Sinead O’Connor to launch her “American Kindness Tour” in NYC

Sinead O’Connor.

Pollstar reports that Sinead O’Connor will launch an “American Kindness Tour,” following a pair of successful shows at New York City’s Lincoln Center Festival July 26-27.

Her latest album, How About I Be Me (and You Be You)? was released in February 2012. O’Connor’s upcoming tour features  multiple gigs in New York City and Oakville, Ontario, as well as three stops in Chicago. With no new album to sell, it’s anyone’s guess what she will do.

According to The New York Times review of her Lincoln Center show, O’Connor performed an eclectic mix of spiritual songs that included a pair of Bob Dylan songs from his born-again period, “I Believe in You” and “Property of Jesus,” as well as an a cappella read of “Before We End Our Day,” a short evening prayer she’d learned from Irish monks.
Could the “kindness” come in the form of inspiration from a pulpit?

She’ll be at the City Winery in New York on November 8, 9 and 19, and the same venue in Chicago on November 4, 5 and 6.

Almighty return to New York for Irish balladeer Damien Dempsey (VIDEO)

Damien Dempsey

It's been four years since Irish folk legend Damien Dempsey graced the U.S. with a tour. Despite the runaway success of his new album Almighty Love overseas, is he worried about facing an audience that may have forgotten him on this side of the Atlantic?

“I’m just gonna play my heart out,” he says, unconcerned about things like rebuilding an audience.

“I have so much to say and I plan on telling them the new stories I have, the places I’ve been, that kind of thing. I also think I am a better player than I was the last time I was out there.” Of course, Dempsey is a brilliant storyteller, as the songs from his outstanding new album attest.

My favorite track on the disc is “Canadian Geese.” In the lyrics, he recounts his boyhood memories of following the train tracks near his house as far as his imagination could take him. The migratory birds could just as well be a reference to an Irish immigrant’s dreams of a better life elsewhere when he sings, “in my mind I up and join them and we glide out of Ireland’s eye.”

Dempsey has been telling stories about Irish life since he broke out with Seize the Day in 2004. Back then Ireland was flush with cash and feeding raw meat to the Celtic Tiger economy. At the time, Dempsey seemed to be the only one railing against the greedy bloodlust all around him.

“Count your blessings that you have enough bread/your belly full and you have a roof over your head/don’t go forgetting how lucky you are/what is it we are always wanting more/until greed consumes us and we’re rotten to the core?” he sang on “Cursed With a Brain” from the 2005 album Shots.

Now, of course, the Celtic Tiger has bared fangs and claws as it bites people on the bottom for a decade of greed.

“I got a lot of grief for writing those words back then,” Damo reflects. “I got terrible flack for it. ‘What the hell is wrong with you? We’re finally getting on our feet and you’re singing these songs to knock us down?’

“But I smelled a rat. They were losing the community spirit and hospitality. Who has the bigger house and car became a competition driving people.

“Meanwhile, the hospitals were in ruins and the school system was in chaos. Where was that money going? It finally has collapsed. I think that makes the community spirit come back now that we’re struggling again.”

Was there a temptation to rub it in everyone’s faces, I ask?

“You don’t want to rub it in,” he replies. “I think people were thinking I would make a follow-up album that said something like ‘I told you so,’ but that would have been too predictable and no one would want to hear music like that.

“That said, there are people that never even got loans that are shouldering that crushing national debt today, and senior citizens that did nothing to cause this are currently suffering in the crisis as they get their benefits cut left and right. So, there is plenty to write about for the future albums.”

Damo reports that he is always writing songs, with many of them political in nature.

“I was going to do a whole album of banks and government, but I said it all before,” he says. “People would put you in a box. ‘Oh, he was giving out.’ Fat cats and billionaire German bankers will always be around, so there’s no hurry getting songs like that out.”

A household name in Ireland, Dempsey has topped the Irish charts twice in the past year with his singles “Rocky Road to Poland” (an Irish soccer World cup anthem) and “The Auld Triangle” (a charity single with Glen Hansard).

Dempsey has been gratified by the response to his tour so far, with strong ticket sales. Apparently, U.S. fans haven’t forgotten the searing live performances this former boxer is capable of.

“I am playing bigger rooms this time around, like the famed Bowery Ballroom and that has been gratifying to have that level of interest still be there,” he says.

