21st century music from Jinx Lennon

OUTSPOKEN, edgy and opinionated, in conversation as well as in his songs, Jinx Lennon is adamant he’s not a political artist.

 

“When somebody says you’re a political singer I blanch at that because I’m not, I’m just singing about life in the country. There is politics involved in it but I’m not at the pulpit saying we should do this or that. I’m saying this is the way life is, here it is, the good and the bad and I’m not going to moralise about it,” the Drogheda man notes.

He has never played in Clare before but that will change on December 27, when he comes to Minogue’s of Tulla.

While he may rail against being described as political, his songs deal with very political themes and he delivers them in a unique style.

Talking about his shows, he says the reaction he receives varies and depends on where in Ireland he is.

“I basically try to have a show that makes a point about the world around us that we live in and the things that I see happening around me. I do try and look at some of the darker aspects of society and write about them.

“In certain places I find that you’ll sing a song about something that has happened and people will respond a bit better than others and I like to see the reaction, it interests me. If you do a show in Waterford and then one in Cavan, you’ll see that people in some places don’t want to listen to some things.”

He has been endorsed by the likes of Christy Moore and Damien Dempsey, who said Lennon has “the best lyrics in Ireland”. Those lyrics are indeed incisive and tackle dark themes, although often with humour and wit.

He refers to the boom as the Septic Tiger rather than the Celtic Tiger and he’s quite angry about how things have gone since.

“I’m a bit p****d off, yeah. I don’t like being cynical about it. It’s hard not to be but I try not to be cynical about things that have gone on.”

He says he doesn’t want to do his shows by numbers, preferring the energy that comes with not repeating the same thing night after night.

“I think there’s a lot of hypocrisy in music and I just want to get to the bottom of it. The shows are always a work in progress. I’m interested in people and the way things go on in this country that are not spoken about but not to do it in a cheesy way. I want to do it in a real way to get the stuff out and talk about it, so it’s not some sort of generalisation that’s cool or popular or rip off some political singer like Bob Dylan or Woodie Guthrie or whatever.

“It’s my own show. I’m following in the footsteps of certain people who have sung about real things and I think it’s an original show. It’s not a slick show by any means, the whole thing could fall apart as I’m doing it but that to me is better than having something that’s totally rehearsed. I like to mix it up a bit and see how people react to the show.”

Being contemporary and writing about what he sees is also something that’s important to him. “I would call myself a 21st century folk musician really, that’s trying to push it forward. I respect the past, I respect the folk musicians of this country, I think some fantastic stuff has come down through the years but I want to push it a bit more. I don’t want to be sticking on an Aran jumper and pretending it’s the 1950s or ’60s or something. It’s 2012. I’m singing about 2012 and living in it.”

Jinx Lennon will be at Minogues’s of Tulla on Thursday, December 27 at 9pm.