three solo performances from the singer-songwriters, explains John.

“I played with Joan once here in Cork,” he says. “She’s an incredible singer, a lovely songwriter. She’d be friendly with some of my friends here. With Vikesh – I had bought his album prior to this tour being booked, so I’m a bit of a fan.”

The video for John’s latest single, Kathleen, features close-up footage of the singer playing solo, interposed with a short film.

The close-up shooting was “pretty intense, but you have to get on with it”, he says stoically.  “It’s par for the course, you can’t be particularly vain in this line of work, because they’re always going to get you looking shit at some point!”

Ultimately, it’s an impressive video, though, and John is glad it came his way.

“It came about through a friend of mine who’s a lecturer here in CIT (Cork Institute of Technology),” the singer says. “He teaches a multi-media course there, and he asked me if I’d let one of the students make a video for one of the songs. It was part of their course, and I got a pretty nice, free video out of it.”

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune