Damien Dempsey plans new album, tour

The Rocky Road is the Dublin singer's sixth studio album, and hits the racks on June 6.
It finds Damo in nostalgic mood, with reworkings of such childhood favourites as ‘The Foggy Dew’, ‘The Hot Asphalt’, Ewan MacColl’s ‘Schooldays Over’ and Shane MacGowan’s ‘Rainy Nights In Soho’.
Lending a hand in the studio were Sharon Shannon and John Sheahan and Barney McKenna of The Dubliners fame.
“Ballads are my roots,” he reflects. “It was the first music that I heard being sung in my home by friends and family. I’d have over 200 ballads in my head, and I used to sing them regularly in pubs around Dublin in the 1990s. I reckoned I had a good feel for them and, as I studied Irish history, I felt I could really tell their story and do them some justice on an album.”
He’s lined up a gargantuan tour to coincide, with stop-offs at Éist Music, Portlaoise (June 12); Whelan’s, Dublin (13); Cyprus Avenue, Cork (25); O’Keefe’s, Clonmel (26); McHugh’s, Drogheda (27); Grill, Letterkenny (28); The Stables, Mullingar (July 4); Dolan’s, Limerick (5); DeBarra’s, Clonakilty (6); Backstage Theatre, Longford (31); and Chapel, Sligo (August 2).
He’ll also be guesting at the Leisure Lounge, Galway (July 18) and the World Fleadh, Portlaoise (August 1) as a member of the Sharon Shannon Big Band.