The Blindboy Podcast - Speaking to Patrick McCabe about writing, failure and creativity

Episode Date: October 10, 2023

Patrick McCabe is a twice Booker prize nominated Irish novelist, known for 'The Butcher Boy' and 'Breakfast on Pluto', His unique style merges dark comedy and profound emotion, capturing the complexities of Irish rural life and personal identity in modern times. In this podcast we chat about writing, failure and creativity Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Sneeze on the steeplechaser's teardrop, you hot barts. Welcome to the Blind Boy podcast. If this is your first episode, consider listening to an earlier episode to familiarise yourself with the lore of this podcast. All Blind Boy has a sore throat this week. I have the beginnings of a sore throat and it's quite painful to talk, so I'll be keeping my introduction quite brief but I have a fantastic guest lined up for you. A couple of weeks back I was at the Patrick

Cavanaugh Festival, a writers weekend up in Manahen and I got to chat with the legendary writer Patrick McCabe who's from Manahen. Now when I say legendary I don't use that term lightly. Patrick McCabe has been shortlisted for the Booker Prize twice with his books The Butcher Boy and Breakfast on Pluto and both of them were turned into incredible films. Breakfast on Pluto it was one of Cillian Murphy's first proper roles and he's still releasing bangers his book Pog Mahon came out last year I believe and it's been compared to Ulysses if you haven't read The Butcher by

I strongly advise it it is hilarious and heartbreaking with absolutely beautiful writing throughout and if you don't want to read the book the film is also fucking fantastic it's incredible directed by Neil Jordan Sinead O'Connor is in it as Holy Mary but if you do have the time go for

the book because you will not be disappointed it is astounding I've read the book about three or four times in my life and one of the reasons I was so excited to speak to Patrick McCabe was because I had pretty bad writer's block during lockdown. Real, real bad writer's block and it was deeply unpleasant and rereading The Butcher Boy got me out of writer's block. It reconnected me with what I love about writing. It made me feel safe because when you have writer's block you don't feel safe. You feel like you're a child in school being scolded by the teachers and everything you do is bad and wrong. When you get writer's block and it goes on for too long your entire confidence goes out the window. Your confidence leaves you and the negative voice that says

you're useless, you have no talent, you need to quit is incredibly loud and all-consuming. To be creative, to create art, you have to be playful. It has to be a playful state of enjoyment. Fear has no place in that process and if your inner critic is loud in the creative process then fear is present and you won't create it's like pissing while someone is watching and i was in that state for more than a year and rereading the butcher boy took me out of that rereading the butcher boy reconnected me with the fun playful i, I don't give a fuck, let's just have crack part of the writing process. So I was so grateful to chat to Patrick McCabe and we spoke about writer's block. We spoke about everything to do with art and creativity. We had so much crack.

So my voice is getting sore now. Without further ado, here's the chat I had with the wonderful Patrick McCabe. How are you getting on? It was a great story, I really enjoyed it. Did you like that? Yeah, I did, yeah. That was great. Great energy in it.

Thank you so much. The reason I was so enthusiastic about coming up here and doing this was to chat to you, Pat. I had about, I'd say a year and a half of really really unpleasant writer's block yeah I was trying to write five hours a day sitting down getting absolutely nothing and it's a very hurtful feeling because a huge amount of my personal meaning and happiness comes from creativity and And after about a year of it, I was getting to the point

where I was nearly going to ring up the book company and say, look, just forget about it. I can't do it. And then I went back and I read The Butcher Boy again. And when I fucking read The Butcher Boy and when I read the freedom of prose that you were doing, it reminded me of what I love about writing. It reminded me of why I was doing it in the first place.

And this story there, The Donkey, was the first one that came out of it because I'd read The Butcher Boy. And I just want to thank you for that. That's art. That's the beauty of art. I really appreciate the flattery. But I think it's very important to remember that what you're describing, which is commonly called writer's block block it really is part of the

whole thing because what you're describing there in the butcher boy if i could tell you how that came about like i had two small children very young and my wife and i i left a teaching job and went to london with these two small children maybe thinking you could write something. And I had written this big slab of thing, which was about, looking back on it now, about five novels in one. And I'd published a book with this English independent publisher, and I sent him this thing. And he was looking forward to this second novel, it's supposed to be, yeah? So I sent it to him, and no word came you'll find this increasingly with

publishers ghosting i understand it's called but it's getting increasingly common i understand between young men and young women and partners and all that but publishers are very fond of it ghosting yeah what a word yeah how vulgar is how can you get but uh anyway one was ghosted as they say so i was in london and uh i said to my wife just this guy isn't uh getting back to him a bit concerned that this massive masterpiece isn't is it being read or and uh i called him so hello thank you patrick can you wait a moment we're watching the racing so all i could hear was moving up on the inside followed closely by Friartuck Friartuck

followed by Blind Boy Blind Boy on the inside followed by Patrick so eventually this all went and eventually about 10 minutes later he comes back yes what can I do for you

I said did you get that novel I sent you is that what you call it yeah there's 350 pages. It looks like a novel to me. Oh dear. We've both read it. And I said, well, what do you think of it? Oh, I have no idea

what you're doing with this. It's not for us. Bye-bye. Oh my God. Okay. Just to get back to our original, what you were saying about I left the book there and you're saying you know, the book there and you're saying you know your writer's block really what that is is tension loss of faith in yourself loss of faith in the whole business and everybody that worth their salt who's a writer gets this all the time

so i left it there it was like lying in a corner of the little flat we had in Kilburn, like contaminated nuclear waste. All right? And I looked at it again, and I thought, well, I'm not surprised. He didn't like it. It's no good. And it stank to heaven in my head. I threw it away. So I was teaching in a junior school in London at the time,

and exactly what you're describing there about he lost faith, strength, everything goes. Beautifully described in Bob Dylan's book Chronicles. Now, Bob Dylan was at the height of his fame when he was doing Oh Mercy. He said, it's gone. It's lost. I can't get it back. He leaves the studio.

He was working with Daniel Lanois. He leaves the studio. He goes off downtown wherever it was, and he's really, really knocked back. And when you're, you know, Dylan lies about a lot of things, but I don't think he lies about the essential nature of his calling. So,

he's on his own with the hood up, I'm sure, sort of hunched and he goes down into a little basement bar with a little jazz combo playing. And he's sitting there knocking back some wine. The next minute, one of the sax player, I think, does a little phrase.

And he said, the hair stood up on the back of his neck. And he raced back to the studio and started doing it. You never know when that's going to happen, right? So always remember that if it ever happens again. You never know when it's going to come back, but it will. So anyway, this thing lay there, and, you know, a very understanding partner said, I made a mistake here.

She said, no, no, no, hold on, hold on. You didn't make a mistake. Just let it go, let it go. And about, I would say, two months later, I woke up and I started writing what you now call The Butcher Boy. It took me two weeks. Wow.

Yeah. And what I'm trying to say to you is that what was contaminated nuclear waste, I didn't realize it then, but that was the foundation stone. And you took off from that. And how much of the butcher boy was in that rejected manuscript?

There were about five novels in there because I was young and wanted to do everything at once. Do you understand me? That's very, very common because you're ambitious, you want to make your, you know, your stake. But

I would say if I went back to that slab of rubbish now, but it wasn't rubbish really, but whatever it was, if I were to investigate it, I'd say you'd find traces of everything I've ever done since in there. So like, that's kind of why it's important, I think, for writers, musicians, and artists to know each other.

