One of Ireland’s most celebrated songwriters, Wallis Bird has been dazzling audiences for over a decade – picking up two Irish Meteor Awards and the Deutscher Musikautorenpreis (German Music Authors’ Prize), as well as nominations for the 2019 International Folk Music Award and the Irish Choice Music Prize along the way. Currently based in Berlin, Wallis released her socially-conscious sixth album, Woman, in September, followed by a European tour. Earlier this year, Wallis joined Eleanor McEvoy and Maura O’Connell for A Woman’s Heart Orchestrated.

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My first “aha” moment with Van Morrison’s music happened quite late in life. During SXSW 2009, I was staying with a friend. She was playing Astral Weeks in the background at her party, and I dropped out of a conversation because a moment in the music became too heavenly, lush and pure. It felt like the future. At that moment, my friend and her daughter absolutely lost themselves in the song – embracing, crying and singing their heads off in some cosmic bond. I asked who it was, and when they told me, I felt thankful and stupid at the same time – to only cop this album I’d heard so much about so late in life. But still, that moment between mother and daughter was a powerful way to find Van Morrison.

I’ve heard so much of his music vicariously – it’s like walking through your life with someone there beside you. I love his presence through other people, and their devotional connection. The pride he brings out in people. The intrigue and the mystery. I love being a fan on the fringes. It sounds fake, but I have a connection with Van Morrison’s music in the same way I do with Bob Dylan or Led Zeppelin. I’m a slow receiver, but over the course of my life I’ll have a really full and innocent experience of his music. It always catches me at the right time.

There’s nobody like him. Nobody can touch him. His music is real and he is a searcher. He constantly works on bettering his performance for his own relief and also not to let his duty as a performer slip. He’s genuine. He adores music. He’ll never leave its side, and the music loves him. They don’t make ‘em like him anymore!

It’s nice to be cut from the same kind of cloth – Irish, Pagan or Celtic, or whatever you’d call our music, has always shined through, never giving a fuck about what anyone thinks. It’s always been nomadic that way, and when he speaks about his heritage I smile to myself – because of an unknowing brethren pride, I suppose. But he seems like a nice man with a really interesting life, willing to impart his knowledge. That’s my kind of person and my kind of basis for art. So, on that level, it’s easy to connect.

I asked my friend Kevin Ryan, who’s a huge fan, to point me in the direction of a song that represents Van’s hidden soul – a song that the man likes himself. Kevin pointed me to ‘Listen To The Lion’. A fuckin’ great song. So, I went studying it and researching it, and it turns out that it’s one of the only songs which Van talks about himself in the lyrics, and it’s seen as a peak vocal performance from him. He loses his inhibition, yet is really tender about it – serving his art, praying and chanting to the muse, the Lion. He’s thanking his art. It’s almost private.

Each performance for 'Rave On, Van Morrision' will be posted at 7pm Irish Standard Time every night on the Hot Press YouTube channel.

See the line-up for the first two weeks of 'Rave On, Van Morrison' below: