Festival 47 Wrap Up
Featuring: Mick Flannery
LATEST ALBUM
Goodtime Charlie
Festival 47
The Vancouver Folk Music Festival 47 is in the books and was one of the best in recent memory.
Kurated is featuring a few of this year’s superb performers.
- PLAYLISTS Goodtime Charlie on Spotify with YouTube
- ONE SONG Saddle in the Rain – video of a John Prine cover
Flannery and band from The Influences sessions
IRELAND’S MICK FLANNERY
Songs of the human condition
Bearded and a bit burly, Mick Flannery has a thoughtful presence on stage. Probing the foibles of our human condition, he serenades about loneliness, communication, the complexities of relationships and more. The Vancouver Folk Music Festival audience he played to last month delighted in his strong and heartfelt 50-minute set sprinkled with his wry wit. His expert trio of bandmates offered supple and nuanced musical backing.
Flannery has become one of Ireland’s foremost singer-songwriters known for having “one of the most idiosyncratic voices in Irish music'”, says the Irish Times. “[He has]… an inimitable worldly drawl inspired by his musical heroes, Kurt Cobain, Leonard Cohen, and Bob Dylan, which has been making listeners sit up and take notice since 2007.”
In the Game, his duet album with Susan O’Neill (a Festival favourite last year) was Ireland’s best-selling independent album in 2021. The collaboration’s success led to a few more co-writes and duets on his latest disc, 2023’s Goodtime Charlie. Artists featured include Valerie June, Ana Egge, Tianna Esperanza and Anaïs Mitchell (of Bonny Light Horseman).
Writing with O’Neill taught him to open up his songs to leave space for the band and listeners.
“In my songwriting,” he told the Irish Examiner, “I was so obsessed with the narrative of the story being told straight and direct, I kind of forget I was making music and that it needed to breath. In this album, we have three or four extended outros. You allow the listener to sit and listen to the mood of the song.”
“My own musicianship has taken a while to develop – for me to be confident,” says Flannery.
“My ability as a musician is not as good as the rest of the guys in the band. Sometimes I don’t want to understand them: they tell me I do odd things. I say, ‘okay I know there’s something weird, I don’t know how to quantify it’. Part of me wants to keep the ignorance: that’s a thing I fall into naturally. My aunt, who writes songs as well, she has the same kind of intuition. She has the same odd approach.”
While he’s not a household name, after almost 20 years of honing his craft, Flannery is clearly content with his musical path. The “odd approach” works like a feature rather than a bug. Give a listen to his latest album to hear if you agree.
03 August 2024
PLAYLISTS
On Spotify
On YouTube
https://music.youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_ktArpLCvnxgjGtYshaAprVbZd_1nQZnQY