Because critics will never know this. And they don't really get it, actually. You know, you read about John Wenner. I don't know if anybody even knows him now, but he was the big cheese, founding of Rolling Stone, and he's produced this book. It's under fire now because it's, I think, legitimately under fire

because it talks about masters of rock, you know, and Joni Mitchell's not in it, and Carole King's not in it. Look, I know everybody can make mistakes, but the thing is, there was a kind of thing with those critics in that when Bob Dylanylan produced self-portrait john when it was the first to headline what is this shit yeah well you know if you look at the

arc of bob dylan's career and now you look at self-portrait you very much understand what bob dylan was doing you know he was his his imagination was so ahead of of, you know, that a bit in common with yourself, but that's just the rush of energy that's coming off. Self-portrait is full of that. But critics, you see, have got caught up in this kind of template of the reasoned, rational, kind of finger-tapping, kind of good manners kind of view of things. So when anything new comes along, they don't get it.

They come later on. Now, some of them do, but by and large, it's because they're not in the space that Bob Dylan was in when he went down the stairs to that little basement and the hair stood on the back of his neck.

And that recording session there, is that where the song Blind Willie McTeddy came out of? I think so. It is. It is, yeah. Because that's one of my favourite Dylan songs.

It's an amazing song, yeah. Well, there's so much that he's done that's amazing, but that's one of them. Dylan didn't know that was good. He thought when he recorded Blind Willie McTell that it was shit, and Daniel Lanois had to convince him this is actually a good song.

That's why it ended up on the basement tapes, or not the bootleg sessions and not the album. It happened with a lot of them on the basement tapes as well. They were just knocking things off, you know, and Dylan didn't know what was good and what was bad but i guess that's what happens with jesus you know um one thing i'd love to speak to you about as well as so when i was speaking about the creative block there okay what put me into that creative block was i got a really bad review in the irish times i got a review that was they were arguing that I shouldn't be allowed to write. The quote that they used was,

I don't believe in gatekeeping literature, but, do you know what I mean? Which was a strong, and it was because I said, most of my influences come from music or painting, and I'm not really into reading. I love reading, but not as much as I like listening to music. Now, for me, creativity is creativity. I'd like... Like, Tom Waits would be my biggest influence as a writer, and not just his lyrics, his music. And I don't have a problem in saying that,

and then producing short stories and saying, yeah, this is like a Tom Waits song. Music is a huge thing for you as well in your writing. Well, I'm trying to get a key into a story, but I really can't get it. But this thing keeps going around in my head, which just goes like, A tongue can accuse and carry bad news. The signs of distrust it will show.

But unless you've done something wrong in your life be careful of the stones that you throw now what's that you say yeah well that's the song I first heard Big Tom from Monaghan singing wow okay I heard it when I was about

6, 17 it's actually a Hank Williams Luke the Drifter melody and lyric, I think. And if you ever looked at Hank Williams' notebooks, I think maybe you should maybe pop it in the post to the reviewer that you're talking

about there, because it's written in this beautifully elegant childhood scrawl, you know, and the links between music and literature are so strong. Like when Hank Williams was, he died at 29. Yeah. I only mention Hank Williams because there's a huge country and Western thing here,

you know, always has been. Big Tom is a very big part of that. Big Tom and the Mainliners. Yeah. And he didn't know that Mainliner meant doing heroin. I don't really know if that's a true story or not. Do you think he did know? Oh, I think he knew an awful lot more than he did.

Okay, okay. I think there is nobody, believe me, I've met plenty, there is nobody who is in a show band that doesn't know everything that goes on. I'm telling you, up every lane in Ireland and abroad, of course, you know, he was a shy kind of guy, but he was a very knowledgeable, worldly, wise man. But what I'm saying about that song is that, and the links between music and literature,

whether it's hip-hop and limerick or country and western music, Monaghan, Cavan and Armand, the North generally, but style is a kind of funny thing. And when I'm using that song, that's the beat in my head, you know, when I'm looking for this thing. But... So you're chasing the feeling that song gives you, but as prose.

Totally. There's the beat, the rhythm, the tempo. So this is a kind of a different one than I had expected. But when... I understand that completely, but that's a strange one to say to a literary critic. No, I felt you would.

I felt you would. And, you know, Hank Williams went to Roy Acuff and he said, well, I got this yodel, he says. And I stole that yodel from you, Roy Acuff. Then I went to Ernest Tubbs and I got a freezing from him. So we put the two of them together. Then he went to comic books.

Right? He's reading, do you remember those? I know you're too young to remember these kind of books, but true romance tales where the word balloon is coming out. Oh, you're a cold, cold heart. All this kind of thing. Was it like a Pulp Fiction? Pulp Fiction, yeah.

So they're driving along in this high-ass van or whatever it would have been, a Chevy. And one of the drivers turns around and says, Hey, Hoss, what are you doing there in the back? And Hank says, I'm reading these books. Every time I look at you, you're reading these sissy books. What are you doing reading them sissy books, Hank? And Hank says, that's where I get all my material.

So all these Hank Williams songs, like Cold Cold Heart, You Win Again, he's using, that's literature. Okay, it might be described as degraded literature, but not to me. So the idea, you know, that there isn't a constant interplay between music and literature

is so laughable, it's embarrassing. It's ridiculous. And again, to use a big word, it's pure postmodernism. It's taking all the different types of art forms and going, there's no limits here. We can remix everything. We can have it all together. I mean, I just understand it as creativity, you know?

But surely Limerick was to the forefront in recent years of that because, I mean, the age I am, kind of getting old, kind of, you know, blues rock, it is old, let's face it. You even get Keith Richards now saying, oh, I can't listen to that hip hop. You know, people shouting at me. So nothing really changed as much.

You know, here's an old granddad now complaining, you know, all he thinks is at the forefront of rock. But when all that started after the kind of troubled urban history that Limerick had, and suddenly this vernacular burst forth with great confidence, didn't it? I mean, I love the blues and I love hip-hop as well

and I kind of don't separate the two because they're both... What I love about African-American art forms is it's post-colonial music. It's music that's... One thing I'm fascinated about is if you go beyond America and you

go back to Africa, West Africa in particular, there's languages there where they use clicks. So how they speak, they have clicks in how they speak. Now, we don't have that in how we speak. A lot of Western languages don't have clicks. But there they speak, they have clicks in how they speak. Now we don't have that in how we speak. A lot of Western languages don't have clicks, but there's an entire system of communication in certain West African countries based on clicks and drums. Like if you think of how we use

like this knocking on a door, we understand that. In West Africa, they might have 70 variations of knocks and rhythms, and these things actually mean language in the thing with hip-hop hip-hop came about in the 70s in america because they had defunded music programs in places like harlem and the bronx music programs have been defunded to the point that the african-american kids didn't have instruments anymore so they made instruments out of their parents records and that's west african thing of rhythm and beat and drums coming out in the music so when that hit limerick i grew up with nothing but hip hop my ice tea ice cube these people were my gods and the desire within me as when I was 17, 18 to make rap music, it was so strong. But I'm like, the fuck am I going to rap about? Do you know what I mean? I do, yeah.

The fuck am I going to rap about? And I was also reading Flann O'Brien. And the thing with Flann O'Brien was I would have been listening to Ice Cube, but also Dylan as well and Tom Waits. And these people were gods to me. But I could never put myself in their shoes because they were American. But Flann O'Brien, it's like, wow, I feel the same way about this writing

as I feel about Ice Cube or I feel about Bob Dylan. And it's like, this fella talks like me and he thinks like me. What book in particular of Flann O'Brien's was it? Was it Third Policeman, probably? Third Policeman was the one that did it for me. And the reason I knew about Flann is that his brother was actually my family doctor.

