Music meets drama in Duke Special's Black Box concert

Duke Special brings a show with a difference to the Black Box on Saturday, May 29. The dreadlocked singer and musician will be presenting songs from his albums The Silent World of Hector Mann and Mother Courage. These are two of the literature-based projects he released this year – the third being a project inspired by Mark Twain’s novel Huckleberry Finn.

Hector Mann was a silent movie star in the 1920s, an era Duke draws much inspiration from.

“He was always in the shadow of more well known silent movie stars, like Buster Keaton and Charlie Chaplin,” Duke says about Mann. “The intriguing thing about him is he disappeared in the late 1920s, right on the verge of talking movies coming in. There are various theories about what happened to him.”

Duke Special was inspired to make The Silent World of Hector Mann after he read The Book of Illusions, a novel by esteemed American writer Paul Auster. Belfast based Duke then enlisted the services of other songwriters, including Neil Hannon, to help create the project.“I sent the book to 11 other writers, gave them one of [Hector Mann’s] film titles each and each wrote a song for me to sing in a pre-rock ‘n’ roll style. I just thought they would get what I was trying to do,” explains the singer, whose real name is Peter Wilson.

The Silent World of Hector Mann has been met with approval by Paul Auster, who had a chance to hear the album when he was visiting Ireland.“He was presenting the address at the annual Beckett shindig (Dún Laoghaire’s2009 Mountains to the Sea Festival) and I had a copy sent to him,” says Duke. “I got a lovely email back saying how much he loved it. I was in New York a couple of months ago and I had the chance to meet him in Brooklyn. He was really behind the music; it’s quite an endorsement, it’s great.”

The Hector Mann project was recorded in Chicago and produced by Steve Albini, the man who oversaw Nirvana’s In Utero.

“I was drawn to him because of his maverick nature and his disdain for doing things the major label way,” Duke explains. “I hired a rhythm section in Chicago and Paul Pilot, who produced my previous two records, came with me. We cut all the tracks live to two-inch tape so it was the old school way of recording. If someone makes a mistake you go back to the beginning and you keep the best take of the two or three you’ve recorded.”

For more, read this week's Connacht Tribune.