Music is everything to me
PAT Shortt is pondering his favourite songs in life. His is an eclectic choice — from Billie Holiday’s Strange Fruit to Ella Fitzgerald’s Miss Otis Regrets; a beautiful affair by Stockton’s Wing (more of them later) to ‘anything by Maura O’Connell’ – and one of his own cult classics features too.
‘The Jumbo Breakfast Roll – that’s a favourite also, did very well I can tell ya,’ he laughs of his 2006 hit detailing one of his many fictional characters, Dicksie Walsh and his toxic love affair with the ubiquitous Irish breakfast.
‘I play it at every show now and I had fecking stopped it too as I was that sick of it. But I’m very proud of it,’ he hastens to add — revealing that he’s even part of a franchise that delivers actual breakfast rolls all around the country, a little side hustle, on top of his day job – or that should read, jobs.
Pat has long mastered the art of entertainment multitasking, and while many will know him as the iconic comedian who can create and depict rural Irish characters like nobody else as one part of D’Unbelievables with Jon Kenny, Tom in Father Ted, everyone in Killinaskully, he’s also an IFTAwinning actor and a lifelong musician. So it’s no surprise that he has so many plates spinning at any one time.
‘Sure, it keeps life interesting when you’re doing different things, and I’m lucky enough to have the audience to see them,’ he shrugs of his multi-faceted talents and hectic schedule. Take his latest varied projects — Songs Of Ireland, a new four-part series with pal and Stockton’s Wing frontman Mike Hanrahan which starts on RTE tonight; he’s also touring with his daughter Faye with their hugely successful live comedy show Knuckle Down, and you’ll even see him pop up in Netflix’s new series Bodkin next month. It’s hard to keep up, but that’s just the way Pat rolls.
‘You don’t just do one thing,’ he says of the trajectory of his entertainment career, which began in music, before he fell into comedy ‘by accident’ and moved into TV and film. ‘There’s something going on all the time, whether it’s a TV project or a film or a comedy show.’
But what started the whole show rolling for Pat was music. Growing up in Limerick with his 11 siblings, traditional music provided
I HAD HAIR STANDING ON THE BACK OF MY NECK FOR THREE DAYS AFTERWARDS
the soundtrack of his childhood, and he was learning piano from the age of six before joining a brass band, something he says gave him the backbone of his musical prowess today. ‘It was such a great learning curve for a kid, and helped me develop a great ear for harmonising and experimenting with different instruments,’ Pat reflects. ‘My dad was a traditional music player so I went on to do a lot of that with the tin whistle and flute, and then my granduncle was a saxophone player and I decided to focus on that .’ It was the 1980s, which meant the saxophone was omnipresent, smiles Pat. ‘From pop like Spandau Ballet to Duran Duran to rock and power ballads, the sax was everywhere, which was great for me. But then the Nineties came along, and all of a sudden — no more saxophone. So that’s why I decided on comedy,’ he says laughing. ‘But music is everything to me.’
That’s why he is so happy to be involved in Songs Of Ireland, in which Pat and his good pal Mike team up with other musicians to explore some of Ireland’s most iconic songs in a new way. Not only has he got to go back to his touring roots with this musical road trip, but his excitement of seeing these songs — some of which are hundreds of years old — reimagined by today’s artists — is palpable.
‘I just love the whole concept of this show, taking songs that we grew up listening to, giving them to a young artist and seeing their perception of the tune. It was a fascinating journey,’ he says, finding it hard to pinpoint one particular highlight of the series.
The programme starts with a visit to Clare where Pat and Mike perform Spancil Hill with Tara Breen before moving on to his hometown Limerick, where rapper Willzee thrilled him with his interpretation of the Limerick Rake.
‘Honestly, I had hair standing on the back of my neck for three days afterwards,’ he says of his collaboration with the rap artist. ‘Then there’s Raglan Road with Asha Ari in Dublin; she sang the first couple of verses beautifully and then went into rap and spoken word about being black and a woman in Dublin and what it means to her, and it was breathtaking.’
In Tipperary, Pat and Mike join forces with jazz singer-songwriter
Norma Manly for a rendition of a traditional Irish ballad called Patrick Sheehan (The Glen of Aherlow).
‘This is a song that has probably been lost in the ages, I’ll admit I’d never heard of it before, and the way Norma sings it is just amazing. She brought it back for us to experience, and it’s beautiful,’ says Pat of the song which is thought to have originated in the 1850s.
