Singer David driven by passion for language

Groove Tube with Jimi McDonnell – tribunegroove@gmail.com

A young man inspired by the likes of Brendan Behan, Leonard Cohen and Nick Cave, David Keenan comes to Galway City on Friday, April 13, to play Monroe’s Live. With a new EP to promote, the Dundalk native is in the middle of a nationwide tour.

“It’s my first tour on my own, really,” says David. “It’s so personal in that sense, and it’s a beautiful thing when you see a room and it’s full.

“I’m meeting versions of myself, people who are on the very same wavelength,” he continues. “When you’re a young kid, you strive to find your tribe and I’m finding them along the way.”

David has invited spoken-word performers to join him at some of his shows, as he’s a keen poetry fan.

“It’s just a love of language,” he says. “Because words are spells. Language can be intoxicating, and what I’m trying to get across is that lyrics these days are kind of put in the bargain bucket.  I think they’re being dumbed-down, and it’s a travesty, a disgrace, because we have the richest history of language, poetry and storytelling in the cosmos,” he asserts.

“The majority of what you’re hearing on the radio today and the majority of stuff that’s readily available to kids is so dumbed down, it’s damaging,” David adds.  “It’s devolution, it ain’t evolution.”

His approach couldn’t be more different.

“I’m aware of my history, and the bardic tradition. Every song is like a prayer to me, I’m not just getting up there and lashing it out.”

On the song Cobwebs the Dublin-based narrator is on his way to meet a girl when he hears a drunk shouting on Jervis Street. This juxtaposition of despair and romance shows Keenan’s eye for detail and his skills as a poet.

“That image was inspired by real life,” he says. “There was this guy walking up Jervis Street with a sleeping bag wrapped around him and a bottle of wine. He was screaming at this busker to get a job, and I found great irony in that. There are so many characters out there, and you just have to document them.”

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.