So his brother, Fergus, had moved down to Limerick. So he was my family doctor throughout. So Flann's books were in my house as a kid. And it wasn't even the great flan o'brien it was there's the doctor's brother's book of course you know what i mean yeah yeah yeah so and and his his brother it was kind of before my time now because i was born in the 80s his brother used to come to the house the whole time and he famously gave my dad a lecture about smoking that was about 30 minutes long and then as he left he asked him for a cigarette. You know?

And as well, Flan O'Brien's brother saw me in the pram and I was a little baby and he said to my ma, he's going to be very handsome. He's going to be famous for how handsome he is. And I got famous by wearing a bag in my head. Which I think is wonderfully Flan. Very much so. But Flan was a huge presence in my house.

His humour, his books. And when I started reading The Third Policeman, very much so but Flan was a huge presence in my house his humour his books and when I started reading The Third Policeman I couldn't believe that I felt I felt the way that Ice Cube makes me feel

or Bob Dylan makes me feel but this person's Irish so when I first started making rap music with the Rubber Bandits I was just like what would Flan O'Brien do

so Irishness was still a big issue in the 80s was it for you well this would have been the 2000s when I was just like what would Flann O'Brien do so Irishness was still a big issue in the 80s was it for you well this would have been the 2000s when I was making when I was making

music isn't that a curious thing when you think about it do you relate that to the post-colonial thing in some way it was

it would have been very embarrassing for me from Limerick to try and rap like I'm from the Bronx. You know what I mean? But no more than Mick Jagger or Keith Richards

singing like a black man. For some reason, they got away with it. They got away with it. Now, examine that. How did that happen? Like, why should it be any more difficult? Because there's more authenticity to rap music than the blues. I'm not dissing the blues.

What I mean is that when you sing the blues there's an understanding in the room that you're kind of an actor and you're playing a part sure rap music is very very much about your literal authentic story and keeping it real so you don't lie in rap music because if you lie in rap music you're seen as a fraud it has the authenticity is essential to it so what my authenticity was I'm going to do a rap song about a greyhound in Limerick because that was the reality but I'm going to deliver it with the passion or my first proper rap song would have been a song called Up the Ra which you heard at the Flat Lakes Festival. And I quote, Sylvia Plath is in the ra. Yeah. So...

I heard it myself. That song was about, when I was a kid down in Limerick, the IRA to us was something that was on the television, you know? And the IRA when I was a kid was a kind of a macho thing. There was Bob Marley, Tupac and the IRA. And those were the three things. And we didn't separate those things and we didn't think about them critically because it just meant a type of masculinity.

So that song that I had up the row was about a southerner from Limerick not having a clue about history where, you know, Tupac is in the IRA, Quentin Tarantino is in the IRA. That's the way kids think, isn't it? That's a big macho. That's how it was., isn't it? That's a big mash-up. That's how it was.

But I'm looking at, for me, I was looking at Swim Two Birds. Yes. Because with Swim Two Birds, Flann O'Brien is getting 1950s or 1940s cowboys and putting them into,

not the Taun, the Fenian cycle with Fionn MacCool. So you've Fionn MacCool and a cowboy existing side by side and I'm like, holy fuck. Now, why do you think that you really got into Flann O'Brien as opposed

to Ulysses? Because Ulysses is full of stuff like that. In fact, that's where Flann O'Brien got it. Just too intimidating? Way too intimidating. And I was in my 30s before. Before I picked up Ulysses and was able to laugh at it. That's the truth for an awful lot of people, which is a great pity. Because it's picked up Ulysses and was able to laugh at it. That's the truth

for an awful lot of people which is a great pity because it's hilarious. Ulysses is fucking hilarious. It's just a drunk uncle at a wedding. It is. No, no, I'm not disagreeing at all.

Yeah. No, no. I was at that wedding. I was the uncle and I quoted Ulysses. And the thing is if you break it down and you chop it up like that

you know, you will see that Flann O'Brien really wasn't the first to do that stuff no you know good luck to him and he's great and everything

but of course I mean the way that Ulysses follows the Odyssey the way that it follows the Odyssey Flann I reckon

was going fuck it can I do this with Irish mythology I know but in fairness to Flann this is what I love about Flann yeah

he was literally translating he had such an understanding of Irish can I do this with Irish mythology? I know. But in fairness to Flann, this is what I love about Flann. Yeah. He was literally translating. He had such an understanding of Irish that he was actually taking some of the manuscripts in Old Irish and translating it into English. And he was elevating Irish mythology to the level of Greek mythology,

which I thought was class two. Oh, there's no doubt about it. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. But in terms of the wild humour and the humanity, though, it does come in a close second to joy, I think. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. But in terms of the wild humour and the humanity though, it does come in a close second to joyous

I think. You prefer Ulysses as you... Well, he was there first and it is wilder and it is more

expansive. And if you examine the female mind in Ulysses, it's very sophisticated the way it's

done. And the relationship between men and women is way is very sophisticated in the way it's done and the relationship between men and women is way ahead of its time and it's just exactly as you say if you think of this you're the uncle

at the wedding and you've got Ulysses well thumbed in your arse pocket and you say hey, we'll read you this bit. You know,

there's no way you can't laugh at it most of it. And what I adore about Joyce too is he opened the first fucking cinema in Dublin. That's right, yeah. You know? there's no way you can't laugh at it most of it and what I adore about Joyce too is he opened the first fucking cinema in Dublin

that's right yeah you know and sometimes I wonder especially when I was reading when I read The Dead when I read The Dead I get a vibe of

this fella wanted to make a film especially the end when he talks about the snowflakes there's he's imagining cameras that can float in the air before they existed fella wanted to make a film. Especially the end when he talks about the snowflakes. He's imagining cameras that can float in the air before they existed. And I think The Dead was written around 1915, I think. It might have been a bit earlier.

But I think himself and Eisenstein were going to meet at some point and they if they had got together it would have been like a nuclear explosion because as you say Ulysses is so sphermic, you know, it's like drone camera. Did they ever meet? I don't know. I don't know. I'll tell you

who he did meet, though, and you never knew about it. It was Emma de Valera. Go away out of this. They had the same eye surgeon in Zurich, and there's a photograph of the two of them together. Now, there would be a conversation for Blind Boy to put down in his next book. What would they say? Come on, what would they say? Come on Ramon, what would they say? I'm Joyce

Here's another mad theory Are you familiar with the art movement called Dada? Yeah, very much so, yeah. The stones are full of guts my friend. Yes The Dada Manifesto was written in Zurich, right? A week after the 1916

Rising and sometimes I after the 1916 Rising. And sometimes I view the 1916 Rising as a type of data performance art. Well, I mean, I mean, if you consider that Joseph Murray Plunkett was a roller skate champion who won medals in Albania, it's a very, very, it's a very possible, plausible theory, you know?

He was a roller skate champion. Are you serious? You think this is a joke, Blimey? No, I believe you. Get the Googlers out, guys. What are you doing? Roller skate champion in Albania. Was it Algeria?

Algeria. I didn't even know they had roller skates in Algeria. How could I have got it so wrong? Algeria, of course, my good man. How did he manage that? I just skated around. I don't know how it's done. Fucking hell.

Hold on, I need to make sure now that we're not going to... Nine o'clock. Is that time for the interval? Is nine o'clock the interval time? It's time now for a little interval. It's time for the ocarina pause. I'm not in my office office I'm in my home studio because I have a sore throat

I didn't leave the house today I'm in my home studio but I still don't have my ocarina I can't find it but I have this little weird it's like a wooden frog I have a little weird wooden frog that makes a rattling noise

so I'm going to play this and you're going to hear an advert for something. Ah, it's supposed to croak. It's a frog and you rub its back with this wooden thing and it sounds like croaking. Ah, that's what it is. Ah, that's what it is. You're invited to an immersive listening party led by Rishi Keshe Herway, the visionary behind the groundbreaking Song Exploder podcast and Netflix series. This unmissable evening features Herway and Toronto Symphony Orchestra music director Gustavo Jimeno in conversation.