Viewers can also expect a rendition of Eileen Óg with Dervish’s Cathy Jordan in Roscommon, and an adaptation of The Reason I Left Mullingar with the band Cronin. The series culminates in Co Donegal where Eve Belle joins Pat and Mike to perform Gleanntáin Ghlas Ghaoth Dobhair.
‘It was so fulfilling as an artist to get back into music in that way, it was just brilliant,’ says Pat of his musical adventure, which he is reprising this August with a ‘very short tour’ with Stockton’s Wing frontman Mike.
‘I was a huge fan of the band – I remember having only two tapes for my Walkman and they were both Stockton’s Wing. Back in 1986 when I was playing saxophone gigging with Jon (Kenny) – I ended up going for a pint with Mike and I couldn’t believe I was in the company of such great musicians,’ he says. The pair kept in touch over the years and a fortuitous turn of events meant that Mike, who also trained as a chef in Ballymaloe and has written a very successful cookbook, Beautiful Affair, merging his passions of food and music , ended up as running the kitchen of a pub Pat bought in East Cork for four years. There were gigs, musical collaborations, even a music festival.
‘We just have great craic working together and a real, solid friendship.’
Another wonderful pairing that Pat is extraordinarily proud of is of course Knuckle Down, the live comedy tour that he has created with his 25-year-old daughter Faye, which is selling out all over the country and is even making its debut in London in September.
‘It’s flying it, and it’s been really special for us,’ he says happily. ‘We are getting better at it as time goes on and that’s exactly what you would look for in a show. It’s great to see gigs back to normal after Covid too,’ he muses.
As it happens, it was the pandemic that inspired father and daughter to join funny forces in the first place, as Faye — a graduate of both the Gaiety and Bow Street acting schools — dropped her London plans and stayed home.
And so it was that father and daughter started to write their comedy sketches, posting them on social media during lockdown. Their hilarious antics were picked up by RTÉ, who asked them to perform at the New Years Eve show, which led to the idea of a live tour.
‘Faye is a hard worker and she’s learnt a lot from me in the sense of the family business,’ says Pat, who also shares two other children with wife Caroline. Lily Rose is in her final year in marketing in UCL and son Lughaidh is an apprentice auctioneer. Although Faye is the only one who has followed in her dad’s starry footsteps,the entertainment gene is strong, as they are all good musicians, says Pat proudly. ‘She knows you don’t sit around and wait for the phone to ring; you create work,’ he continues. ‘Faye is working away all the time, furthering her career in other areas. She’s busy, she’s smart, she’s funny and she’s very talented. I have no worries about her at all,’ he confirms.
In fact, Pat feels that although today there exists a very different landscape for someone trying to break into the entertainment industry than when he was starting, the always-on world of social media is not such a bad thing.
‘Back when I was starting it was harder to get noticed, because you had to go through the channels of RTÉ and they weren’t doing much comedy,’ he recalls. ‘When I started off with Jon (Kenny) there were no comedy venues in the countries, there was only a handful of theatres. But then during the 1990s, lots of wonderful places opened up and a much better touring circuit came about. And now social media is a way that you can create your own platform and get your own following and tours and everything else that comes with that.
‘So in some ways it’s easier but the demand on material and work is much more intense and that’s when it can get tougher for the artist. But when you’re young, you’re knocking the stuff out,’ he laughs.
At the age of 57 , Pat is still knocking things out — too many to mention – although his return to a pub on screen recently deserves a mention. This time, he wasn’t holding up the bar in Killinaskully, but was behind it as a publican in the Oscar-winning Banshees of Inisheerin.
‘It was wonderful to work on.’ he says pf the film. ‘I’ve worked with Martin (McDonagh) before in a few of his theatre productions in the West End and Broadway, so we had a great relationship already.’. And of course he was reunited with his fellow D’Unbelievable and great pal Jon Kenny too. ‘Working together on such a film was fantastic,’ he says. ‘It was an incredible experience.’
It’s surprising he has any time left in his days, but when he’s not working, Pat manages to squeeze in chill out time with fishing, camping and motorbikes, he reveals. ‘We’re heading down to Spain shortly and going to have a drive around. We’ll go to the bullrun and have a bit of craic,’ he laughs.
We wouldn’t expect anything less.
SOCIAL MEDIA IS A WAY THAT YOU CAN CREATE YOUR OWN PLATFORM