Flying solo and being flexible for Town Hall Theatre show
Arts Week with Judy Murphy
The last time Declan O’Rourke played Galway’s Town Hall Theatre a year ago, he was accompanied by a full band. Back then, Declan was celebrating the re-release of his debut album, 2004’s Since Kyabram, and recreating its sound on stage.
“I love the Town Hall. It was the first place I played after the album came out first, the first big gig,” explains the Dublin-born singer-songwriter who now lives in Kinvara.
This time out, next Thursday, November 28, it’ll be a simpler affair – just him and his guitar, because Declan is on what he terms ‘an interregnum’.
“It’s the tribal term to convey the space between two battles”, he says with a laugh.
“I’m in the middle of making a new record and deciding what will be on it, and I’m having fun with the back-catalogue. Because I haven’t been out much this year, I’m having fun and letting people call up their requests.”
As someone who loves performing, Declan would play and sing 24-7 if he could. But in the past 18 months, for the first time in his career, he has pulled back on live performances.
That’s partly because he and his wife Eimear have a toddler now, “and also I’m re-looking at how I do things”, he explains. “It’s such a small country and I don’t want to be constantly available.”
He’s also looking outside of Ireland, planning more international work.
One of Ireland’s finest singer-songwriters, Declan began playing music in his early teens, when his family were living in Australia – they moved when his father, a carpenter, got work there. It was in Australia, in a place called Kyabram, that he got bitten by the bug. Before that, Declan had contemplated becoming an artist (his late grandfather, who was from Kinvara, was a talented artist).
For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.
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