Jimmy Crowley interview Aug 9th 2010
Jimmy spoke on Youghal radio this week of his joy at returning home to Cobh for the summer. Jimmy who will sing at the drop of a hat, spoke about how the music industry has changed. At the moment its hard to get acknowledgement from many places including the national airwaves. His current album which gets lots of play in America is based on stories tracing the fortunes of Irish in wars The first world war, the Franco war, the second world war and including our own civil war.
He feels that people take singers for granted the “he will always be there” attitude prevails to this day but sadly this is not true He will not always be there. Musicians pass on and sometimes with them, the music, a legacy which can be forgotten. But behind it all he feels that Irish music, songs and stories are strong and will be carried on by the next generation. In America at a recent festival in the Catskill Mountains Irish music was strong and being carried on by the children of Emigrants so there is hope for the future.
Jimmy says he thinks the death of the Celtic Tiger is a blessing as it brings out the musicians again, in a recent trip to a local pub Jimmy saw about 10 musicians all sitting around playing music swapping songs and having fun which we had nearly lost for a while due to the Celtic Tiger. When asked about his songwriting he said that writing songs is not hard, its a process that happens to everyone over time, something would trigger your thoughts and you would be thinking of it until you sit down to write, by that time the subconscious process has already been thinking about the subject for a number of weeks so it appears that you just come up with the song when in actual fact you have been writing it without knowing it over the last few weeks
Jimmy is currently playing in the Firkin Crane Theatre in the shadow of the Shandon Bells every Wed and Thur for the summer doing a one man show called Songs from the Beautiful City. The show traces Jimmy’s journey around cork for the last 40 years, its about the people behind the songs, the context of the songs and the historical content of the songs, to tie in with the music old footage which has only recently been discovered will also be shown, footage of when Queen Victoria came to Cork, Christy Ring, The Fusiliers coming home in black and white giving a kind of magic lantern effect on stage while Jimmy takes us on his musical journey
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