Aslan legend still fighting the good fight
Legendary Aslan king is busier than ever
Christy Dignam could well be forgiven for thinking he is just Ireland’s most recognisable cancer battler rather than one of our most celebrated singers. A few weeks ago, he and a writer from a tabloid engaged in a spat about whether he had declared that his cancer had returned more aggressively than before. The resultant who-said-whattery benefited neither of them.
To reiterate what is on the record, Christy suffers from a rare form of cancer called amyloidosis for which there is no cure.
Chemotherapy keeps it at bay but as he told me: ‘It will get me one day. It could be a year. It could be ten years, but it could be six months.’
However, Christy is now back doing what he does best – making music, lots of it and of a diverse variety.
The 57-year-old is writing an album with his band Aslan. He is also working with Finbarr Furey on one which is eagerly anticipated due to their memorable rendering of The Green Fields of France on the Late Late Show back in January.
He still found time to record a Northern Irish punk classic with Dublin punk band Hooligan which will soon be released as a single. If that wasn’t enough, there is the small matter of their large outdoor show in Dublin’s Iveagh Gardens this coming Friday.
However, as if his own health concerns weren’t enough, then he and the band were struck by a number of tragedies that hit them professionally and personally.
‘We were going to put out an EP of new material in time for the Iveagh Gardens gig, but then our keyboard player [Pat Fitzpatrick] died a couple of months ago,’ he says.
‘The girl who did all our social media, Grace McDermott, died in a fire in Limerick and a few weeks ago our manager [Svenn Braamark] also passed away. We’ve just had a nightmare of setbacks and tragedies in the past while.’
Christy admits that the album with Aslan could be their recording ‘swansong’ but neither his inescapable mortality, nor current events, are necessarily reflected in the songs that he is currently writing.
‘I listen to the guitar riffs that the lads play and see what it evokes in me,’ he says of his writing process.
‘I can tell you that they’re not all doom and gloom. I’m not writing songs about Theresa May and the DUP and how it’s pissing me off. They are reflective though. I look at the world now and I pity my grandkids and the world that they’re growing up in.
‘It’s horrendous. That Trump fella is terrifying.’
Perhaps his ire and aggression is more in keeping with the track Teenage Rebel that he recently recorded with Hooligan. It’s a cover of a track by Belfast band The Outcasts. Christy has always been a punk fan and still likes to go to punk gigs in the capital when he can.
‘I went to a gig in Fibber Magee’s by XSLF. A couple of them used to be in Stiff Little Fingers and one of the support bands was Hooligan,’ Christy says.
‘I said to them I was big fan of The Outcasts and they told me they were going to be recording Teenage Rebel, one of their songs. They asked would I do a vocal. They were only on to me the other day asking would I appear in a video and I said I would. It will be released after we do that.’
In a complete change of pace, Christy says working with Finbarr Furey is fulfilling one of the wishes on his Bucket List.
‘Because I’m Irish I wanted to do something that had the feel of traditional Irish music,’ he says.
‘I’ve been talking about it for ages, so that is how I ended up doing the song with Finbarr on the Late Late Show. I think Finbarr is an absolute genius. Half of the album is going to be covers and the rest of it will be songs that he has written and ones that I’ve done.
‘I’ve never written in the folk genre before, so it’s a challenge for me.’
Tickets are still on sale for the band’s outdoor show at the Iveagh Gardens this Friday. Christy recalls the last time Aslan played an outdoor show on such a scale in their beloved capital city.
‘The last time we headlined an outdoor gig in Dublin was in 1988 for the Millennium,’ he says.
‘It was down by the Ilac Centre. I had just written a song about Phil Lynott called Let Loose In Heaven and Thin Lizzy’s Brian Downey got up and played drums on the song.
‘It was a great day. If the weather holds for the Iveagh Gardens it will be amazing.’
Aslan play The Iveagh Gardens Dublin this Friday, July 7.