Hometown hero Jinx offering a soppiness cure at Disfunction Room
Dundalk’s own Jinx Lennon aka Free State Nova takes to the stage at the Disfunction Room, upstairs in the Uisce Beatha, Clanbrassil St, on Saturday for a gig which he promises will be the perfect antidote for all the soppiness of what the day before, Valentine’s Day,
Jinx promises to deliver a set full of perfectly forged lyrics and what he calls ‘ the border schizo cosmic folk sound of guitars like barbed wire ,drums like beer kegs rolling off lorries, noises like jack hammers and dentist drills and voices like seagulls scouring the curry cartons on Sunday morning.’
His is a unique and authentic voice that has earned him fans far from his native town. Although his songs are very much rooted in Dundalk and the border counties, he writes about and for the underdog, those at the edges of society, the every man and woman. While he’s often labelled as a punk poet, there’s a fair measure of folk and country sensibilities to his music as he tells stories of the everyday ordinariness which capture the sense of place of the town he calls home. It’s not easy listening but it’s real.
He has been lauded by none other than Christy Moore who declared that: ‘for me the best songwriter in the country at the moment is Jinx Lennon, and he matters. He matters to me. And we don‘t hear him because he’s telling the truth. He’s singing about this island we live in as it is, and he doesn’t get airplay. Why doesn’t he get airplay? …Because he’s telling the truth. And why can’t people deal with that truth?... Because it’s very raw, and he doesn’t sugar it up.’
This is his first local gig of the year, and he will be playing new material for his latest album Border Schizo Songs for the Fuc**d’ which is due out in April, as well as material from his large back catalogue, including his most recent releases such as ‘Grow A Pair!’, ‘Magic Bullets of Madness to Uplift the Grief Magnets’ and ‘Past Pupil Stay Sane’.
The special guest is Annie June Callaghan, from Fermanagh, who when not making visual art, brings her own brand of acoustic rawness to the fore. She recently completed a residency at Creative Spark and travelled to New Orleans with the Armagh Rhymers last month to attend the Folk Alliance International.
Tickets €10 at the door, which open at 9pm.