Dempsey is also philosophical about his music, shrugging off the risk of playing places he’s ever been. Our phone interview took place while he was in the Swiss Alps, where he was part of a Guinness festival.

“It’s all about building a fan base,” he says. “Even if I don’t make money out of it, it’s grand.”
Dempsey has previously supported artists such as Sinead O'Connor, Morrissey (both in the U.S., U.K. and Ireland), David Gray, Bob Dylan, Willie Mason, Hot House Flowers and U2 on opening night of their U2360 tour in Dublin’s Croke Park.  The time for Damo to highlight his own tour has arrived!

Dempsey plays the Bowery Ballroom in New York on September 7. For more dates visit www.damiendempsey.com.

Below is a video of Damien Dempsey performing "It's All Good" live.

Wrinkles of motherly worry, the ongoing stress of children

I'm typing this some 36,833 feet above the earth, somewhere over the deep blue ocean waters of the Atlantic between Newark and London.

Some 2,400 miles from this hurtling flight, my mother is pacing the floor with worry.  As a parent of a teenaged girl with a driving permit, I can sympathize with the woman's concern over a child not making it to their destination in one piece.

Stakes are high on this trip, as I am interviewing for a new "day job" to supplement the king's ransom I make writing this column every week -- another cause for worry if things don't go well.

Flying to a somewhat unfamiliar foreign cosmopolitan city alone for the interview also causes the woman to bite her nails a bit, and I'm quite sure she won't sleep comfortably until I settle into Dad's family compound of Tuam, Co. Galway on my way home.

Of course, the worry machine will begin to whir into high gear when I board the plane to cross the Atlantic. Again, I can totally relate to much of this now that I'm a parent myself.

But on this trip she took worry to a new level.

"Ye have a good suit packed?" she asked.

"I just came home from the Brooks Brothers outlet, where they had a two-for-one suit sale. I got one in dark gray and one in navy," says I.

"That's good," she says. "Lovely. And there's a nice tie to go with it, yes?"

I filled my lungs with air and pressed my tongue hard against the inner lining of my front tooth to keep the thoughts I had in their proper place.

"Yes, one green and one yellow.  It will be paired with a powder blue suit. I haven't decided which suit to pack and the combinations will look good with either one."

"New shoes? Not those old ones yeh had on last time I was down."

"Yes, Ma," I said.

"And you have a decent suit bag to keep it nice and pressed? Not just throwing it up in an auld ball?"

"Wow, I'm glad you mentioned that, Mom," I said through clenched jaw, the blood percolating to a boil.  "I'll take it out of the bag now and see if I can smooth out the ball of wrinkles."

"Jesus, Eileen!" bellowed my dad, listening on the other end of the phone. At 78 and after 48 years of marriage, the man has long since abandoned the possibility of getting a word in edgewise.  "Jesus, Eileen" every few minutes is about all he can manage during these three-way chats.

"Ye don't have to get huffy, I'm just interested, is all."

"How did I ever make it out of the house to become a vice president of a company without you inspecting my wardrobe every morning?" I sighed.

"Really," my exasperated father said.

He definitely married his mother.  Granny Farragher was always a circuit board of worry.

Even after she'd put out a feast fit for a king when us Yanks would come over, she would sit at the head of the table and drum her knobbed fingers incessantly. She wouldn't actually settle into the conversation for a few minutes, her thoughts running through a mental checklist as she surveyed the table.

In the later years of her life, my father would have been the same age as I am right now when we visited her.  I can’t help but wonder if she inspected him for flaws in the same way she surveyed the table so obsessively?

I couldn't get off the phone with my mother fast enough.  This whole display of an Irish mammy mothering her middle-aged son to the point of exasperation on my part was broadcast over the Bluetooth system of our car. and my wife was shaking her head the whole time.

"That was un-bee-leeve-able," she said, the pent-up frustration erupting. "You held your tongue a lot longer than I would have. She still thinks she's dressing you for Communion or something! How did you survive that level of smothering?"

I shrugged my shoulders in an attempt to shrug off the conversation. I know Mom meant well.

We were heading home from the beach for one more kiss of the sun in an attempt to look a "Yank brown" to my Irish relatives later this week.

"Did you shake off the sand from your feet so that you don't track it into the house that was just cleaned?" my missus asked as we placed the beach chairs into the shed.  My daughters and I nodded absent-mindedly.