Together, they dissect the mesmerizing layers of Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring, followed by a complete soul-stirring rendition of the famously unnerving piece, Symphony Exploder. April 5th at Roy Thompson Hall. For tickets, visit TSO.ca. On April 5th, you must be very careful, Margaret. It's a girl. Witness the birth. Bad things will start to happen.

Evil things of evil. It's all for you. No, no, don't. The first omen. I believe the girl is to be the mother. Mother of what? Is the most terrifying. Six, six, six.

It's the mark of the devil. Hey! Movie of the year. It's not real. It's not real. It's not real. Who said that? The first omen. Only in theaters April 5th.

There's something unintentionally pagan about that that I enjoy. Because I have a frog in my throat. That's what you say when you have a sore throat, isn't it? So maybe I cast a little strange wooden spell on my throat there. This podcast is supported by you, the listener, via the Patreon page, patreon.com forward slash the blind boy podcast. Whatever reason you listen to this podcast, entertainment, enjoyment, merriment, fucking distraction distraction the news cycle this week is incredibly sad some people listen to this for distraction

to get away from that shit whatever has you returning to this podcast whatever has you taking your time out of your week to listen to this podcast this is my full time job and it's how I earn a living and it's how I pay the rent from my office and how I feed myself and pay my bills.

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coming up to the six year anniversary of this podcast this month and I haven't missed a week in six years because of gratitude. I'm doing this shit since I'm about 16 years of age. I've been trying to be professionally creative for a long time. And most of those years were completely unpaid. And the years that I was getting paid, it was wildly unpredictable. But since I started this podcast six fucking years ago, my patrons have allowed me to have a predictable fucking income as an artist, which I'm eternally and consistently grateful for

so if I get a sore throat I work through it I figure out a solution so just some upcoming gigs for my book tour in November because my book Topografia Hibernica new collection of short stories that I'm very proud of is coming out 9th of November in Ireland, 19th in the UK. My book tour slash podcast tour. UK tour is mostly sold out except for there's tickets left for Liverpool and Coventry on the 14th and 16th of November. Belfast is almost sold out on the 18th of November. And then what's almost about to go, you don't want to miss this one. My Vicar Street Dublin book launch. Right on the 19th of November. I can't wait for that.

And then February 24. Berlin is now sold out. So I'm looking at trying to add a second Berlin date. And there's still tickets for my live podcast in Oslo in February. Back to my chat with the wonderful, fascinating Pat McCabe. We basically just continued the conversation backstage. I apologise. We didn't stop.

But backstage, we'd managed to get on to speaking about the singer John McCormack from the 1920s. And I'll tell you what came into my head. And I said, I'm going to save this for stage. Because you were talking about some type of Irish music that was being sang in houses and stuff, right? So they were doing these archaeological excavations in old Irish houses and some houses,

when they dug up the floorboards in old cottages, they used to find horses' skulls full of, like, bottle caps and stuff, right? So what would happen is when the Protestants during the, what did you call it when the Protestants came here

in the 1600s? The plantations. When the Protestants came to Ireland with the plantations, Protestants were terrified of witches. Now we didn't really have witches in Ireland, but Protestants were terrified of witches and Protestants believed that witches would come down chimneys and Protestants believed in the 1600s that witches were afraid of horses. So Protestants would put horses skulls in their

floorboards where the chimney was so that if a witch's spirit came down it would go fuck this there's a horse's skull underneath and they also used to make witch bottles which was a glass bottle full of nails that the protestant would piss into because the witch would smell the human piss and then get caught in a in a load of nails down this in this witch's bottle but what would happen is catholics would then move into the cottage and the Catholics would be having a KLE and they'd be banging on the ground and they'd notice, fuck me, the sound sounds great here. What's going on?

And they'd lift up the floorboard and they're like, the fuck are the Protestants doing leaving a lot of horses' skulls here? We don't know what this mythology is, but it sounds great. The horse's skull is a perfect acoustic chamber. So then the Catholics went in and they threw bottle caps. The horse's skull is a perfect acoustic chamber. So then the Catholics went in and they threw bottle caps into the horse's skull. So they turned the ground into a fucking tambourine

with this perfect acoustics. I'm serious. And the best houses for music, like before sound systems, were old Protestant houses that had a bunch of horse's skulls with bottle caps in them. Like, it's not class.

So I wanted to say that to you backstage, but... Is that verifiable? Oh, yeah, man. But I did a podcast on that. I go deep into, like, academic articles and archaeological records to find that stuff. I don't just put it out of my ass. No, no, no.

It's good either way. You've got to be able to back that one up. But something I love about music, right? I love how environment can shape music, how the shape of a room. This is, when I got into this church here, like I was fascinated by, was this a Catholic church or a Protestant church?

Because they're built quite differently. But something fascinating about the history of music. In around the 11th or 12th century, there was Gregorian chant, okay? So these are monks that are singing, but they're singing in a monastery. And the monastery is effectively one room, like a round room.

And when the monks would sing Gregorian chant, they all kind of sang at the same octave, all of them together. Then in the 14th or 15th century, when they built Notre Dame Cathedral in France, right? The mathematics of how they built the inside of this cathedral, it went up in fives.

The actual architecture of the building. And then when monks went to sing there, no one told them to, but gradually they started to harmonize in fifths. So the harmony of how they sang matched the mathematics of the fucking cathedral because music is symmetrical vibrations of air. So why wouldn't it happen?

And do you see music like, say, hip-hop, which is, you know, the vernacular now of urban limerick whatever do you do you see it mutating into something else or will it be like rock and roll say i was born in 1955 and it kind of had its adolescence in the 70s and now it seems to be old and tired and it's a limited art form anyway if it's an art form i think it probably is you could argue maybe that the old seven inch single was almost a perfect art form in that it was three minutes long, you know.

Yeah. You know, and it told a story and off it went. But now, you know, it's a cliche, you know,

go to London sometimes and you sit outside the Hope and Anchor, which was the big place for all the, and oh, you can see them, you know,

like a bad play arriving up with the grey hair and the leather jackets and all the chains man you really should have been there you know at the Bath International Festival or did you hear their third album the second track yeah yeah yeah we know all that

and they're living in the past totally yeah so what I'm saying is like now there's a whole because I'm kind of interested because we have three grandchildren, you know, and they're coming up to us. I'm really interested to vault into the future as to where music might land. So, you know, you were saying that the influence of Bruce Lee, for example, the Kung Fu master on break dancing,

then that becomes hip hop, but linked with the African kind of cliques and all that. Where can music go with, now you know, when you get old. In limerick at the moment with hip-hop, like, the first thing you asked me tonight when we were backstage was the hip-hop scene in limerick. Because the rap scene in

limerick has exploded in the past five years. We've got Denise Chyla, Hazy, Strange by Nature. We have all of these incredible artists coming out of Limerick that are practicing rap music. The reason Limerick had an explosion in rap music, and I always say this, is that this is why we should invest in the arts. As you know, Limerick had its problems about 20 years ago. There was problems with gangs and violence and stuff like that. That's not the case anymore. But around 2010, when the recession happened, we set up this thing in Limerick called

music generation. Some of the money came from U2, fair play to them, and the Cranberries as well. A big fund of money was set up to basically look at the fact that Limerick had an issue where there's kids who are at risk of joining gangs or whatever. They put money into music generation. And what it meant was people my age, because I'm in my late 30s now, so people my age then who were in their 20s, who were in bands, they didn't have to emigrate with the recession.

