Champion of the imagination returns to Clare

POPULAR Cork singer/songwriter John Spillane will be playing in Tulla this Saturday.

 

A two-time Meteor award winner, he is one of the country’s more accomplished songwriters and his work has been covered by the likes of Sean Keane, Sharon Shannon.

He has performed in Clare many times, and only last week he came to Kilkee. His shows and songs are marked by a lightness of touch, which might be particularly welcome now.

He said he is looking forward to coming back to East Clare. “I’m playing in Minogue’s, I’ve had a number of great nights there and the last time I was there it was jointed. I’d say that was about a year-and-a-half ago. It’s always a pleasure to play, I especially like the letters from Christy Moore that are posted up on the wall there.”

He does have a close association with the big Kildare man. “I’m a big Christy Moore fan, of course. I’d have a kind of connection to him, he’s been very good to me and championed me and he’s recorded three of my songs. We’ve co-written a song together for Haiti, at the time of the earthquake there. We wrote it 50/50 and we did a show in Vicar Street for the relief effort.”

His better-known songs include the likes of the Dunnes Stores Girl and The Dance of the Cherry Trees. While his own work features heavily in his shows, there are other songs too. “Usually it’s original material, that I’ve written myself… Out of my imagination! I had a couple of albums of Irish songs we learned at school, they’re the most well known Irish songs, things like Óró Sé Do Bheatha Bhaile. The Clare crowd will know those and they’ll sing their heads off!”

When he spoke to The Clare Champion last week, he was in the middle of a new composition. “I’m walking around here trying to write a song and it’s like cracking my head off a wall. I wrote a brilliant melody about two weeks ago and I’m humming it constantly but I’m looking for lyrics to arrive down to me from heaven. The tune is so good I know I could make a lot of money out of this one.”
He makes his living visiting different venues around the country and says it’s easier now than it used to be.

“I do a couple of nights a week around the island of Ireland. I was in Belfast last weekend for two nights for example. It’s a very small island. When I was a younger man, I toured in Germany and America and Canada, a lot of different countries and you’d spend your whole life on the road. I resolved to try and make my living at home. It’s a piece of cake, I went from Cork up to Belfast in under five hours.”
He enjoys coming to the Banner County.

“It’s always a pleasure to play in Clare and fair play to Frank Hayes, who brings all these artists to Crusheen and Tulla.”