"And let’s put the beach badges back in the envelope where they belong," she added. "You know how nuts I get when we turn the house upside down looking for them, only to find them at the bottom of the washing machine."

A flash of enlightenment passed over me as I washed my pale toes with a hose. Dad might not be the only one that married his mother...

(Mike Farragher's collection of essays can be found on www.thisisyourbrainonshamrocks.com.)

Van the Man moondances again

Van Morrison in the sixties.

Van Morrison will revisit one of his classic albums with a five-disc deluxe edition of his 1969 classic Moondance.

Yes, once again the classic rock dinosaur teams up with the panicked record company to shore up the declining revenues of album sales in this digital age.

And once again, I will line up to buy this one.

How many times did Van the Man become my wingman during my brief and regrettable bachelorhood?  That the whole affair of the evening barely lasted the 2:33 of "Come Running" was besides the point. Moondance was so good you could play it the morning after, during an ill-fated attempt to make brunch the next morning.

According to Rolling Stone, the deluxe Moondance collection will include remastered and expanded versions of the songs, and will also feature 50 unreleased tracks, including studio outtakes of favorites like “Caravan,” “Moondance” and “Into the Mystic."

There is but a meager smattering of unreleased songs in this package. "I Shall Sing," a Morrison original that he completed but left off the album, is also featured as part of the collection, and includes multiple takes of the song. Hearing the song in demo form is always fun, as it allows the diehard fan unfettered access to the creative process.

At the time, Rolling Stone praised the album when it was released for Morrison's "full command of the musicians that play with him," in addition to "the striking imagination of a consciousness that is visionary in the strongest sense of the word creates an atmosphere that instantly sets its own terms."

Multiple versions of an album will be available on September 30 to suit any budget.

For my money, a more interesting compilation of rarities is The Philosopher's Stone, a 2-disc, 30-track set Morrison released back in 1996. It was not only crammed with alternative versions of tracks like 1975's "Naked in the Jungle," it had some great rare material as well.

You can only catch momentary glimpses of the ginger-haired gypsy poet in his late years.  There was the anniversary tour of Astral Weeks a few years back.

Nowadays, he uses the gruffness of his low register to full advantage on blues and jazz originals, like the excellent Born to Sing/No Plan B that he released last year.

Morrison has been keeping busy with a string of summer festivals throughout Europe. He is part of a fantastic blues festival in Notodden in Norway from August 1-4 that includes Eric Burdon, John Mayall and harmonica great Charlie Musselwhite.

Willie Nile’s sweet “American Ride” - VIDEO

Willie Nile

"This is our journey/this is our place/this is our time.”

That’s the first chorus out of Willie Nile’s mouth on American Ride, his brilliant new album, and this writer and long-time fan is praying that THIS be Willie’s time.

Once again, the man has delivered a brilliant collection of insightful tunes that rock without mercy.
“It’s pretty rockin’ over all, but there are some left turns and right turns along the way,” Nile says of the album, which was fan-funded through Pledgemusic.com.

“There are songs about the rights of man, songs about freedom, songs about love and hate, songs about loss, songs about God and the absence of God, and songs about standing up for your fellow man. It’s upbeat and full of life. I’m thrilled with how it came out.”

“We’re taking 95 to F-L-A/once we hit the Keys/gonna make a toast/head out west to the California coast,” he sings with a warm raspiness on the infectious, country-fried title track.

The tune was penned by Nile and the Alarm’s Mike Peters, who is experiencing a resurgence himself as the leader of the reconstituted Big Country.

Over the 11 tracks on American Ride, many roads seem to lead back to his beloved Manhattan.  “Life on Bleecker Street” and “Sunrise in New York City” are simple songs that chronicle everyday life observations in the Big Apple.

Those of us who have seen Nile’s fiery reading of Jim Carroll’s “People Who Died” during Joe Hurley’s annual Irish Rock and Soul revues will be pleased to know that Nile recorded it here as a tribute to both Carroll, who passed away in 2009, and to Nile’s late brother John.

American Ride features scorching backup from Nile’s live band — guitarist Matt Hogan, bassist Johnny Pisano, drummer Alex Alexander, and Nile on guitar and piano — along with guest appearances by Eagles guitarist Steuart Smith and New York singer-songwriters James Maddock and Leslie Mendelson.

