Luka Bloom

Luka Bloom is one of Australia’s favorite Irishman. Fortunately the feeling is mutual. The singer- songwriter has been returning to our shores on a regular basis since 1992 and his shows are always a treat. Bloom has just released a new album, Dreams In America and it finds him re-interpreting songs from his catalogue in a acoustic and intimate way. It’s more interesting than simply a greatest hits album because it finds the artist re-discovering his own material, rather than a record company simply repackaging it.

The theme across the album is the journey of his career which made its greatest leap when a young Barry Moore made a speculative trip from Ireland to New York. On the flight over he decided that in the interests of a completely fresh start he would re-invent himself as “Luka Bloom”. The rest is history…..

HHMM : Congratulations on Dreams In America. It’s just a lovely record, a very well thought out record.

LB : I really happy with it. I’m really happy that something that was so enjoyable to make and so painless in a way has proven to be something that has given people pleasure. That’s really great.

HHMM : Was the idea of re-interpreting the songs for this record a daunting prospect because so many people were so attached to the songs the way they first heard them, or was there a sense of those songs having unfinished business?

LB ; The latter, and that’s a very good way to put it, that some of the songs had unfinished business. That definitely was the motivating factor when I decided to do this. I got the idea to do this record as I became aware that 2010 was going to represent the 20th Anniversary of Riverside (his remarkable, breakthrough 1990 album). I began to think about this and ask myself whether there was a justification for looking at revisiting some songs, to not just acknowledge the songs as they’d been recorded , but more importantly to revisit some of the writing. I wanted to re-invigorate the songs in such a way that the record had some kind of meaning in 2010.
That was my main ambition was that it had to sound like something that could stand on its own two feet in 2010 rather than just being recordings taken directly off records.

HHMM : It’s a much better idea than a greatest hits record.

LB : I think the idea of a ‘greatest hits’ or ‘best of’ record or whatever you call them, there is something kind of bogus about it and that they have always been a record company ploy to make cheap money, because they don’t have to deal with the studio or the producer or the engineer or any of that. This however serves the purpose of allowing people to reflect on songs from the past but it gives the songs new meaning.

HHMM : I’d always considered that the tools of trade for a songwriter where their guitar or piano or whatever instrument they use to write and things like melody and lyrics. But recently I’ve come to the conclusion that the actual catalogue of songs is also the tools of trade and that there shouldn’t only be one way of using those tools of trade.

LB :  That’s a very interesting observation and certainly without the songs there’s not a lot that I can do. The songs are what everything is all about. The work that I do begins and ends with the songs. If the songs aren’t right the records are not made and the gigs are meaningless. So I’m constantly looking at the songs. I’ve never looked at it before to think that the songs are the tools of my trade but of course you are absolutely right. But they are kind of more than that too in the context of my professional life. They are almost like children and you have a relationship with them. If you are going to be singing them they have to be nursed and taken care of and looked at and examined and you have to ask ‘does this song really have meaning for me at this time?’ I have a really simple philosophy about songs and singing them and that is if I somehow tire of a song or the relationship is not as strong as it used to be then its really important to stop singing them. It’s fake to arrive on stage and sing songs because people want to hear them but to have no connection to them yourself.

HHMM: I was talking to Lloyd Cole a few months ago and he said the same thing, that sometimes songs just have to be rested even though he knows that there is someone in the audience who really wants to hear a particular song and will go home disgruntled if they don’t.

LB : It’s really true. There is a couple of songs on this record that I rested for years. Since the songs have come back into the picture I’ve gained a lot from them. It’s like renewing an old friendship when you bring a song back into the loop. Songs like Bridge Of Sorrow or Don’t Be So Hard On Yourself  I didn’t play for five or more years.

HHMM : Are you aware that Suzanne Vega has done a similar thing recently and she’s going to release a series of albums re-recorded her own catalogue under a series of different themes?

