Des Collins

This week we spoke to local Cork singer songwriter Des Collins. Des was born and raised in Douglas, Cork, Ireland. He first took up the guitar as a teenager and played in various bands around Cork city during the 1960's & 1970's. Then in 1977 he gave up music to concentrate on business.Des is married with 5 sons and 14 grandchildren, the most recent grandchild Lucy only coming into this world last week, and after a lifetime in business working hard, Des decided to return to his roots in music in 2009. It was only then, he began writing songs for the first time.


This was a whole new world for Des who had never written songs before, even when he was playing guitar over 30 years ago. But with life experience behind him and a life time of work he found writing songs a very easy and natural progression. In the last few years he has released 2 albums and several singles and at 64 years of age says he is making the most of writing songs. It’s something he really enjoys and when we spoke he said he was sorry that he didn’t start songwriting earlier. He released his first album "Magic Carpet" in May 2010 which consisted of all his own original material. His first single "The Peace Drum", was released during Remembrance week in November 2011 and received airplay on national radio.

The response to the album was great and encouraged Des to continue writing and before long he had a second album ready to go. Playing solo live was a new experience for Des, it was a brave step when you consider he would just have the guitar as a backing instrument. The other great problem for Des was getting bookings in the first place, I grew up with the Beatles and the Stones as a younger guy and that’s the music I learned and listened to. That’s the music I love to play, but because of my age people automatically assume that I want to play old time waltzes, and older music they tend to forget that I like more upbeat sounds, songs and bands. Thankfully in this day and age it seems that music comes full circle and people like to hear songs from the 60's and 70's mixed in with my own songs.

I asked Des about his songwriting and what inspires him to write and he said that he sees something and he just writes it down, he didn’t take this new found skill of writing songs to seriously until he met a friend of his who writes books and Des said to his friend that writing books was something he could never do, the author replied to Des , Listen I can write a story but it takes several hundred pages to do it, you have less then 3 minutes and a few lines to tell the same story, so what you do is far harder then what I do. Des realised that there was merit to this logic and has found a new insight into his songwriting. I might hear a phrase, a word or something that some one would say that might spark a thought in my mind, an example that springs to mind is one called Magdalena about a polish person who came to Ireland to work, its an Emigration song from the point of view of another person coming to Ireland to work, we are so used to hearing Irish songs about Irish people leaving and going to other countries to work this was the same based on another point of view.

His latest album "Hope Springs Eternal" was released in January 2012. All 12 songs are original material, with words and music written by Des. For more information on Des check out Des at www.descollinsmusic.com

Shane Supple interviews Des Collins by Shane Supple on Mixcloud