Luke Concannon, one half of folk duo Nizlopi, who scored a 2005 No 1 hit with JCB Song, has released his new album. Midnight Bloom. We asked him the BIG questions . ...
As one half of folk duo Nizlopi, Luke, who has grandparents from Kerry and Roscommon, is best known for JCB, and being a key inspiration for Ed Sheeran when he interned for the duo.
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Midnight Bloom marks Luke's return to recording after a long period of illness after he was diagnosed with IBS and burn-out.
Speaking about the album, Luke says, "I’m a recovering perfectionist. I’m learning to let go and realise that 'good enough’ is a better way to approach our lives.
"Me and my family live in Vermont in an area with a rich history of back-to-the-landers who lived on the edges of culture, and yet still managed to shake up the world through community, art, and politics."
Tell us three things about yourself . . .
I’m Anglo-Irish; I grew in England close to the Irish side of my family; it’s refreshing to be bi-cultural; each shines a light on the other. Now I live in America so I get to see these cultures from within and without them.
Spiritual practice, insight, and community are central to my life, I practice in a Buddhist community in the lineage of Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh, my primary mentor as an adult is Scots Quaker activist Alastair McIntosh, and my wife, Stephanie Hollenberg, is a singer and hospice chaplain. Spiritual practice is a way to come in to deeper connection with life and not get stuck in our heads!
I love music and see it as life breaking through our conditioning, to inspire and move us; to help us be more alive. I want to help people to connect to what is true for them so they can light their own fires in the world.
How would you describe your music?
Spiritual, activist folk hip-hop.
Who are your musical inspirations?
A Rory McLeod gig at the Concorde in Brighton changed my life; I was 19 and he was rumbling away up on stage, a steam engine of funk freedom and passion, I could feel the road on him; all his rambles through far lands, meeting people and feeling community with them; and now he’s on stage for four hours without a break, educating and uplifting the folk, a maestro of many instruments, a great poet and singer and so earthy. Blew me away. There seems a direct link between genius and humility to me; most of the most talented people I’ve met have been so modest. The Great Kinvara musician Declan O’Rourke, Damien Dempsey, the Vermont genius Anais Mitchell, my mentor Alastair McIntosh; all very relational and humble: they can reach the stars because their feet are on the ground.
What was the first gig you ever went to?
I’m guessing it was one that my Dad’s rock band, Far Canal, was playing, he and his two brothers were rocking out when I was a kid. The drumming used to make me cry as a two-year-old it was so loud.
What was the first record you ever bought?
I heard Tracy Chapman’s Fast Car on Top Of The Pops as an eight-year-old and I thought it was utterly beautiful. Mum took me to Woolworths to buy it; my first single, and my cousins and I reverently sat round and listened to the song in the dark in our old living room. There’s something so full of life about that song, the sadness opening her heart and our hearts while we listen.
What’s your favourite song right now?
I read Anouar Brahem’s Behind the Music interview on this website and he turned me on to Erik Satie’s Gymnopédie No. 1. What exquisite taste and intelligence in that music!
Favourite lyric of all time?
When I met my wife, I was truly madly, deeply in love; we were going to meet up in the west of Ireland for a few days and I was thinking of proposing on Inch Strand on the Dingle Peninsula where my Nan is from. Just before we met, she sent me these lyrics from Strauss’s Morgen: 'And tomorrow the sun will shine again, And on the path that I shall take, It will unite us, happy ones, again, Amid this same sun-breathing earth ... And to the shore, broad, blue-waved,, We shall quietly and slowly descend, Speechless we shall gaze into each other’s eyes, And the speechless silence of bliss shall fall on us...'
It’s just how I felt.
If you could only listen to one song for the rest of your life, what would it be?
Abida Parveen singing Raag Yaman; deep great reaching music like this doesn’t get old.
Where can people find your music/more information?
My website and the best place to hear the music is at a concert.
Alan Corr