LB : No I didn’t know that! That’s a wonderful project. I didn’t realise that she had done that. For me personally that’s probably a little too much time in the past, but having said that by doing this record I became aware that there were many, many more songs that I could have looked at. Because we decided not to make it a big rambling 25 track reflection I had to be selective to keep it to the length of a normal CD, a new album of new material.

HHMM : The title of your album Dreams In America comes from a 1992 song. How do you look back now at the decision to go to America and re-invent yourself?

LB: Well apart from the song Dreams In  America, the reason that it’s the title of the album is that the reality of my working life is that America is where my dreams came true. Professionally speaking I had struggled for many years prior to 1987 and it was quite obvious by 1987 that I was going nowhere fast. Even though I felt I had turned the corner creatively and that I was writing songs which would stand up to anyone’s songs and I had a style of performance that was unique I just couldn’t seem to get through the window that separated me from the audience in Ireland. The decision to go to America was to be frank quite a painful one because I was leaving people behind here. I felt like the stereotypical Irish emigrant who had to leave home begin a new process. In New York City I found a great welcome. It was like a homecoming there and it was spectacular how quickly and dramatically my fortunes turned around there. Because I was suddenly operating under the name of Luka Bloom I had no sense of struggle. By 18 months later, by 1990 I had signed with Warner Bros., I was touring America and I was on my way.

HHMM : I do get a sense that being an Irishman in New York is imbued with a certain sense of history because the city of New York has its own Irish history. Is that something you were aware of?

LB : Oh, very much so. That would be the case for New York, Boston and Chicago in particular. There are some places in America where there is a very strong Irish presence and there is a certain strange kind of camaraderie that exists between people of certain nationalities in New York. Obviously the thrill of going to New York is to encounter people from all corners of the globe but there is something special about encountering your own fellow countryman. So much hardship is associated with the journey to New York and Chicago in particular going back two hundred years. Now of course being Irish in those cities is kinda cool. But  you are right there is a sense of a small group of people from Ireland, not going there as individuals but going there as part of a collective.

HHMM : Listening to your songs now I do get a sense of South and Central American music that I doubt would have been there without the move you made to America.

LB: The first big impact that America had on me musically was my encounter with rap and hip hop. It was kind of shocking because I didn’t expect it. I went to America as a singer songwriter and I didn’t expect that I was going to encounter a completely different style of music that tickled my curiosity and ultimately saw me cover a rap song – and I would never underestimate the impact that my version of I Need Love had on my career. It really did have a huge impact because people who would ordinarily never bother to listen to some guy from Ireland with a guitar singing his own songs were a bit taken aback and they were curious why I did this.

HHMM : And what you do have in common with rap and hip hop music is that is a form of folk music.

LB : Oh, absolutely. It can be shocking to people to hear this but I absolutely regard the guys who live in the Bronx and whose form of expression is rap and hip hop to be doing what the folk singers were doing in the villages in Ireland two hundred years ago. They are describing their environment, they are articulating their problems, they are expressing their feelings. It’s rough and its raw but its very real and very connected to their community and that is what folk music is all about.

HHMM : Do you feel that as a storyteller and a troubadour that you have a responsibility to tell stories?

LB: I never worry too much about the idea of responsibility because I think there is the potential for some arrogance in that. I think my responsibility as a songwriter is to be absolutely true to myself. That’s the only way that the songs can be truthful. It’s important to be honest with myself, but yeah, if I’m not connecting with my community, if I’m not reflecting something of the life of my community, then it would be a pretty selfish, pointless exercise. I would certainly want to feel part of my community.

HHMM : I saw a comment you made somewhere about a year ago suggesting that the Global Financial Crisis might possibly have some positive impacts on art and culture. Do you think that has happened?

LB: I still feel exactly the same! I can only really articulate this in the context of my own country. While people are struggling and people are hurting I also noticed that people are really coming together again and people are really discovering community and friendship. People are less self obsessed and they are reaching out more for community because they realise that we are all together on this earth and we have to work out our problems together.

HHMM : And finally the next visit to Australia will be….

LB: Next March will be my tenth visit to Australia and I’m really looking forward to it.