Tradical Chic
Damien Dempsey's adoration for traditional Irish balladry has inspired the Bard of Donaghmede to record his most powerful album yet.
Peter Murphy, 25 Jun 2008
A burly, socio-politically savvy troubadour informed by Woody Guthrie, Luke Kelly, agit-prop hip-hop and reggae, singing in his native Donaghmede-ese? When Damien Dempsey released his debut album They Don’t Teach This Shit In School back in 2000, he seemed like just the antidote to the culturally amnesiac wasteland of metropolitanised, moneymad 21st Century Ireland. His peers seemed to think so too, with Christy Moore, Morrissey, Shane MacGowan, Sinéad O’Connor and Robert Plant lining up to sing his praises. Jah Wobble, Sinéad and Eno collaborator John D Reynolds loved Dempsey’s songs so much he elected to record them for cost on studio downtime.
In the interests of full disclosure, I should say that this listener respected rather than loved albums like Seize The Day and Shots. I saw Dempsey play live once at the Lisdoonvarna-in-the-RDS extravaganza a few years ago, and thought him a powerful performer, but never could quite make my peace with the recorded work.
However, the new album The Rocky Road – a selection of robustly recorded trad standards featuring cameos from John Sheahan and Barney McKenna from The Dubliners, and also Sharon Shannon – is a different story. To put it bluntly, Damien Dempsey makes a far better traditional balladeer than pop mongrel. Steeped in the nuances and ornamentation of narrative ballad rendition, and obviously relishing getting his teeth into the juicy, bawdy, arcane, language of songs like ‘Hot Asphalt’, ‘Sullivan John’, ‘The Hackler From Grouse Hall’, a pump organ-driven ‘The Foggy Dew’ and a quite beautiful version of The Pogues’ ‘Rainy Night In Soho’, the big guy’s unfettered enthusiasm for the material is infectious.
Consider the de facto title-track, the clattery, rambunctious ‘Rocky Road To Dublin’. This listener first heard it on Makem & Clancy’s 1977 live album, but no matter who takes a run at the tune, it never seems to lose its vitality.
“It’s just incredible,” Dempsey affirms. “It’s a slip jig rhythm. Whatever timing it’s in, they don’t do that anywhere else in the world. I’m singing it 15 years now, but the lyrics paint some vivid pictures. These songs wouldn’t be around if they hadn’t been as strong as they are, they’d never have stood the test of time.
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