I feel like the oldest man in rock. I should get an award for perseverance."

While he hardly qualifies for the pension just yet,Bap Kennedy has been through enough music business machinations to last a lifetime. Fronting the Belfast rock/raggle taggle outfit Energy Orchard for the first half of the nineties, he sampled at first hand the kind of major label hell that most bands these days actively strive to avoid.
"We came along with the second big wave of Irish acts who were signed with bands like the Fat Lady Sings and Something Happens," he explains. "The record company spent absolute fortunes on us. The second album cost at least #250,000 to make. Half of it was done in LA and the rest in Wales. After all that we still weren't happy with it, so we re-mixed it and fucked around with it."
Despite building a reputation as a storming live act, the band failed to take off commercially.
"Things were looking good for us at one point," Kennedy recalls. "Then all of a sudden the whole 'Madchester' thing came along and we looked ridiculous with our waistcoats and ponytails. We finally agreed to break up in 1996. We could have gone off to Germany and made a living doing covers but we decided to call it a day."
For a while Kennedy turned away from music altogether, taking to the building sites to earn a living. Then out of the blue his old pal Steve Earle called and offered him a chance to go to Nashville to work on an album. His association with Earle goes back to the early days of Energy Orchard when the two met up in London.
"He was hanging out with the Pogues at the time and they all came to a gig we were doing in the Marquee. He took us under his wing and we went on tour with him across America and Canada. He was loopy on the road, fucking mad and he went off the rails completely. It was all very rock'n'roll with lots of over-indulgence. He's exactly the same today apart from the fact that he doesn't do drugs anymore."
The Nashville album, Domestic Blues came out in late 1998 and was widely praised with many citing its authentic take on Americana and "lonesome wistfulness". The follow-up, Hillbilly Shakespeare, a Hank Williams tribute recorded in London also sold well and Kennedy was well and truly back in the loop. His latest outing Lonely Street (also the name of his label) has done even better picking up radio-play right across the US hitting No 10 in the all-important Gavin Chart radio survey
"It's a pity you can't eat good reviews," he laughs. "But it cheers you up no end. It's been playlisted on [BBC] Radio 2 and Bob Harris has played it quite a bit.
"It's a big, lush, laid-back sound," he says of the album's approach. "People have started dropping comparisons with bands like Cowboy Junkies, which is all right by me. We've been to America doing clubs, playing at conventions and it seems to go down well."
Currently on tour with Beth Orton, Kennedy is about to embark on a nationwide Irish tour with his own band which includes legendary slide guitarist Ed Deane.
"I've neglected the auld sod over the past few years so I'm looking forward to getting home again," he says. "Except for Belfast, where they'll all come out just to slag the arse off
me!"

Bap Kennedy plays Whelan s, Dublin on Sunday 6th August.