They could stay in Limerick and show younger kids how to make music. And all those younger kids that were in this program, they're now the ones that are making hip-hop music and are getting international recognition. Would you be in favour then of investing in these things? You fund the fucking... My adolescent self would have thought, ban it. And then it'll flourish.

But the thing is, but you've got a point if you were a kid and all of a sudden we'll say there's a lot of money to be a writer the fact that that center exists means that you're probably on the outside in the alleyway writing something yeah so even the fact that there's there's the kids over there they're getting funding they're approved well i'm gonna be on the outside of that okay you know what i mean yeah even that works sure yeah it's better than nothing sure absolutely no i'm just curious if it works that's how i'm totally in favor of it because like there was absolutely no funding really well that's what i want to know like how how did you become a writer how how did you when when you, like, at what point in your life

did you decide, fuck it, I'm going to write words on a page? There's a, a sort of a view of writing, and I would say art in general, visual or musical. What used to be called,

I don't know if people ever talk about it now, it was called the necessary wound. Are you familiar with this concept? No. No. Well, really what it means is there's something missing in you. There's an ache.

There's a vague unhappiness. And you don't know what it is. Now, children know this. You know, they'll never tell anyone. You can sometimes see it in their eyes, some vague unhappiness. And everybody has this wound to some extent you know it could be anything it could be a slight in the in the schoolyard it could be a sibling getting preferential treatment with an eye it could be anything it can be small or it can be

big but it's there and it's part of you and for me it was very very much inextricable with the notion of creation like when I was youngish about maybe 9 or 10 you know the emotional intelligence that children have both male and female you know when something is wrong but you don't know what it is

and I had this kind of impression when I was very young of almost ecstatic happiness. I lived in a town called Clonus where I still live. I always thought it was called Clones. Clones, yeah. They all look the same. I remember actually

when I was teaching in Longford there was a movie made, a science fiction movie called Clones. It really exists and you can Google it. And I was in a pub in Longford and this guy's thinking, you're all fucking it,

don't you, up there? And I said, what do you mean? Ah, fuck off, he said. I said, no, no, what are you talking about? Down the Odeon. Never make anything about here, though, do they? But anyway, to get back to the necessary wound, it was kind of this thing, you know, how almost

ecstatically happy was, you know, going to the local convent school and telling very, very, you know, good education and so on. But something was wrong at home and I didn't know what it was. And there'd been an awful lot of activity going on, baking cakes and everything, visitors and that all stopped. And of course, you don't realize at that age that what you might be surrounded by is postnatal depression on the part of your mother.

But you know it, you feel it. And I began to become very disconnected and the jokes wouldn't land anymore. There's a darkness around the place, unhappiness. I really was quite unhappy, I think, at this age. And I had a wonderful teacher in primary school in Clonis. His name was Jerry McMahon. And I was about, I don't know, 10 or 11.

And I started to feel, if you could recast the world after the manner of your own preference in other words in your imagination become Montezuma Prince of the Aztecs mysteriously riding down from Anna Street Clonus and a brood mare or perhaps inhabit the body of King Kong

climbing around Tower that mysteriously a kind of calm descended. Wow. Yeah. So I started writing all these things. And that's creativity. It was at that age. So I gave them to Gerry,

and he said, you know, these are very good, but you're a bit undisciplined. And of course, as a kid, you go, well, what would you know anyway? Yeah. Until I realized, ah, so if you were disciplined, what benefit would that be? And he would say, so if you were disciplined, what benefit would that be?

And he would say, well, you've got, he didn't say it in these words, but effectively what he was saying was, in any work of art, you have your exposition, your development, and your recapitulation. Or to paraphrase Jean-Luc Godard, every story must have a beginning, middle, and an end, but not necessarily in that order,

as you well know, blind boy. must have a beginning, middle, and an end, but not necessarily in that order, as you well know, blind boy. But when I started to put a shape on these things, he said, now they're in good order. They're very polished. I want you to read them to the class.

Well, I read one or two of them, and lo and behold, I had gone from that McCabe fellow needs his arse kicked into his neck, and you better do messages for me and buy me cigarettes to actually having some kind of a power, as it were. Wow. And it was like some kind of secret thing. And I started to write. But then, of course, when you get overconfident, the story's no good.

So then you learn another thing, humility. Yeah. So by the time I was 12 or 13 i thought there could be some future in this and not in terms of success although that might have been part of it but in terms of personal happiness that's where it was coming from if the world is such a difficult place which was increasingly becoming to appear to me if there was a world you could make yourself whereby sometimes you could be crown prince or you could be you know a great warrior or or even social realist things if you could make something that was solely your own

then you might be a little bit more at ease other people got it in sport, you see. Yeah. You're talking about flow as well. Very much so. Oh, definitely, yeah. So then when you go back to your original thing about writer's block, where somebody cuts across you. Writer's block for me is when I can't get flow. There you have it. Yeah. There you have it. So somebody has cut across you, and there's you moving along with a lovely, even... And suddenly there's a dam, and you can't get past it.

And then all the other things that were there initially, which were disconnection from the world and an over-alert dissatisfaction, all come back because they don't go away. Everybody knows that now with the examinations and therapies and psychoanalysis. They are all still there, ready and waiting. And that's possibly what writer's block might be, but more importantly, it's interrupting what you've now perhaps decided

might be your life, which as Kavanaugh said, a person dabbles in verse and discovers it can be your life. But the problem, as I had studied a lot of the writers that I admired, it's an incredibly difficult life for an awful lot of people. And that's why it's so kind of important for artists to know each other or to kind of understand. Because if someone doesn't understand that, and, you know, it is a little bit adolescent, you know.

As Martin Amis, rest him said, you know, a father or a mother, who is a writer, they're not entirely 100% present at any time, either for their children or their partner. And that's, you know, it's a selfish act, really. And it can be problematic. Because you have to live in the dream world for a while. Well, that's true. That's a good way of putting it.

That's pretty much it. That's what I have to say to my ma when she rings me up. I'm like, to live in the dream world for a while well that's true that's a good way of putting it that's pretty much it so that's what I had to say to my ma when she rings me up I'm like I'm in the dream world today

I need to live in my own thoughts to figure this shit out and I mightn't be fully present well what does she say you need a good welt in the arse

blind boy 100% yeah cop on I'll bet she does yeah absolutely so anyway the necessary wound

was that and in so far as you can ever understand it because it's a totally irrational act locking yourself away for seven or eight hours a day

making up shit that doesn't exist I mean on the outside it looks insane it is insane but the internal experience of it is absolutely wonderful

the lived experience of writing and being in flow except when it's not. Except when it's fucking not and then it's torture. Yeah. Something I'd love to speak to you about is like

the character of Francie Brady, right? Like I look, I read that now having language around trauma, having language, I have all the language about mental health and psychology and what i felt you did so beautifully with that character is that i don't think francy brady is mentally unwell he is somebody who experienced such great trauma

that he ended up effectively experiencing psychosis and what you portrayed in that is the impact of trauma on a young mind and how that can turn someone that way. But I asked the internet for questions tonight to ask yourself. A lot of people wanted to know about language around mental health. Like, Francie had no support system whatsoever. He was just called bad.

No one would have said he has mental health issues. Nobody looked for how hard it was for him. He was just called bad. No one would have said he has mental health issues. Nobody looked for how hard it was for him. He was just bad. Well, that's not entirely true. I mean, there wouldn't have been support systems pretty much anywhere in the world at that time, whether it was England or Ireland

or anywhere else. I mean, we're all banished children of Eve, put it that way, to quote the Rosary, that people were in an impoverished, relatively speaking, country with very little access. Remember, it's only 1960, 61, you know, where all these awful diseases like smallpox, diphtheria, polio were being eradicated up to that child mortality.

