Van Morrison will play an intimate date at 3Olympia Theatre, Dublin on 27 February 2023 and has announced details of his new album, Moving On Skiffle.
The album follows last year's Latest Record Project Volume 1 and sees Morrison return to his musical roots in Belfast and his days hanging out in record shop Atlantic Records, where he’d hear early 20th century folk, blues and jazz from the likes of Lead Belly and Jelly Roll Morton.
Moving On Skiffle will be released on 10 March and the singer has released its lead single Streamline Train.
"I was still in school when I performed with a skiffle band - a couple of guitars, washboard, tea-chest bass," Morrison says.
"I was already familiar with Lead Belly’s recordings so when I heard Lonnie Donegan’s version of Rock Island Line I intuitively understood what he was creating, I knew that it was what I wanted to do. It was like an explosion. This record retranslates songs from that era.
For the most part, Van Morrison plays the songs straight, but he has changed the title of Mama Don’t Allow, recorded by both the Memphis Jug Band and the Chicago blues man Tampa Red in the late 1920s, to Gov Don’t Allow, a nod to what he calls "his fight against the rise of government interference in our daily lives".
Tickets for Morrison’s 3Olympia gig will go on sale this Friday 2 December at 9.00am.
