HAPPENING IN THE A proper St Patrick’s Day
Keith’s mission to give us all ...
HE’S rubbed shoulders with royalty, sung in the White House for President Obama, hung out with Prince Albert and Princess Caroline of Monaco and counts actress Jane Seymour among his best mates.
Now Derry-born singer Keith Harkin is out to give the world A Proper St Patrick’s Day, the title of his new album recorded in his studio in the wilds of Donegal.
As a solo artist and a member of Celtic Thunder, Keith has travelled the world but his Irish roots are what drive him to make music, spending his time between Portugal, Ireland and Los Angeles.
‘I could be working anywhere and everywhere, America, Canada and wherever the world takes me. I just finished a 40 city tour of the States before Christmas and I was there a few weeks ago playing at a few showcases and then I will be back in June, July and later in the year,’ the singer explains.
The new album A Proper St Patrick’s Day was recorded at the studios in Keith’s Glack House, nestled on the shores of Lough Swilly on Inch Island in Co Donegal.
And for the record it was his experience of St Patrick’s Day as a child that Keith wanted to bring to people through this record.
‘Growing up Paul Brady was a massive influence on me, Andy Irvine and Planxty and stuff like that, Richard Thompson, John Martyn. I actually supported John Martyn when I was 19 at a concert in Derry. This is my ninth solo record and I do these online concerts for a company called Stage It, about two or three concerts online a week and every now and then like this coming St Patrick’s day I will be doing a full-on production, a huge live gig with a full band.
WE did this last year in Glack House, playing a show with all our buddies and that’s what turned into the album. Growing up as a kid Irish music to me was always about a couple of fellas in the bar, playing tunes. To me that’s the St Patrick’s Day I grew up with - there was a big session in the pub with my dad and my uncles down in the Drift Inn in Buncrana, we’d all bring our guitars down and play and sing. So that is what St Patrick’s Day sounds like to me.
‘This had that feeling, everyone in the room knew each other, we were laughing and carrying on and the fire was crackling in the background. It was all done in one take and to me it just sounds like A Proper St Patrick’s Day hence the name and why I decided to put it out into the world.’
On the album there are some Paul Brady songs, Beeswing by Richard Thompson, Fisherman’s Blues by the Waterboys, and some original songs too.
‘I wrote a song called This Old House which is about Glack House itself,’ he says. ‘We bought the 200 year old house which at that stage was a dilapidated building about ten years ago and did it up ourselves. One night I was I was sitting there covered in dirt and wondering why I bought it but I got to thinking about how the house was 200 years old and how there had probably been some other man sitting in the same room at one point asking the same question.
‘I got to thinking about the families, the births, deaths, marriages, the loving and kissing, the lives that went before and I got very emotional singing it. It’s really cool that it is our turn to look after the old place and my son was born there so it was nice to be recording an album there in front of my whole family in the pub that I built with my own hands.’
Another original song is Rocking McLaughlin, about being a fly on the wall at a swanky event but it’s based on a true story.
‘I got invited to the Monaco Grand Prix about six years ago and a friend of mine has a super yacht and we were hanging out on that and the Prince and Princess of Monaco came on the boat,’ says Keith.
‘I played a few tunes for them and there was only about 20 people there. We got a royal invite the next
day to the palace for a party, my wife Kelsey and I and our friends all went to the palace. I had to borrow a cream suit for the occasion,’ says Keith who will launch the album at 10pm Saturday with a live online gig that will be repeated again on Sunday at 2pm via Stageit. com.
‘I’m really proud of the album,’ Keith says. ‘Kieran Brady from Belfast is playing pipes and whistles throughout. We’re going to be streaming another live gig from Portugal and I have the full band here for it.’
Keith says he learned a lot from being part of Celtic Thunder and wrote some of the music for the shows too. And it was through this that he ended up singing for the Obamas and their guests in the White House on St Patrick’s Day too.
‘That morning we got a police escort through Central Park and we got a train to The White House and when we were soundchecking we hung out with Michelle Obama and the kids - that’s 15 years ago now maybe.’ Keith’s life is never dull, after delighted guests with a concert on Richard Branson’s Necker Island at the business mogul’s behest, he has often returned to play , the last time in November and it was at one of these that he met the actress Jane Seymour. ‘The second time I was out there Jane was a guest along with myself and we hit it off and became good mates,’ he says. ‘When I was living in California she came to my shows and we’ve been in St Tropez and Ibiza together. ‘She came to Glack House and had a few pints with us up there when she was in Ireland recording Harry Wilde.
‘She is the creator of a charity called Open Hearts and when she came to a gig I was playing just before Christmas in LA, she asked me to play at a Gala for the charity just last week. It was a fun event and we raised lots of money for charity. She is an absolute sweetheart and a big believer in me and my work too.’
Keith says he is a singer/songwriter but hates the description as he says there’s nothing quiet about him or his music.
IT’S like folky acoustic rock and roll with a country and Irish twist,’ he says of his songs. ‘ The term singer songwriter has been put with the people who play real quietly but am very upfront and I’ve got a big voice so I am a rock n roll singer songwriter, I was brought up on country music and Irish traditional music so that’s where it all comes from. There’s nothing feeble about it.’
To join Keith online this weekend or to buy the album see