So there were, you know, particularly housewives and mothers were literally exhausted from trying to look after their own children, never mind, you know, looking after someone else. And they were kind of bewildered, you know, as to what to do, because when you're dealing with somebody as unpredictable and as wily and as you know possibly dangerous you know you're worried you know what if he comes for you but see the way i viewed that book was when i had it finished because it came from such a deep wellspring that i'm trying to articulate for you now about the unhappiness really what it was saying was if you'll accept my earlier analysis of this almost ecstatic happiness

and happiness with the oneness with the world, and then it's not. What he's asking himself is, why was there so much love in the world and now there isn't? And what is it anyway? Is it worth anything? Because at some point he says, the beautiful things in this world

they count for nothing in the end you see for me it wasn't a story about a psychotic boy it was a much bigger story than that and a kind of a parable almost and there's a cyclical kind of turn in it when the two residents or inmates of the hospital, they call them the bony arse bog men.

Yeah. And he's looking at them. And that's when the tear strolls down his cheek and the thing like third policeman begins again. Yeah. Really what it's about is not a small town called Cairn or Clonus or anything else it's about the condition of love because there was a young guy

and I was everywhere with him there was a lot of transient movement in Clonus because there was a railway him. There was a lot of transient movement in Clonus because there was a railway there and there was a border. So he had a lot of customs people and train drivers. They were always moving. And this guy, I went everywhere with him.

And it was almost crystalline kind of understanding, as there is between young boys and girls at that age, I should say eight or nine. And it used to be kind of understanding, as there is between young boys and girls at that age, you'd say eight or nine. And it used to be kind of a currency. If a young child, pupil came to the school, you'd make a beeline for him

and see had he any comics. This was the thing, because a big democratic kind of currency, that was comics. Cinema and comics was the thing, was democratic kind of art forms. So you go up to this guy and say, hey! And he'd say, well, I always see what the new accent would be.

If it was Granard, you'd go off, oh Jesus, talking like the new fella. Or Dublin. You're like, this was the thing. But he said, have you any comics? He said, yeah, I have. And I go, what have you got Dandy Beano, Topper, Victor Hornet, Horsby, Hartigan

and Commandos and then I must hang around with this guy so all the time he was swapping comics running around rambling the fields all the things standard kind of rural boyhood fare

but one day I called down I said is Liam there. And a strange woman answered the door. I said, where's Liam? He's gone. I said, what do you mean he's gone? I said, did you not know they're gone? His father's been transferred to Dublin.

Fuck me, I was already to burn the town down after this. Because I had figured, no, this can't change. This is the way it's supposed to be this is a kind of an Eden I think maybe some kind of

schism or sort of trauma might happen I don't know but it wasn't the same after that I thought fuck this and threw the comics away and you know

didn't go around telling anybody about it but then you don't do you these are the things these are the necessary wounds. I'm hearing so much of your own biography now in the butcher boy. Like the cakes. You better watch yourself. No, but like, I mean, today we use the word,

auto fiction is what they say, you know what I mean? But like, the cakes in particular, you you know that broke my heart in the book but you're saying you remember the the cakes from your own childhood yeah but this is where the art comes in i think because if i had to delineate it as it was as it had happened did it just be another sob story it was a much much bigger project that i I mean, it built up over years a notion of what style is. You know, coming back to the teacher in Clonley, you cannot just put it down as it happened. So I'd learned through his offices at a very early age

how much discipline must be applied to refining a thing so that it's, you know, understandable and comprehensible to an ocean audience. That if it's solely your story, it's not the story of anybody else then. It must be the story of everybody else. If you accept that human beings of any creed or gender basically, they're cast

out of paradise and they're trying to get their way back every day of the week. And there's a great sadness. And if we get back to the story though, people kind of, why wasn't he helped and everything else? I never saw it as a social realist story like that. I mean, people were saying to me,

you ran the town down, you did. But many times the place is described as the most beautiful town on earth. There's a beautiful battleship or a beautiful cruise liner about to say. It's full of all the human kind of aspirations that Ulysses telling through every minute of every day people experience different things so i wanted to be a big story

and as soon as i'd finished that draft i was telling you about after the big rejection i thought nobody would read it yeah i thought it would never be read i could tell you a good one i gave it to a friend of mine he He said, yeah, it's interesting. Jesus, the printer's really fucked up though, didn't they? And I said, what do you mean the printer's fucked up? Aye, they did though. He said, no, they didn't. But there's no capital letters or full stops or nothing. Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha.

And I didn't know what to say. You know, I'd thought that this had come out in a huge kind of controlled rush, you know, of energy and all these things that were intentional. He felt sort of sorry for me. That was what got me out of my fucking writer's block, was the fact that you'd done

that, the fact that you'd have sentences that were so long. People had done it before me. Wasn't anything new about it. Who were you looking for? Who were you looking at for that shit? Was that the joys coming out? Partly, but one must remember, Blind Boy, that writers are always forgotten. And please

God, you and I will not be forgotten too quickly. But there was a writer called Ian Cochrane who was from Cullibachie in County Antrim. He was a working class Protestant extraction. And he wrote a series of books in the 70s

called Jesus on a Stick. That was one of them. The Lady Bird in a Loony Bin was another one. They were absolutely marvellous and they had all the vernacular, the speech in Cullibachy wouldn't be that different to Monaghan so I was

really addicted to these things and I read them all and he had done it before me and I acknowledged it and I kept saying to journalists stop saying I'm original I'm not but they hadn't read Ian Cochrane and I see his books were republished

and destroyed in the papers. Like, what's funny about this? That's hilarious. The first time in my life I was prompted to pick up a pen and say, how dare you? How dare you write this about this guy? You know?

Even allowing for all the changes in fashion and everything else the guy's work was so funny so good so original and so authentic i just i just say i'm never buying this magazine again because it was an absolute travesty but he was a huge influence very funny very hip at the time but very rural that was the thing that was very important to me and i think when you speak about Limerick, you know, when you're talking about the post-colonial situation, how the vernacular informs that,

I think it's hugely political and hugely important that, because if you're speaking in the wrong register, or you're speaking in a register that somebody has decided you should speak in, it might be alright, but it'll not be as good as it could be. You know, when I was a kid, I remember

becoming aware of a kind of a drollery in the speech in Monaghan and the Cabin, you know? I remember saying, Jesus. And you'd get it in old people and you'd get it in younger kids. It was being taught catechism in the school in Clonus. The teacher had just told the parable of the loaves and fishes, feeding the multitude.

There's always a young fellow at the back, isn't there, looking out the window, a little country fellow, probably working on the bog or a plant hire or something like that. And the teacher said, you don't seem very much interested. Did you not hear what I just said? And he says, ah, did you? And, uh,

well, what do you think about that? The miracle of the loaves and fishes. Jesus comes down from heaven and he feeds. And the young guy didn't look at the teacher. I remember how sort of implacable he was. I said, what do you think about the miracle of the loaves and fishes? And the little fella, remember, he's only five miles out the country,

but out the country is different to in the town. Yeah. And he said, it better be a whale. Yeah. and he said, it better be a whale. And I remember thinking, oh, it better be.

Nobody in the town says that. They say it in the country. You know, it might as well be a whale, we'd say. Yeah. It would definitely have to be a bigger fish than that. But he just, better be a whale. And I thought, oh, fuck, that's a good way of saying it. And I tried to say it,

but I couldn't say it as authentically as him because he was, you know, surrounded by older people working and things. And probably if you track that back, you'll get Elizabethan English. Wow. You know what I mean? So I've become very alert to the possibilities of...

