Christy Moore has lived his life with a greater ambivalence towards fame than most of his musical peers. Contemporary performers like to talk about being ‘real’. However, Moore, aka the man in the black t-shirt, has been doing it that way for years. He has always bravely pursued his own path. He follows the logic of his music and, if this means taking the route less travelled, well, so be it. His loyalty has always been to his craft, not to any extraneous factors.
This was a lesson he learned growing up, when he saw the Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem perform. As the driving force behind Planxty and, in their earliest incarnation, Moving Hearts, he gave everything to the work and, when it was obvious he had nothing else to contribute, quietly, modestly moved on. Always evolving, always looking for the next challenge, in his later years he has entered one of his most creative periods yet, performing with his foil Declan Sinnott, an artist with whom he shares a deep, almost uncanny, understanding.
Never a prolific songwriter, Moore has experienced creative peaks and troughs – including spells when he considered his new material insufficiently robust to stand the test of time.
A triple album, Where I Come From gathers together 43 songs from across span of his career. Tracing his evolution from young Midlands troubadour to elder statesman of Irish protest rock, Moore’s unique mix of wit, wrath and rigour shines brightly throughout. He addresses a range of political, social and personal subjects, always singing with tremendous zeal and intelligence. For the most part, tracks have been re-recorded specifically for the LP (a few live cuts are sprinkled through also). The result is a moving portrait of an artist who has never backed down and always bravely put one foot before the other.

Key Track: 'Yellow Triangle, Strange Ways'