Nile also worked with some notable songwriting collaborators, including Eric Bazilian of the Hooters, who co-wrote “God Laughs.” “God smokes/he plans to quit before he croaks,” Nile sings, tongue firmly in cheek as the guitars crackle behind him.

Nile’s catchy rock melodies and insightful lyrics make him a songwriter’s songwriter.  His high-profile fans include Bruce Springsteen, with whom he’s guested onstage on multiple occasions, and Pete Townshend, who personally requested him as the opening act on the Who’s 1982 U.S. tour.

Other avowed Nile admirers include Bono, Lou Reed and Paul Simon. Not bad for a guy named Robert Noonan, who began rocking in his bedroom in an Irish Catholic Buffalo household many moons ago!

It’s been fun to follow Nile ever since 1999, the year he released the classic Beautiful Wreck of the World. I missed the first wave of Nile which had marked the start of an exciting new chapter in his career.  Since then, the man seems incapable of writing a bad song!

“She’s Got My Heart” slows things down a bit, and it’s just about one of the best love songs I’ve heard in many moons. Take an American Ride with Willie Nile and he’ll get your heart in the process.

Check him out on www.willienile.com.

Check out 'American Ride' here:

Behind the Irish freckled skin, George Zimmerman and the Stones in Hyde Park

George Zimmerman (Associated Press)

There were two significant stories I followed over the weekend that brought back a long buried memory.

The first involved the trial of George Zimmerman in the murder of Trayvon Martin. This trial of a “neighborhood watchman” untrained by law enforcement that shot and killed a teenager became, in my humble opinion, a media-sponsored circus that provoked unnecessary racial unrest in our nation.

Sidestepping the issue of Zimmerman’s innocence or guilt, I couldn’t help but think that media outlets pulled a race card on the collective nation to stoke emotions on both sides for the sake of ratings.

I am a Rolling Stones super-fan, so the second news item that caught my eye was the triumphant return of the Stones to Hyde Park in London. It was 44 years to the month that they performed their first concert without founding member Brian Jones. The images of Mick Jagger in a white frock releasing thousands of white butterflies in Jones’ memory is an iconic image from that legendary concert.

How are these two stories connected, you might ask? Where am I going with this?

For me, it started when my friends began weighing in on Facebook about the Zimmerman case. Being a registered independent, I wear it as a badge of honor to have folks of all persuasions on both sides of the aisle politically. You can imagine the hot debate of opposing views that streamed into my news feeds!

I’ll probably get tarred and feathered for saying this, but it is inevitable that my African American friends will assert that because I am white, I have never felt the sting of racial profiling whenever the subject of race comes up.

True, I am not black and don’t know the true impact of daily racism, but that gets my Irish blood percolating nonetheless. You can forgive them for thinking that my Irish freckled skin has never aroused suspicion, and that would show a lack of knowledge of The Troubles between the Irish and the British.

When you spent summers in Ireland and England in the seventies and early eighties as I had, you felt the sting of racism for being Irish.  Hyde Park reminds me of my biggest trouble with The Troubles.

I was visiting my Irish kin and all set to see the Rolling Stones at Slane Castle (did I mention I was a super-fan?) during July of 1982.

We decided to jet over to England to see relations before the concert and when we landed, we were confronted with the horrific news that eight British soldiers on ceremonial duty had been killed in two IRA bomb blasts in central London.

According to BBC reports at the time, the first blast, in Hyde Park, killed two soldiers and injured 23 others. The second explosion, in Regent’s Park, less than two hours later, killed six soldiers instantly and injured 24 people.

The IRA soon admitted carrying out the attacks, saying in a statement that echoed Margaret Thatcher's declaration of war on Argentina over the disputed Falklands that “the Irish people have sovereign and national rights which no task or occupational force can put down."

We all watched in shock at the scenes of carnage in Hyde Park. I remember well the bloodied carcasses of the dead horses that were taken down by the nail bombs.

We slumped along, saddened and uneasy, toward the security gates.  There were metal detectors set up at baggage claim and as I went through, a buzzer went off.

I was pulled aside from the family and an interrogation and search ensued. I don’t remember the details of what was said, but I do remember the panic I felt at being alone and the jaundiced eye that was cast on my freckled skin.

