Running On Dempsey

Damien Dempsey is one of those potentially unhinged people who swim in Irish waters all year round. Regular walkers on Dublin’s Howth Head have a fair chance of seeing the giant singer-songwriter swimming with pals (both seal and human) or plunging into the waves from a 20 ft rock.
Dempsey’s definitely a bit of a nature boy, drawing on the environment to feed his soul. He’s all about the soul. There was a strong spirituality evident in his music and personality as far back as seven years ago, when his debut album They Don’t Teach This Shit In School was released. It’s good to see he hasn’t changed, although he’s in a very different place career-wise: his forthcoming fourth album To Hell Or Barbados is a potential classic, every track a jewel.
“The first album went nowhere,” Dempsey remembers. “There was no money left over after making it to promote the thing. The album disappeared, so I thought I was gonna disappear as well. I was back doing a bit of labouring. Then the Hothouse Flowers gave me a call and asked me to support them doing a tour of England.”
That was in 2002. Through The Flowers, Dempsey met producer John Reynolds at a party in his house in London.
“John has put me up in his house, treated me like a family member for the last few years, fed me and made albums for me,” says Dempsey. “He’s put all this work in because he loves the music. I was lucky to meet a man like that, who was a bit of a socialist, and would let you into his house. We haven’t really got that much of a return, but I can live, so that’s good. I re-invest in other countries, so I can tour and put out albums there.”
So you’re not labouring any more?
“No!” laughs Dempsey. “Them days are gone. And I realise how lucky I am. I give thanks for the break I got, being able to play me own music and get by.”
Giving thanks and praise, Damien reckons, is something of a lost art.
“It’s a thing I think we’re losing in Ireland,” he says. ­“Our spirituality. It got us through some very hard times. With the scandals in the church, people are getting driven away. And I tell them, just go into a church when there’s nobody in there and say a prayer. It doesn’t have to be to Jesus, but just to the source, the Great Spirit, or whoever you want to pray to. The light that’s in yourself. Pray to whoever you want to, but go in there and say a prayer.”
And like so many musicians, Dempsey claims that he’s simply a channel through which the music flows.
“It’s very hard to be an atheist when you create music,” he says, “because you hit places deep down in yourself when you’re doing it. You get glimpses of things. I was born and raised a Catholic but I wouldn’t be a Catholic. I still go to church for meditation and that. I still take from Christianity, the good things. Sayings like, ‘Do unto others as you would have them do unto you’ or, ‘The Kingdom of Heaven is within’.
“If anybody’s a bit lost, I’d encourage them to get into some of my stuff. Because I’ve worked it out on me first. Singing stuff like, ‘Love yourself today’. Get rid of your low ebb. Those songs used to pick me up, and I think they work for other people.
“So I try and preach the good word, like Sinead and Christy did for me, Bob Marley and all them. I’d see myself as a pupil of theirs. I mightn’t be an A student, but I always get a C average! (laughs).
“I was always very deep, even as a child. They used to say, ‘Damien should be a priest.’ I’m a bit of a loner. I’d be deep in thought and reflection and all. A thousand years ago I might’ve been a monk. But I wouldn’t be a celibate, teetotaller monk!”
Listening to Dempsey’s first album in the light of his fourth, you notice how much his voice has developed over the last seven years.
“Ah yeah, the voice is coming on,” he says. “I’m a late bloomer. I think I’ll be great when I’m about 40. I hadn’t got the confidence when I was younger. Didn’t think I could make any money. And maybe it’s just as well. I’m a bit wild anyway, but if I’d had loads of money, I don’t know what I might’ve done. I could have gone very wayward. Luke Kelly and Christy Moore and Shane MacGowan – if I’d tried to do what they did as young men, you could forget about it. I’d be dead.”
Among other things, To Hell Or Barbados rehabilitates the notion of the love song, eschewing the tyranny of Hollywood romanticism.
“The song ‘How Strange’ is about how if you’re ever feeling down about mad things happening in the world, thinking about good people can pick you up,” he says. “I try and focus on a really good head that I know, someone who’s really made a difference in people’s lives, concentrate on them, and they’re the ones that get me through.”
Of the new songs, ‘Serious’ is clearly the one Dempsey’s most proud of and excited about.
“I feel nobody’s done anything like it here before,” he says. “There’s a sort of dialogue between two fellas. Your man’s trying to get the other fella to do heroin. Actually, it could be the bad side within his head. It’s a dark picture but there is salvation at the end of it.”
That salvation breaks through with the protagonist calling out for divine intervention at the critical moment when he’s about to crack.
To Hell Or Barbados is literally bursting with such moments, yet it’s never pedantic or preachy. One of my own favourites is ‘The City’, which depicts Dublin as a sort of avenging goddess, a thresher of souls who is also, paradoxically, a nurturing mother (Kali in the Buddhist tradition; in Ireland, The Morrigan.) This dance track brilliantly captures the death aspect of life, and how illuminating it can be when we accept it, see its beauty and absorb what it has to teach us. Meanwhile, on another level, the song paints a joyous and celebratory picture on our increasingly multicultural capital city, a theme explored further on ‘Massai’.
“I’ve always had an affinity with the ancient tribes of the planet,” says Dempsey. “Their teachings. Their great love of nature. We could learn a lot from them, especially what we’re doing to the planet now. That’s why I wanted to put in these ancient tribes. I think sometimes in the modern world we have a watered-down version of love. It’s not passionate the way it used to be back then.”
Elaborating on the theme of ‘Massai’, Dempsey says: “People are being urged to sell their houses so they can stay in these nursing homes when they’re old, and then they’re getting abused by the staff. I just think I’d hate that. I’d rather go out like the old Celts wanted to go out, with a spear through me on the battle field. They used to feel that dying wasn’t the end. Whereas people nowadays in Ireland seem to think that once you die, that’s it, there’s nothing out there.
“I’d rather go out like a warrior instead of on me own in a nursing home. Off Howth Head in me pyjamas!”

Damien Dempsey’s To Hell Or Barbados is out now