Remembering Mic

A year to the day after his tragic death in Amsterdam, family, friends and fans of the late Mic Christopher will be gathering in Vicar St. for an evening of Skylarkin’ on November 29. All 1200 tickets for the night sold out within a week, with the proceeds going to a children’s speech therapy charity.

“It’s sort of a joint venture – it’s a celebration of his life on the anniversary of his death, and it’s also the posthumous launch of his album,” explains the late singer’s sister Maureen. “The album will actually be in the shops that day.”

The album Skylarkin’ was completed by former Mary Janes bandmate Karl Odlum, using the Dublin recordings Mic had just finished prior to departing on his ill-fated European tour supporting The Waterboys.

“Before Mic went away with The Waterboys last year he finished recording all of his own work for the album, and he left it with Karl Odlum with instructions about what he wanted done with it, in terms of certain people doing backing vocals on certain tracks and the whole lot,” explains Maureen. “All his end of it was finished. The way Mic was was kind of, ‘There you go, get it finished and I’ll be back in two months!’ I didn’t actually know anything about this but, after he died, Karl got in touch with me to say, ‘Look, it’s all here, it’s ready to go and it’s just a matter of getting it finished’.

“So we decided we’d just get at it and get it done. So literally everything that he wanted done in terms of backing vocals – he wanted Glen to do a little bit in places and things like that – we got done. Over the past year we’ve got together at different times and got the various parts done. Karl’s been working flat-out along with Dave, his brother. And we’ve just got it finished off.”

There are 11 tracks featured on Skylarkin’, including all of the songs from Mic’s solo Heyday EP (including ‘Listen Girl’ which Glen Hansard covered for The Frames’ Headlong EP). Other tracks include ‘I’ve Got Your Back’, ‘Daydreaming’ and ‘The Loneliest Man In Town’.

“The title track is probably the only one that nobody will be familiar with,” says Maureen. “I’d never heard it myself until just a couple of months ago when Karl played it to me. It’s absolutely gorgeous – very, very different from the rest of his music. Very upbeat, a lovely tune.”

The album cover and sleeve also features artwork by Mic and some never before seen photos of him performing in New York last summer. “The cover is a picture Mic did himself – it’s like a cartoon character of a little boy peeping over a wall made of stars, and it’s very childlike and simple. And there’s also quite a few photographs taken over the last year of his life by this photographer called Patrick Glennon from New Jersey. Patrick became a good friend of Mic and Glen from when they were playing in the States last year.”

The Vicar St. night will feature some of Ireland’s premier live performers, all interpreting Mic’s work – both solo and with The Mary Janes.

“First of all, The Mary Janes are getting back together for the night, with various different people singing. The whole night is going to concentrate on Mick’s own stuff, so it’ll either be music that he made with The Mary Janes or his later solo stuff. So it’ll be an awful lot of well-known people around the Irish music scene but basically none of them performing their own stuff. So there’s The Mary Janes, The Frames, Kila, Maria Doyle Kennedy, Mundy, Damien Rice and Nina Hynes, to name just a few. We’re also pulling in a few people from years back – like The Pale.”

The album (on Loza Records) will be on sale on the night and also available in all good record stores nationally. There’s also talk of re-releasing The Mary Janes’ Hunter S. Records 1993 debut Bored Of Their Laughing a little further down the road. For the moment, however, there was a lot of debate but Maureen is satisfied that Skylarkin’ is being released exactly the way Mic would’ve wanted it.

“There was a lot of people suggesting various things over the year. You know, why don’t we throw in this track or try that or whatever. There was a lot of talk about including a DVD with it, but in the end I just decided against the whole lot. The album is exactly the way Mic wanted it. I didn’t add anything extra. There was talk of maybe even making it a tribute album, but it’s not. It’s something I’d like to do a little further down the road – maybe getting other people to record some of his tracks and then possibly including a few live recordings and that kind of thing – but basically this is exactly the way he wanted it.

“I know Karl had a really hard job because there were things that he didn’t agree with – the way a song would finish or whatever – but Mic had said, ‘I want it this way.’ Normally they would have argued it out but because he couldn’t argue with him, he let it go the way Mic wanted it.”