Georgie Boy goes outdoors at Scariff

ONE of the highlights of the Scariff Harbour Festival will be the performance of Jack L, who will do an outdoor show at the Fair Green on August 5.
Armed with an extremely distinctive voice, Jack L has been prominent in the Irish music scene for over a decade, with a string of popular tunes.
Speaking to The Clare Champion last week, he said that not only has he performed in the Banner County before, he’s actually performed in Scariff. “I’ve played in Scariff in the old Merriman, I’m often down around there.”
Of all his songs perhaps the best known is Georgie Boy, which showcases his own vocal talent and has a very engaging story. “I suppose it was funny, when we did the Metropolis Blue album we didn’t consider it as a single really because it was in the wrong time signature. The radio just picked up on it and it’s still played to this day. It’s a song that everybody can relate to,” he says of it.
The Man Who Couldn’t Cry is another example of a song of his which tells a story. “I’d be into words and character-driven songs and that one was just too tempting not to do. It’s a Loudon Wainwright song, it’s a bit of a spoof really and it covers a lot of ground in three and a half minutes.”
He acknowledges that lyrics are quite important to him. “For whatever reason, I’ve always leaned in that direction, to people who were great writers or lyricists like Leonard Cohen or Jack Burrell. Then when I wrote my own stuff, I tried to give a face to each song but it’s just rock ‘n’ roll and pop at the end of it all.”
Jack is travelling to Edinburgh next month with a show he calls The 27 club, which pays homage to some of the great artists who died at the age of 27. “It came from doing the High Fidelity radio show on RTÉ last year, which was about the history of recorded song, and a recurrent theme was the 27 club and all the different artists like Robert Johnson, Morrison, Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Kurt Cobain, Amy Winehouse, all of whom were 27. When I looked at the canon of songs it just seemed like a lovely platform to sing some songs that I love and which other people love too.”
Some of those songs might get an airing in Scariff. “We might sneak one or two in but it’ll be a mixture of all the albums I’ve had out over the years.”
He hasn’t recorded much over the last few years but is nearly ready to go back into the studio. There’s a fair chance that the Scariff audience will also hear some of his new compositions. “I’ve got the guts of an album together alright. The 27 club will probably be a live album and I’ve an album of original songs ready to go. It’s been a few years since I did one and I have a good bunch of songs.
“There are a couple of them that have been lurking around the set. We have a beginning and an end to a show but we can kind of go anywhere with it. The set is made up on stage some of the time, which is the way you want it, you can go with the ambience of the evening.”