Tradition plays key role in John’s new folk album

John Blek’s gung-ho approach to touring all over Ireland and abroad is steadily helping to raise the profile of this contemporary folk singer-songwriter. The Corkman – whose surname is O’Connor but adopted the surname Blek in homage to a Parisian street-artist – will play Campbell’s Tavern, Cloughanover on Saturday, October 22, part of a nationwide jaunt to promote his second solo album,Cut the Light.

It's an extensive tour that, in the past few weeks, has seen him play Wexford, Westport, Galway, Tipperary, Cork and Limerick. He started booking the gigs in January, while playing guitar with fellow Corkonian Anna Mitchell during her tour of Germany.

“In the evening I was finding myself sitting down in the hotel, the hostel or wherever we were staying and I thought ‘I may as well start'," he says. “I got in touch with venues, firing out emails and making phone calls. It got out of hand pretty quickly. I thought I’d do eight or nine shows; that’d be a lot generally. But I kept finding more nice venues to play in and it morphed into a tour of Ireland and Germany between now and the end of year, 36 or 37 shows.

As a member of the excellent six-piece John Blek & The Rats, John is well versed putting a tour together.

“It can be tricky to co-ordinate everyone’s diaries," he says of touring with a band. "But with this it was one diary, and it was just a much easier thing. I enjoy the booking though. Maybe half as much as I enjoy the playing, but that’s enough!”

Cut the Light was recorded over four days in Bantry, an impressively quick time – was that down to the skill of the players, or the expense of recording?

“It happened, I suppose, because of good preparation, which doesn’t sound very rock and roll,” John says. “Then the other side of it was I had gone to Brian Casey, who I recorded it with in Bantry, and said ‘look, this is my budget, what can we do?'."

John has cited the English folk singer Bert Jansch, who died in 2011, as an influence on his music, and so do a lot of younger folk artists these days. What does John glean from Jansch’s work?

“For this collection of songs, I had chosen to delve into the folk world a bit deeper, be it Irish, American or British,” John says. “I kept coming back to Bert Jansch, Richard Thompson and Liege and Lief, a record by Fairport Convention.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.