is third solo album Hey Dreamer might have been released on April 1st but John Spillane is nobody’s fool. After almost a quarter of a century playing music of one kind or another in various guises, the canny Corkman has seen his star rise rapidly in recent years. After a long spell with acclaimed traditional outfit Nomos, and before that with jazz vocal combo The Stargazers, he now enjoys success both as a solo performer and as a supplier of quirky songs to the likes of Christy Moore, George Murphy, Sean Keane and Sharon Shannon.

Earlier this year he sang his ode to his hometown, ‘Farranree’, at the opening ceremony to mark Cork European City of Culture 2005 before an audience of 100,000, and he’s recently provided the soundtrack for The Boy Who Had No Story – the new film from Brown Bag Productions (who had huge success with the Oscar nominated Give Up Your Aul Sins). And if all that wasn’t enough to be going on with, Spillane continues to present a weekly show on Radio na Gaeltachta.
“I’m flying at the moment,” he beams, sitting in the offices of his new record label EMI. “I certainly can’t complain. My career to date has been one long, slow climb towards glory (laughs). Whether this is the one that’s going to catapult me into world fame, I don’t know yet – we’ll just have to wait and see. But I think it’s a pretty respectable album. It’s been very well received and has been getting a lot of airplay, especially in Cork. John Creedon has played a track every day since he got it a week ago and Neil Prenderville on Cork’s 96 FM is playing it off the air. There’s a certain amount of localism involved I suppose but sure there’s nothing wrong with that.”
An unashamed Corkman who lives and breathes the culture of his home city, Spillane is unrepentant in his love for all things Cork - something that is reflected in his singular songwriting approach.
“There’s a strong tradition of individuality in Cork when it comes to music,” he says. “I think there’s more imagination down here. Cork bands tend to be fucking mad anyway. When you think of outfits like the Nine Wassies From Bainne, Sultans of Ping, Emperors of Ice Cream and even Jimmy Crowley you’ll find there’s a lot of black humour in the lyrics. Songwriters in Dublin say to me that there’s a lot of competitiveness and bad vibes and backstabbing and politics, whereas in Cork the musicians are more supportive of each other.”
Spillane commenced his long musical journey at the start of the 1980s, when he began playing bass with local rock outfit, Sabre.
“I basically started off as a rocker and then fell in love with trad,” he explains. “But I got sidelined along the way. I had turned into a folkie playing with Noel Shine, and Jimmy Crowley, which was a great apprenticeship. Then I started playing with The Stargazers in 1984. We were a really tight three-piece doing all these jazzy oohs and ahhs and close harmonies. We put on tuxedos for a laugh and then we started making a few bob. It was great fun and we were all great friends and it lasted about seven years.
“When I left the Stargazers I swore I’d sell my bass and just concentrate on my own stuff. But then along came Nomos and I thought they were fucking brilliant. They were young and arrogant and energetic with a real attitude. I started playing fretless bass with them, which I did for another six years. We made albums and toured the world which I hadn’t done up to that. We did some serious touring, playing gigs like The Philadelphia Folk Festivals and the Milwaukee Irish Festival. Eventually, I got back on the solo track which is where I’m at now.”
Starting with his first solo album, 1997’s The Wells of the World, and the follow-up Will We Be Brilliant Or What, Spillane has increasingly sung with a distinctive Cork accent - something he feels strongly about.
“It’s a conscious decision,” he says. “When I was in rock bands I sang with an American accent, and then you’d be learning ballads and singing in a folk accent, which is kind of artificial in itself. It’s a movement which is happening all over Ireland as you know. [Damien] Dempsey is the big one - I think he’s a fucking champion – the first time I saw him he blew me away. And there’s Juliet Turner in the North and The Sawdoctors in the West singing in a Tuam accent and proud of it. Christy Moore did it in the early days. He sings the way he talks. People say to me it’s a sign of self-confidence that Irish people now sing in their own accent.
“When I wrote ‘Johnny Don’t Go To Ballincolig’ I was told by various people in the industry that’s all very well John - ha ha ha - but people aren’t going to get it outside Cork, it’s local stuff for a local audience. I said to them that we’re living in a global village - you write about your own place and you write about the whole world. If you write about the whole world - nobody gets it. So it’s a kind of ‘do what you do do well’ thing. And then Christy Moore covered it on his This Is The Day album and on Live In Vicar Street so those people were proved wrong.”
Despite his close affinity with Cork, Spillane has strong opinions on the official Cork City of Culture program of events. “The thing is there’s no Irish music on the official programme,” he says. “When I say Irish music I mean Irish trad and folk - real Irish music. I’m very disappointed and a bit upset with a programme which is bringing a lot of culture to Cork and hiding the culture that is already in Cork.
“We’re completely fucking excluded,” he says, getting into his stride on the subject. “There’s a lot of bad feeling about it. There’s some good stuff coming in to Cork but it’s like we’re a bunch of unwashed peasants down in the bog, and you can quote me on that. There’s the anti-movement called Where’s Me Culture? which is mostly people who are pissed off with the City of Culture because there’s no Cork culture in it.”
But surely being asked to sing at the opening ceremony was a major honour for Spillane and a clear acknowledgement of his own Cork-rooted music.
“I was originally commissioned to write a song for Cork 2005 but it actually didn’t happen,” he explains. “I was asked to write a song, an anthem that would be sung by massed choirs and brass bands and which would be taught to all the school children of Cork and sung by the people of Cork on New Years Eve. I wrote a song and handed it in and I didn’t get the gig. I was fucked around for about six months. Maybe the song wasn’t good enough which is fair enough. I don’t know what they were looking for. I was never given a spec, the ball was just thrown into my court. It was never resolved.
“Then RTE Cork approached me before Christmas and said they were filming the opening night and they wanted Cara O’Sullivan and myself to sing a song. I handed in four songs - one of which was the one I’d originally written. To cut a long story short I sang it live in Patrick Street on January 8th to the people of Cork. It was a big moment for me.”

John Spillane’s new album Hey Dreamer is out now on EMI. He plays the Cork Opera House on April 16.