POP-FOLK...
MICK FLANNERY AT THE IRISH CULTURAL CENTER
by Mick Walsh
Pour réserver : Centre Culturel Irlandais – Paris – France 28 janv. 2015 19:30 – 21:00
“I prefer the darker side of the human psyche. Pop songs do nothing for me because they’re all happy-clappy, “You’re the apple of my eye” stuff. Well what about when love fades? What about the death of love - that’s what I want to talk about.”
Singer-songwriter Mick Flannery muses about the inspiration for his songs because the reality is that Mick is far from a depressive who expects dark things to happen.
“I get rid of all my confusions and dark thoughts through my songs. Recently I heard Ed Sheerhan say the same thing but the difference is that he gets rid of the bad things and marries them to a pop tune and makes a packet at the same time - I take my hat off to him”.
Mick’s forthcoming performance at the Centre Culturel Irlandais will be his first trip to Paris.
“I’m not sure if Paris will inspire any songs – it depends if I have much time to sit in a stupor. Writing takes a lot of free time and boredom.
I wrote a lot of the songs for my last album ‘By The Rule’ while I lived in Berlin – it all came from just walking around on my own with half an idea for a melody in my head. I’d be just looking at new things and looking at people and thrashing out ideas and maybe having a couple of drinks to loosen up the synopsis. If I have an idea I think about it all day but that’s only true when there’s something fresh in my mind that I’d like to get finished because I think it might be worth it.”
Originally from Blarney outside of Cork, Mick has recently moved to Ennis.
“I moved to Ennis to get away from hipsters, there aren’t any in Clare, they export them all. Ennis is one of the last places where I can feel safe from hipsters.”
Flannery’s fourth album ‘By the Rule’ ushers the listener into a world which is by times emotional, romantic, insightful and hopeful.
“A lot of my songs are influenced by Casey Black, an American singer-songwriter friend of mine. His style of song-writing is kind of philosophical, he writes songs about the human condition, ‘Why do I feel this way’. I got influenced by all that – and he made me go into my head – and start thinking about the way I think.
Casey says that he reads books and writes songs because he believes there’s someone out there who knows how to live better – and he doesn’t know – but he wants to know what is the right way to live.
So ‘By The Rule’ is influenced by that idea of what rules should we follow”. ‘The Small Fire’ is one of the stand-out tracks, “The song is about someone like me, just thinking too much, thinking about everything that’s involved in life and just getting themselves down. You start the thinking process but then the process takes over. That line actually comes from a story about my maternal grandfather.
When he was 3 years old, his father died, leaving his mother to run the farm and raise the family. So one day she went into town, leaving his older sister to mind him, but he went out into the hay shed to play with matches and he burnt the whole lot down. The fire got away from him – and everything was burnt and it was a total disaster for his mother. So when she returned home, she saw the whole barn gone up in smoke but she couldn’t find him and she was worried sick. But he’d gone hiding under the bed because he realized that he’d done something wrong, and when she found him she had to coax him out and he said to her ‘I lit the small fire Mam – but I don’t know who lit the big one’. And that was his explanation and it became a popular line in our family and it sums up the idea that your thoughts can run away with you”.
Mick released his first album ‘Evening Train (2005)’ when he was just 20 but admits that performing didn’t come naturally, “The song-writing, the creation is the nicest part. But I often thought that performing just wasn’t for me because I was so shy; it just didn’t add up, it didn’t fit with my personality so it took me a while to reconcile to it. I like a bit of banter from the audience because it can release the nervous tension that exists at some gigs. You can’t get away from the unnatural setting that involves one person standing up in front of other people, on a raised platform and performing. There’s just something strange about it.”
At 30 Mick is a consummate performer regularly playing to sell-out audiences at iconic venues like Dublin’s Olympia Theatre, the Cork Opera House and Belfast’s Limelight.
In March he will tour in Germany : “German audiences sit very attentively, listening to everything that you have and then they clap for the same length of time after every song. So you’re not really aware if you’re impressing them or not. They’re kind of withholding judgement and they make their decision at the end of the concert. Then they give you a standing ovation out of the blue and you think ‘Jaysus what gig was I at’?”
Flannery’s second album ‘White Lies’ was released in 2008 but his commercial breakthrough arrived in 2012 with the release of ‘Red to Blue’ which was Ireland’s number one best-selling album for several weeks. “Then I signed to Universal Records and they left me to my own devices to record ‘By The Rule’. But while they might be regretting it because it hasn’t done as many sales as the previous ones, this is the album that I like the best. I sound like myself here, I feel more comfortable.”
Mick will bring his compelling voice and vision to the Centre Culturel Irlandais on Wednesday 28th January; a master singer songwriter performing his best work to date…. hipsters be warned!
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