The Sligo! Team

He’s an enthusiastic chap by nature, but this interview catches Duke Special in particularly top form. It’s the first day of his nationwide ‘Grassroots’ tour, in venues chosen for their quirkiness and intimacy. Accustomed to playing live with full orchestras, the Belfast-based singer/songwriter/pianist has gone back to basics for his latest show, which is built around pieces from his successful 2006 album, Songs From The Deep Forest.

“It’s a one-man show I’m doing this time,” says Peter Wilson, alias Duke Special. “It’s almost like a scripted show, employing various theatrical devices as opposed to just a gig.
“I’m dividing the show into three parts. The themes are the same as on the album – ‘In The Beginning’, ‘Something Changes’ and ‘At The End’ – and they’re speaking about relationships. In the first part the songs have poetry, magic, fireworks, intensity; the second part are the idea of looking for something more… looking for excitement, thinking, Is this it? Looking for something that’s gonna complete you. And the third part, initially, is where it goes tits up. But it doesn’t end there – there’s hope as well.”
The Duke writes about the love relationship a lot. Why?
“Being in an ongoing relationship is very interesting,” he says, “because it’s never static. Perhaps someone you started with, on down the line, you’ve changed, they’ve changed, and you’re continually having to re-adjust and lean in towards each other again if that’s what you want to do. So it’s in constant flux. My hope is that there’s a wealth and a lifetime of writing to be done about that. But of course it would be very dull to just write love songs, although the love song is such a great vehicle for music, and such great skin for the emotion and soul that comes out of music.
“But also I think there’s a bigger thing of longing and of wonder,” Wilson adds. “Van Morrison sings a lot about essential wonder and about being distracted and just caught up in something, and I find that really intriguing. It’s not even love, it’s that child-like immersion in something, whether it’s the moment, and just living in that moment, or whether it’s just loving what you’re doing.
“A lot of my songs are about how I relate to other people, and some of the concepts internally and some of the beauty realised in the middle of what might seem ordinary, and suddenly you find a spark or something magical that might ignite something again. I’m really interested in finding poetry in ordinary things, and finding beauty in things that are often overlooked.”
As always with Duke Special, experimentation and a blurring of artistic boundaries are hallmarks his latest show.
“I’m using two gramophones, and for a number of songs I’m running animations and little films,” he explains. “I’m also using songsheets because I love the proximity and the community feeling that’s created by everyone singing together. So I’ve got songsheets where the audience will be singing some of the songs collectively. I think people love the opportunity to sing really loudly, whether they’re in tune or not. Often at gigs you hear people singing along to the songs, but I think to actually invite people to, audiences really respond to it.”
Next year Wilson plans to release an unusual online EP featuring songs written by Kurt Weill for a musical adaptation of Huckleberry Finn. He elaborates:
“My good friend Réa Curran – he’s an actor, a musical director for a puppet theatre and chairman of the Tom Waits Appreciation Society in Derry – he introducted me to a song called ‘Catfish’ by Kurt Weill, and I absolutely loved it. I discovered it was from an unfinished stage musical called Raft On The River. I discovered that there were five songs, but the whole thing hadn’t been completed because Kurt Weill had died in 1950. So I thought it’d be really interesting to record those songs.”
Wilson is also looking forward to getting off the road (he’s been touring as Duke Special for six and a half years non-stop) for the first few months of 2008, to give himself time to write material for his third album. As the father of three young boys, does he find it tough carving out space to write in the midst of family commitments?
“I’ve a little studio space, but it’s few and far between that I’d be able to get down there,” says Wilson. “My wife Heather is an artist – she had her first solo exhibition just two days before this tour kicked off – so we were like passing ships for a while. It’s really full-on and it’s an incredible challenge to manage everything and it makes for really interesting songs, but yeah, it can be tough sometimes.
“But I think the myth is that to be creative you have to have this crazy lifestyle that isn’t conducive with family. I believed that myself in the past, that all the interesting people are the car crashes and the train wrecks. But you only have to look at Tom Waits to see someone who’s at the top of their game and doing something incredibly interesting, challenging and of depth, who’s fully immersed in his home life as well.”
I ask Wilson what he’d be doing if he wasn’t a musician.
“I’d have to be involved in the arts,” he says. “It’s where I feel that I breathe, where I feel I’ve something to say and contribute. When I was leaving school I felt guilty about being a musician ’cause it didn’t seem like that was a worthy thing to be. I felt like a should be doing social work or something like that. But I think now I see the importance of the arts; I don’t mean in any overly self-important way – I just see there’s as much of a place for an artist as there is for a social worker. Both have their role and both are valid. It took me a long time to feel comfortable with that.”

Duke Special plays Sigo Live Saturday, October 27. The album Songs From The Deep Forest was recently re-released as a limited edition with a bonus disc featuring a ten-track live recording with the Ulster Orchestra, and Neil Hannon and The Magic Numbers’ Romeo Stodart.