Brothers strike up The Secret Chord

THE Secret Chord is an album with a difference – an amalgamation of poetry and music by the Durack brothers, Mike and Austin Durack. In making this album, they are renewing a collaboration dating back to the late ’60s, when they teamed up in a folk group named The Prodigal Sons.
The album features 12 poems by Mike, who resides in Ballina, and a string of instrumental originals by Austin, who lives in O’Briensbridge, with numerous verbal and musical nods to popular music classics and traditional tunes.
There is also a poem by Spanish poet Antonio Machado set to music by Austin and performed in Spanish with a voiceover English translation.
The landscape of the poems ranges from Tipperary to Mississippi, from the Curragh of Kildare to Moscow and from the Banner County to the land of the Star Spangled Banner. There are poems about love and marriage, assassination, travel, musical and poetic inspiration, as well as an ironic Valentine and a whimsical lullaby.
The dramatis personae include figures as diverse as Lee Harvey Oswald and Hank B Marvin, Elvis Presley and Michelle Pfeiffer. Complementing the poems is Austin’s assured playing on electric, classical, flamenco and acoustic guitars, as well as on concertina and balalaika.
Mike was a founder member of the Killaloe Writers Group. His poems have appeared in literary journals such as InCognito, The Burning Bush, Flaming Arrows, The Café Review (Portland, Maine), The Stony Thursday Book and Poetry Ireland Review and they have aired on national and local radio. A chapbook, Nothing To Write Home About was published in 1988 and A Hairy Tale Of Clare, a comic narrative in verse was published in 1994.
Austin’s career as singer, guitarist and composer has yielded nine albums and frequent airplay on national radio and television stations and he is a regular performer in restaurants and at concerts and festivals.
His most recent instrumental albums, Drops Of Jazz (2012) and A Guitar Journey (2008) received critical and popular acclaim. 
Austin and Mike will perform tracks from the album live, plus other poems and guitar pieces at the launch of the CD at Woods Restaurant, Killaloe on February 28.