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Extraordinary man: the Christy Moore files

Christy Moore and I go back more than 50 years, says Colin Randall. Today I make him my Artist of the Week at the Salut! Live Facebook group in honour of one of the grandest figures of Irish music.

Singer, songwriter, raconteur, wit, showman and philanthropist, he has contributed enormously to folk from the early days of the revival when he took advantage of a strike to  abandon a safe but dreary job in a bank in his native Co Kildare to cross the Irish Sea and try his luck as a roving minstrel.

I'm an ordinary man, nothing special nothing grandI've had to work for everything I ownI never asked for a lot, I was happy with what I gotEnough to keep my family and my home

The words written by Peter Hames from Grimsby sum up Moore rather well. But for all his efforts to present himself as someone very bit as regular as the narrator of the song, Moore is one of the least ordinary men I know. 

Christy_Moore_A_Terrible_Beauty_cover

 
Salut! Live's North America editor Bill Taylor hails from Bishop Auckland, Co Durham and shares with me vivid memories of an accidental double bill involving Christy Moore and Tony Capstick more than half a century ago. For Bill,  it figures among the "grandest live musical appearances of my life". 
 
 
But Bill also once asked if there was any half-decent song Moore had not covered. An outstanding songwriter himself, Moore also performs the work of others with style, warmth and elevated powers of expression. Ask the average person in Ireland about songs on which Moore imposes his own stamp and they'll say the were his own: think of Ride On (Jimmy MacCarthy), Beeswing (Richard Thompson) nd The Voyage (Johnny Duhan).
 
The latest entry in this glittering volume of highly personalised interpretations is Black and Amber, an unnervingly raw description of one woman’s despair as collateral damage, along with the kids, of her man’s ruinously selfish descent into habitual drunkenness fuelling false bonhomie at the pub and potentially violent rage at home.
 
Down the Black and Amber treating strangers like they're kings
 
Written by Briany Brannigan of the Irish band A Lazarus Soul, Black and Amber is a newly released single taken from Moore’s forthcoming album, A Terrible Beauty, from W B Yeats's famous line in Easter 1916, his poem about the Irish uprising of 108 years age:  “A terrible beauty is born.” The album is out on  Nov 1.
 
The lyrics  conjure for Moore memories of his own hard-drinking days and the gratitude he feels for having found the strength and determination to leave them behind for good, decades ago. Thank heavens he did: if even a drinking Christy Moore was a mesmerisingly engaging artist, this might otherwise have been a posthumous tribute. 
 
Moore tells seeing A Lazarus Soul in Whelan's, Dublin six years ago. "I fell beneath the spell of Briany's lyrics straight awa." he says. "I made contact saying I'd love to sing a couple of his songs.
 
"He gave me the nod - his lines are just up my street. This song - Black and Amber - brings me back to a time in life when the pub was a central part of my life. It remained that way for many years. Different pubs in different places became my 'home away from home'. Thankfully the day came when I closed that door behind me, never to return, one day at a time. Briany Brannigan's songs are raw, relevant and real."
 
Christy-liverpool-philh-oct-08-crop

Christy Moore at the Liverpool Philharmonic, 2008. From Richiecoss 

A search of Christy Moore at this site produces several pieces about or referring to him. Here's a a brief guide:

I feel fortunate in having known Christy Moore for so long, interviewed him so often and seen him live on countless memorable occasions, singing to scores of people in folk clubs or thousands in concert halls. Pushing 80, he deserves to rest. But he has so much still to offer that, maybe selfishly, I hope he doesn't.
 
 

Comments

Bill Taylor

For me, Christy Moore's best cover is Pink Floyd's "Shine On You Crazy Diamond." Flawless and beautiful. I have, of course, written about it:
https://www.salutlive.com/2019/07/cover-story-41.html

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