WATCH: David Rooney Channels Hank Williams On New Video

David Rooney has released a brand new video for ‘My Last Flare’ – a track from his highly acclaimed debut album, Bound Together, released last year.

The video was made in collaboration with animation artist and musician Ali Greene McEnerney, who graduated from NCAD in Dublin last year. Curiously, it was a portrait of Hank Williams, left on Ali’s studio desk, which led to the making of the video – the fourth in a series of videos for tracks from Bound Together.

“While doing my annual teaching stint in NCAD, I had spotted a portrait of Hank Williams on the empty desk in another class,” Rooney explains. "Being a mutual Hank admirer, I left a note… and when we met I discovered that Ali was a drummer in a punk-flavoured band called Checkpoint, who had an album out – which as it happens was very favourably reviewed in Hot Press – and had a lot more experience than I had in music.

“The story for the video grew out of a conversation we had over a coffee, accompanied by ‘Hank’, the foot high carved figure, whose creator the song is dedicated to,” explains Rooney. "We swapped stories, albums and following her very impressive final year show, I asked would she be interested in working on a video. The result has been a journey of discovery for both of us."

The track itself features the album’s recording band of Jay Wilson on piano, Baz Rycraft on bass and Conor Guilfoyle on percussion, augmented by Mildred Fox on harmony vocals, and featuring Richard Nelson on pedal steel guitar. It was produced by Declan O’Rourke and mixed by Scott Halliday. The wooden image of Hank was carved by Stephen Guarino – the father of Madeleine Morrissey, a teacher whose influence was an inspiration to the album as a whole.