Legendary British singer-songwriter Ralph McTell embarks on his most extensive Irish tour in 2025, playing 20 shows over four weeks from 24th April to 18th May.
Celebrating his 80th year, McTell sees the tour as a tribute to longevity, music, and connection. Having first played in Belfast in 1969, his bond with Irish audiences has grown ever since. Despite a prostate cancer diagnosis, Ralph continues to perform, using his platform to raise awareness about early detection.
His resilience and passion remain undiminished, and Ralph's Time Drift of the Road tour promises to be a heartfelt celebration of a remarkable life in music. He talks to Miriam O'Callaghan below...
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We asked Ralph for his choice cultural picks...
FILM
I've always loved the Coen Brothers' films and my particular favourite is The Big Lebowski - whenever it's on TV I watch it and never seem to tire of it. I can usually find something new each time I see it. It makes me laugh and horrifies me at the same time. Jeff Bridges' performance is so accurate. I knew American hippies like the one he so excellently portrays.
The next film I'm planning to see is A Complete Unknown, the Bob Dylan biographical movie. I refrained from watching it at first because I was there at the time the adventure began, (albeit in England), and feared that I might be disappointed by the overglamorisation of the story. However, so many people have told me that it's a great movie so that's next.
MUSIC
Music has always been important to me, but since my recent illness it has become vital.
I play my guitar every single day and also try to improve my piano playing although my creative concentration is usually quite short - no more than an hour at a time - but in that hour I am often completely lost and time is suspended. This is often the beginning of how my songs arrive and my accidental mistakes, strange dissonances and misplaced chords can often be a key to the beginning or part of a song. I also spend hours and hours over lyrics and write quite a lot before I'm satisfied that I've enough to whittle down to the essential point of the song.
A bit like an artist rubbing out all the unnecessary lines so that the central figures or the central theme is revealed and is stronger.
BOOK
I'm sorry to say I'm not a great reader of novels, but at the moment I am reading about the Crimean War because I attempted to write a book during the Covid lockdown. Often narrative songs are condensations of stories in books but in this case, I have written a book about one of my own songs which I wrote many years ago. It was wonderful to write unfettered by scansion, rhyme and a musical accompaniment.
I think book reading is a true leisure activity and I always feel guilty about just sitting reading when I think I should be playing or trying to compose or writing a lyric.
I am hoping to change this prejudice and spend some time reading more of my favourite type of writing which is biographical or autobiographical . I am not so good at fiction…yet.
THEATRE
Plays make me nervous and I've seldom enjoyed being in the theatre. I think it's partly because I am anticipating things going wrong; it usually means that I'm clenching my jaw through the performance and I leave the theatre thoroughly exhausted. I know I'm missing out on great cultural events and was partly converted by the productions of the award winning but now sadly closed Knee-High Theatre Company who worked out of Cornwall with their director Mike Shepherd. They were fun and a maintained an illusory chaotic, hippy-like style and retold strange mythical stories.
The troupe often performed outdoors and perhaps this informality helped me relax.
Through my musical connections I have become friends with Adrian Dunbar and was recently invited to the magnificent production of Kiss Me Kate at the Barbican.
I found myself sitting next to an old friend, the great and original Irish musician, Andy Irvine and we both were like kids at Saturday morning pictures and thoroughly enjoyed the production, so perhaps there is hope for me yet . The play and music were a joy with fantastic singing and dancing, zipping and gliding and Adrian and the cast were a delight.
TV
I don't watch much on TV. The news mainly. I am accused of doomscrolling by my family but surely it’s really in the hope that there would be some chink of light in the world and these dreadful conflicts that seem to be engulfing this planet of ours. Perhaps it was always thus but there is now immediate and graphic reporting of destruction and devastation on a scale never before witnessed.
I wonder where our fellow feeling for humanity has gone. It’s almost impossible to write about the present horrors which we receive daily on the television. I despair at times…
It is hard to see how we move forward when the present leader of the free world is described by one of his close relatives as "A bipedal black hole of need".
Thankfully there is one show that makes me totally relaxed, it’s currently my favourite TV programme which has the most delightful characters in two men who have had marvellous comedy careers whilst coping with recovering from life-threatening illness. It is called Gone Fishing. The two men banter and joke while one of them, Paul Whitehouse, attempts to make a fisherman out of the charmingly inept Bob Mortimer. This little show has everything: tension, humour, serious issues, humanity, tolerance and respect.
ART
I love art and wish I could draw or paint.
I have some Bob Dylan prints which are encouraging to me. They are quirky as you would expect but like his songs, there is probably more to them than meets the eye.
I have an eclectic taste in paintings and often, in theatres and arts centres around the country, I'll see pictures and I buy them - I've now got so many I've run out of wall space, so many of my pictures and paintings are stacked against a wall.
I think I first became aware of drawing and painting when I was a little boy and I posed for an artist called Cicely M. Barker, who is most famous for her books about Flower Fairies. As a little lad I appeared (back view) on Christmas cards and in one book titled Simon the Swan.
I also love the work of Victorian cartoonist Phil May and have several original drawings as well as books of his prints.
I'm just as happy with amateur paintings and I just need a bigger house to exhibit them all.
I missed a recent Van Gogh exhibition in London but I did see many of the paintings when I was in Amsterdam. If I get a day off on tour I would often wander into a gallery and just soak up as much art as I can with admiration and deep envy.
GIG
I love live music and luckily for me living in living in London there is plenty of places to hear it.
My local pub is the famous Half Moon Pub in Putney, and there is live music seven days a week.
I also have little oasis for traditional music in the Irish Cultural Centre in Hammersmith and you'll often find me there on weekends for their wonderful concerts where I have fallen ever deeper in love with traditional Irish music and I'm always made to feel most welcome. Most recently I went there to see my favourite trio - McCusker McGoldrick and Doyle. I never miss this threesome whenever they're in London and my daughter tells me my shoulders actually drop as I just sit back in my chair and listen to music played exquisitely by these three wonderful musicians.
I've also been lucky enough to catch the delightful Cathy Jordan there in various performances with the wonderful band Dervish who have all become great friends along with Lúnasa and so many other talented visiting Irish musicians. I also catch up with Fergal Keane, who is a regular visitor there too.
TECH
I am a technophobe but luckily for me I have a number of grandchildren who live nearby who can help me when I'm wrestling with my mobile phone or the TV remote control. I have however discovered the delights of being able to record demos on my mobile phone and have used it quite successfully on a project where I needed to send rough demos of songs to friends.
I'm delighted to say that many of these were the grounding for my upcoming Irish album which is going to be called The Time Drift of the Road and I am grateful that so many great Irish singers and musicians will be performing songs that I have written which connect me to Ireland and it's rich artistic culture
THE NEXT BIG THING?
More live music hopefully. Peace and laughter would be good too.
Ralph McTell's tour kicks off on 24th April in the Jerome Hynes Theatre in Wexford, wrapping up on 18th May in Sligo's Hawk’s Well Theatre - find a date near you here.