So he says it different. So all the time within the language you'd be getting all these different musical kind of notes and when it came to the butcher boy i said i'll tell you without being long-winded about it when i submitted it eventually to the publisher he said when i was a young lad 20 or 30 years ago I lived in a small town on what, what they were all after me on account of what I'd done on Mrs. Newden. The publisher said, well, obviously we'll have to change that. Fuck off you English cunt.

No, no, no. It wasn't anything to do with English really. It wasn't. It was, um, he was just, he was just thinking, you know, we have to get this accessible to as most people that would buy it. But I said, no, you can't do that because you change that. You change everything about it. The whole register, the whole note, if it's in the key of E flat, you can't suddenly switch mid-phrase to D minor. So, of course, he was perfectly fine with it eventually. I don't know whether I'd get away with it now

because they'd just say, well, we're not publishing it. That'd be the difference. What's the difference between the publishing industry today and when you were doing things back then? I think now it's a much more commercial enterprise, what they call in business the end user, the people at the end who buy it. Then, see, you must remember that in my day with the risk of

Stanley too old there was such a thing as a calling or a vocation sometimes the religious had it sometimes but the thing was that it wasn't entirely about commerce it was about being devoted to something and you had writers in this area plenty of them Eugene McCabe Dermot Healy, Tom McIntyre, Michael Hart. They all had a calling. And don't forget that analogous to the religious where someone would have a vocation. People understood this.

Now, they might not have wanted it for their own children, but they would have had respect for it, which might not be the case now. How much money are you making? A guy came up to me during the Celtic Tiger time. He was in a hotel, the Four Seasons in Dublin. He said, are you who I think you are? In this weird accent.

You know that accent that developed? I know the one, yeah. Yeah, yeah? I'm all on the move, yeah? The recession softened that cough. That's a very 2007, didn't it though it did anyway the dude the dude yeah yeah 25 sit down buy a pint i know yeah i said i'll go on yeah so but anyway he does something come down so uh i've got something to ask you sit there

all right then young man man, what is it? He said, I want to be a writer. Oh, yeah? Yeah. We've got 25, so we'll get four or five novels by 30, that sort of thing. What advice would you give me? I said, well, old fool that I am, I said, look, if you are serious about being a writer,

one piece of advice I would give you, try and get enough money to get a house or a flat or something so that you have a roof over your head because it's... To continue the race. Yeah, that's what I thought. And he's looking at me. Check out the dude. What?

What? Get a house I said yeah some kind of a place look man I've got five houses I don't need I don't fucking need

fucking dumb advice like this I'm out of here I hope the recession seriously softened imagine it did five houses man in 2007 that fella's story

did not end well you spoke there about when you were Five Houses, man, in 2007. That fella's story did not end well. You spoke there about, when you were chatting about the lad in school talking about the whale, you know, and you said there might be something Elizabethan about his droll. Something I'd love to inquire about is anyone who doesn't live in, like,

the Manahan area, right, we're genuinely like, the fuck are you doing with that country music? Like seriously we marvel at it and go what's going on? Like this doesn't make sense. I have looked into it and I've heard theories about

a Protestant plantation that it's an Ulster Scots thing and that's why you also see it over in the southern states of America Gospel Gospel Hall but mostly it's because it's the rural stories

of course there is that too that's essentially what it is you get all sorts of elements of what you're talking about but you know guys sitting in bars in the southern states of America listening to the jukebox it's the same life that i lived the fellas working in a factory you know stories of marriages gone wrong they're brilliant stories and you know there's always a touch of redemption you know so you know church gone kind of rural living it's as that simple and also as complicated as you're saying you know know, but you need someone who is well-versed in these things.

But the gospel aspect of it definitely would come from the Ulster Scots element. Because it doesn't feel rooted in Irish tradition. It feels something foreign coming in. Well, I don't know when the banjo... Banjo, interestingly, man, that's actually an African-American instrument. Yeah. The banjo... So in parts of West Africa, they used to have a gourd, which is like a pumpkin.

So they had an instrument in West Africa. I'm talking 500 years ago. So they'd get a pumpkin and there'd be a stick coming out of it. And then one string, which is like the gut of an animal. And when enslaved people went to America, they were going, we don't have any instruments like this. So they then found American pumpkins and made these instruments. And that's what the banjo is.

So the banjo is actually an African-American enslaved instrument that found its way into country music. And then the country vibe, that's pure Ulster Scots, you know? Oh, absolutely. That's why they're all called hillbilly, like because of King Billy.

Yeah, of course. It's true. Oh, no, I's why they're all called hillbilly, because of King Billy. Yeah, of course. It's true. No, I'm not about to disagree with you. I know it's true. And, you know, Billy the Kid was Kid Antrim. Yeah. But the thing is, there's a great movie on that subject,

far better than I can articulate it, by a guy called John T. Davis, who's from County Down, I think. And it's called Power and the Blood. Power and the Blood is a Protestant gospel song, which was Paisley's favorite. But he did this movie called Power and the Blood, which follows a country singer called Vernon Oxford.

What a name! Yeah, Vernon told Clock, they at Liebertown, get the old guitar down, and he's sitting in Monaghan Town. Here I am on Northern Sound. I hope you people are all doing good out there. Yeah.

And all this stuff. But anyway, he goes to the Mays prison when the conflict was at its height, really. And some of the images in it are beautiful. He kind of has a rusted sky you know somewhere in texas and he tracks along the electric wires and arrives back and down and there's a prison officers country music association you know these are all big guys you know what the stats is and the disagreements are parked for a while and and he stands up and he sings. He pushes the Stetson back, and through the wires, going back out to Texas,

where Vernon Oxford's home, he starts singing. Many years ago, on a cold, dark night, someone got killed, it'd be a moonlight. Now, if you can say, it doesn't really come from, there's never a music that sounded as appropriate to the landscape of both places as that scene.

Yeah. Where he's standing in silhouette. You could put all the blues you like there and you could put all the rock and roll, but it wouldn't fit as good as the Long Black Veil song with that guy.

Really authentic, I thought. And do you think there is this the country music singers, they're Presbyterians and stuff from the North who moved there. Like, I heard that the way that they say y'all, they say y'all in the southern states of America, was that that was

old Elizabethan English. Then it just went to the southern states. And even the, you were talking about Hank Williams earlier and his yodeling. Like the yodeling in America comes from an area in Appalachia that's known as the Hollers. And this area called the Hollers

was a mountain range where people lived so far apart that they had to communicate through hollering. And that's where that old American yodeling comes from. I taught it for a while in Indiana. Yeah. In the university there. And it's called the Hoosier State,

you know, as in the Hoosier, the H-O-O-S-I-E-R. And I was curious as to where that came from. Mm-hmm. And what it is, it turns out to be, is Hoosier! Ha! Wow!

Yeah. So, going over the mountain. Hoosier! Hoosier! as it turns out to be who's there wow so going over the mountain who's there yeah fucking hell and and then show bands

what is the like I don't understand show bands I know you understand show bands. I know you understand them up here a lot, but like. I feel so sorry for you. And the DJ, the DJ killed the show band, didn't he?

Who? DJs killed the show band. Well, Progress did. I mean, you've got seven or eight people to pay in a band, you know, and the owners of these ballrooms see that if they can, you know, buy what we call the singing lunge. Yeah. The singing lounge it was. The singing lunge.

Lunge, yeah. Are you going to the singing lunge? It's a whole new thing, you see. So the people haven't got their heads around the right name. They've gone all down to the singing lunge tonight. They couldn't. They saw it had spelt and just spelt like calling lingerie

lingerie. They called it lingerie in Limerick. Lingerie in Limerick is lingerie. Very un-erotic. She was wearing her lingerie last night.

