INTERVIEW Jimmy MacCarthy

LYRICAL LEGEND?Jimmy MacCarthy, who has penned ‘Ride On’, ‘No Frontiers’ and countless other iconic entries in the Irish songbook.

A maker of things


Interview
Ciara Moynihan

Singer/songwriter Jimmy MacCarthy is coming to the west this Thursday, September 18, to play on the opening night of the Clifden Arts Festival. The concert will no doubt draw many a Mayo music lover over the border, particularly those who were looking forward to his concert in Castlebar last July, which was unfortunately cancelled. (He hopes to play another gig in the Royal Theatre soon.)
MacCarthy, who has been deservedly dubbed a national treasure more than once, is a native of Macroom, Co Cork. He started singing in pubs and busking at an early age, and his first single ‘Miles of Eyes’ was released in 1981. Over the years, he has penned some of the most famous songs in the Irish folk and contemporary repertoire, including ‘Ride On’, ‘No Frontiers’, ‘Katie’, ‘Bright Blue Rose’, ‘The Contender’, ‘Mystic Lipstick’ and ‘Missing you’. His songs have been performed by Christy Moore, Mary Black, Mary Coughlan, Westlife, The Corrs, Celtic Tenors, SeΡn Keane, Paddy Reilly, Moving Hearts, Frances Black, The Fureys and many more.
MacCarthy has also released four albums of his own ‘The Song of the Singing Horseman’ (1991), ‘The Dreamer’ (1994), ‘The Moment’ (2002) and ‘Hey Ho Believe’ (2010).
Amazingly, when asked what he sees as the high point of his career to date, he veers away from his own talents. “I’m still waiting on it!” he first jokes, then adds, “No, I’ll tell you what was an amazing thing – and it’s not the songwriting – it’s that I got to do three gigs with [‘Fifth Beatle’] Sir George Martin in the National Concert Hall with a huge orchestra – it was fantastic, because I’m such a huge fan of The Beatles.”
MacCarthy is no stranger to the National Concert Hall, and for the last 20 years, has consistently sold out the prestigious venue every time he has played there.
The Macroom man’s songs, which have become so much a part of the Irish songbook, are associated with deep, timeless lyrics, rich imagery and haunting melodies. Hotpress called him ‘arguably the most significant songwriter Ireland has produced in the past 20 years’. This is no cookie-cutter song generator, but a man who mines his creative spirit to produce distinctive, powerful songs that resonate and move.
All artists have their methods for getting their creative juices flowing, and MacCarthy reveals that for him, removing himself from his everyday existence is key. “I have a shoebox in Spain, and I go there quite a bit, and I write. I have found over the years that even though I write all the time, whenever I take a holiday – every two years or whatever – I rarely come home without two new songs. There’s something about going into a clutter-free environment where your life doesn’t exist, the phone won’t ring…”
The sheer joy of creating songs lies at the core of MacCarthy’s being. It’s what drives him. “I love living with the idea [for a song]. There’s a joyous thing when you start something – every day you wake up and it’s in your mind. It’s very rewarding to carry around while the making is going on, you know? It’s a very complete feeling, a feeling of purpose.”
With so many of his songs having been made famous by other people, does he ever write with someone else’s voice – a particular singer’s tones – in mind?
“In general I don’t, but I will say this: The day I finished ‘Ride On’ I thought, ‘Wouldn’t that really suit Christy Moore?’,” MacCarthy reveals. A couple of years later, he met Moore at a recording session. Moore asked “Have you any songs?” and the rest, as they say, is history.
“But it’s never happened any other time,” says MacCarthy. He writes continually, and when a song is complete he adds it into his library. Then, if someone approaches him for a song, he matches them with one he believes will suit them. “If it was Mary Black, say, I would look into the list and I basically would pick what I thought would be the best songs for her – ‘No Frontiers’ was one of them. She’s recorded a dozen of my songs over the years on her albums, which is an album in itself.”
MacCarthy has said before that he’s ‘famous for not being famous’. Often people may know a song, but they may not realise it was him who wrote it. When asked how this sits with him, MacCarthy’s reply is philosophical.
“If you’re a farmer you live with the weather,” he chuckles. “Whatever happens, happens. One thing that I learned from my mother was that it’s the making of things that’s precious – no counting the harvest while you’re still ploughing the land, you know? It’s a case of each job for its own sake and everything turns out as it should.”
MacCarthy has now returned to the stage with his national ‘Prophecy/Conspiracy?’ tour. While writing – the very act of creating – is closest to his heart, he loves to perform his work too. “Traditionally I’ve been more happy writing. It’s a great space to be in … I have learned to really enjoy performing the songs too though.
“I now work with my nephew, Christopher MacCarthy Wall. He’s my sister’s son, and he’s magnificent to play with. There’s a sense of connection between us and a great sense of joy about doing the gigs that I find very uplifting. I do enjoy it now – but it’s another department. I am a maker of things.
“Many of my songs – I have such a huge amount of songs written over the years – if I didn’t sing them myself they would actually never get heard, and that is something that weighs heavy on me … And people always look that little bit happier leaving than when they arrive – there’s a kind of a joyous thing happening in the gigs that I love.”
MacCarthy is really looking forward to his trip to Clifden for the Arts Festival. “It’s such a beautiful part of the world,” he says. “One of the songs I’ll be singing is from and of the place – it’s a song that I wrote called ‘The Sky Road’, and it’s about walking out The Sky Road and seeing all the skeleton stone buildings with no roofs and windows and the trail of a jet in the sky – it’s an emigration song based really in the ’40s and ’50s … It’s a young woman lamenting her boyfriend Danny going away. The young woman is the young State, and Danny – her boyfriend, lover – is the workforce leaving. There’s also the imagery of the place and the feeling of the place, which I hope I’ve captured.
“I get so much personal satisfaction out of the creation of my own thing. Then it’s a pleasure to be able to play them to people who know them, and to bring my other songs to them too.”

Jimmy MacCarthy will perform on the opening night of the Clifden Arts Festival this Thursday, September 18, at the Station House Theatre. For more information and to purchase tickets (€20 each), visit http://www.clifdenartsweek.ie.