An Irishman entering England from Ireland by way of America that enters the country on the day of an Irish terrorist attack is going to raise suspicion. After an exasperated search of where the metal was on my person, it was determined that the American braces on my teenaged teeth were made of a different material than British braces (thank God for that -- have you seen some of their teeth?) and I was soon let go after that foreign metallic source was discovered.

There was also the time that I made the mistake of seeing Riverdance on Broadway on the same night as both Gerry Adams and a gaggle of British dignitaries. I went on a church bus trip with my mother, and I suppose the British intelligence forces thought the presence of a lone man dressed in black leather with sunglasses and a driving cap that were also black looked a bit weird in a mix of blue-haired church gals, and I was once again singled and frisked until a few minutes before showtime.

Yes, these are mild cases when compared to what racism my African American friends have certainly felt over the years. Yet it is a mistake to assume that the Irish know nothing about the subject.

Of course, our race started on the bottom rung of the American socioeconomic ladder like everyone else.

If you want more recent examples, check out the brilliant book written by my buddy Colin Broderick. He has just written That’s That, which recounts his youth growing up among the tensions between the British and Irish in ways that are both hilarious and harrowing.

I’m sure this fellow parent’s prayers for Trayvon Martin’s mother and father will land in the right place with our Maker, even though my skin is a whiter shade of pale.

Mike Farragher’s book of essays can be found on www.thisisyourbrainonshamrocks.com.

The sad case of the altar boy shoe blues - nuns wrath kept us on the straight and narrow

It was almost too much to take in.

The Mass had just ended, and I sat with my wife and girls in the back pew as we waited for the christening of my friend’s baby to start. The alter boy strode down the aisle, his oversized and untied shoes making a loud clumping sound with each step he took.

He had synchronized each step with the chewing of gum. He stopped in the middle of the aisle and high-fived a friend of his who had just sent a text from his pew.

Thank God Sister Helen was dead, because this display would have killed her! 
Sister Helen was the nun that was responsible for managing the schedules and appearance of the altar boys at St. Ann’s Jersey City when I was a wee tyke there in the seventies.

I was on the young side of the altar boy range and was terrified of Sister Helen, a zaftig old Polish nun who taught the higher grades. She was impeccably dressed in a smart blue suit with neatly trimmed nails; those hands would be the last thing you’d see in an explosion of range that would ensue if your appearance didn’t cut the mustard.

I remembered one morning when I was serving a funeral Mass. I was very excited because it was a plum gig not only because you got out of some classes, but you also got between $5 and $10 from the distraught families for your service.

I had the audacity to wear my “Gass Shoes,” these soft tan suede things with the large yellowish rubbery sole that were sold at Kinney’s back in the day. These were THE shoe in the fifth grade, but St. Helen’s expectation was more on the laced-up leather than the suede number I was sporting.

“Come here,” she would say, her fat and wrinkled finger curling in front of her face as she beckoned me over. I stood in front of her and she looked down like I just tracked dog crap into the sacristy.

“Might I remind you, young man, that you are in the House of God,” she hissed, her jaw clenching.

“St. Peter will turn you away if he gets a load of those hideous things on your feet. I’m surprised your mother let you out of the house looking like that, and you can tell her I said that!” 
Of course I did no such thing. My mother needed convincing at the cash register that these shoes would adhere to the strict dress code guidelines of our school.

If my Limerick-born mom found out I lied and a nun thought less of her parenting based on this poor choice of footwear, she would not be able to darken the door of the school ever again over the embarrassment of it all.

A slap upside the head was administered on the spot.  My clasp hands rubbed the cheek that she hit as I kneeled in the pew and prayed I was sent away to seats near the confessional to reflect on what I had done.  I kneeled and began mumbling these prayers at her request to “ask Jesus for guidance.”

I never thought the Son of God was a poor shoe shepherd to his flock, choosing to run barefoot or with cheap sandals as depicted in the images of him on our stain-glassed windows. Where is the example in that?

The idea of chewing gum or playing with a device in the pew would have sent  Sister Helen over the edge. I channeled the old nun in my pew, scowling disapprovingly at the boys throughout the Christening ceremony.

These altar boys today don’t have the spit-shined look and feel that we did when the fear of a nun’s wrath kept us on the straight and narrow and that is sad.

Mike Farragher’s humorous essays can be found in his two essay books. Visit www.thisisyourbrainonshamrocks.com for more information.