It was hot. There's more going on there than you allow for. Take an ownership of it. Okay. You know what I mean? There's more going on than just not being able

to read it. This is their word now. And that's again a rural thing and a country thing. We don't say it like them folks up in the city. We make our own. And that's very interesting in its own right. The lunch bar is one thing.

But they would say they'd have three or four people instead of seven or eight. But it was never going to last forever. It lasted. But the miracle is that it happened at all. Like, if you kind of think a guy is working you know in a meat factory in uh during the day that's what i think is really exotic because it's not urban you know it's rural and that and the um they put on the dickie bow and off they go off to boris and ossory or valencia island you know Places where the music comes to you. Yeah, yeah.

And a lot of them too, like, some show bands used to be like novelty acts. They'd dress up as spacemen or cowboys or Indians. Really weird shit. Yeah, that was Joe Mack and the Dixies and all those people like doing opera and stuff. I mean, it was kind of crazy. A lot of them were really out to lunch, you know.

They really kind of... And I think sociologically, they're very important in Ireland, you know, because it's not like the urbanity of the north of England where they had, you know, northern soul and all that kind of... It's peculiarly Irish.

Do you know what I mean? Yeah. It's not like anything any other country has. Now, you can say they're not great musicians, but some of them were. You know, there was almost like... Oh man, like, I, being from Limerick,

when I think of show bands, I don't hold it in high esteem. But recently like on YouTube, I went back and listened to some show bands and I'm like, fuck me, the musicianship here is shit hot. This is actually good music like not all of it but some of it like I was the guitar playing it was good

stuff it was funny when it started to change and horse lips came yeah and played in what was then called the Maryland it's an old story but it's kind of worth retelling.

But the wheeled in was a mixing desk. All the faders. Yeah, yeah. And nobody in their lives had ever seen a fucking mixing desk. There was more people around this thing. Like, what is it like? Doctor who or what? You know?

And that's standard. That's standard. This was the point when the show bands were given way to what then became known as groups. I mean, did you ever hear the one about the drugs and horselips? Did you ever hear that?

There was these two boys, supposedly down in Offaly, yeah? And the horselips were being denounced from every pulpit in the place, you know, like long-haired pups coming down, you know. Long-haired pups? That's a better name than horselips, man. Yeah, but the long-haired pups were arriving, you know, and you know, the vehement car and, you know,

Barry Devlin and Charles O'Connor arriving in. And they were really great people because they were very friendly to the young country kind of heads, you know, who kind of be in awe of them.

You'd see Charles O'Connor coming in and he'd have On the Road by Jack Kerouac in his back pocket, you know. And this was at the age when you think you're going to be a writer, you know, and you think you go to maybe the sports center in Cavan, you know. And this was at the age when you think you're going to be a writer,

you know, and you think you go to maybe the sports centre in Cavan. You might get a girlfriend there, or you might go to the far-flung kind of climbs of the embassy in Castle Blaney. And you kind of be on the bus, of course. Sad, isn't it, really? But not like a horse outside kind of sit through one or something but

it's kind of dancing you kind of figure out things like to say to these girls that you thought would be really impressed you know like let the proprietors of the revolution know this is that a chat up line yeah

let the proprietors I'd work this out that there was going to be some hippie chick should know this. That a chat of blind? Yeah. Let the proprietors. I'd work this out that there was going to be some hippie chick No, no. How it had started was there used to be a magazine called Mind Alive. Long before you were ever heard tell of blind boys. But in Mind Alive

which was a catalogue of exotic experiences like erotica and things yeah across the world and there was it an article in this which suggested that there was a particular way that if you breathed on the girl's neck she would fold and collapse at your feet and follow you around for the rest of your days going please please go to bed with me right now there's a mixture of all that kind of nonsense and kind of dylan and early kind of counterculture which would be the first girl that looks like a reasonable hippie prospect you would dance with her to slow set and say let the proprietors of the revolution know this that the song that people loved was written by a thief,

right? And then you'd look off mysteriously into the distance. So anyway, I was waiting there in my heart beating and a copy of, you know, On the Road in the Arse Pocket, waiting to see what would be the most likely candidate for this conjugation that was about to ensue. Sure enough, there was a girl in a kind of a bearskin coat that was fashionable at the time. And I thought, oh, she's really going to go for this. She got hoop earrings and she got a little distant gaze. Maybe a bit of ganja might have been on the job. I don't know.

But anyway, time came and the freshmen, as it were, were playing, you know, some kind of stylistic style slow set. Yeah. Let's put it all together. Bit of Philly soul. Bit of Philly soul. Yeah. I was getting confident now.

I'm thinking, you're not from the town, are you? She said, no. I said, are you from Blaney? Yeah, fuck. And I thought, now is my moment because she's obviously a dissident.

Let the proprietors of the revolution know this, that the song the people loved was written by a thief. And you know what she said? Go on. Do you know what she said? Go on. Do you know what it is? I'm as warm as an owl horse.

I swear to God it happened. Did anyone have any hash back then? Yeah. Go away. Oh, yeah. There was hash up around here. No, not necessarily around here, but, you know, if you went maybe a couple of miles down the road, aye.

And, like, was it hard to come by? That wouldn't be easy, no. Were young people smoking at a bar? No, no, no. Only people who went around foolishly quoting Leonard Cohen to girls who went in. Wouldn't have been common currency really, no. Because I ended up

talking to some fucking older hippies in Limerick and they told me about the first man in Limerick who brought hash to Limerick. And what he used to do was he had a connection down in West Cork

that we were bringing into West Cork. And he was the only this would have been it would have been the 60s so he was the only man in Limerick bringing hash to Limerick and the guards couldn't figure out how he was doing it, they knew he was doing it but they couldn't figure out it was him so he'd come back on the train

the guards would search him and they wouldn't find the hash what he was doing was, he'd get his hash, put it into a biscuit tin with an alarm clock. Then as the train was coming in, he'd throw the biscuit tin full of hash with the alarm clock

out the train window, arrive in Limerick, the guards would search him and then he'd go back the train tracks and just at that time the alarm clock would go off and he'd find his hash.

And he managed to do it for 10 years. Did you write this story? No, did not it's true no but did you write a version i didn't write well you should that's one for right it's a great story yeah yeah all right look we're gonna call it a night because i need to make sure that you can go to the pub and have a pint although i'd imagine i'm there like usually when i do a gig i'm like gotta make sure i wrap it up at half 10 so they can get a pint. I'd say the bar just stays open here. There's only one pub and I'd say it doesn't close.

But anyway, look, Pat, this was the most magnificent, fantastic chat. Thanks very much to Blind Boy. It was lovely. Thank you so much everybody for coming along. Thank you so much to Pat McCabe. Wonderful chat. Have a good night Bola bus

Bola bus, bola bus that was a wonderful chat with Pat McCabe hope you enjoyed that and again apologies for not having much talk this week, it is quite painful for me to talk with my stupid cunt of a throat, so hopefully this will all be sorted

within a number of days I'll just get a bit of rest and i'll be back with lots of chat next week it was world mental health day there yesterday so i was gonna do something mental healthy but not not when i sound like i'm getting teabagged by beelzebub all right i'll catch you next week dog bless i'm not gonna blow you kisses because I've got a sore throat even though you can't pick them up over the fucking earphones it just feels it feels uncouth it feels wrong catch you next week dog bless

I'll hug the microphone there you go. You're invited to an immersive listening party led by Rishikesh Herway, the visionary behind the groundbreaking Song Exploder podcast and Netflix series. This unmissable evening features Herway and Toronto Symphony Orchestra music director Gustavo Gimeno in conversation. Together, they dissect the mesmerizing layers of Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring, followed by a complete soul-stirring

rendition of the famously unnerving piece, Symphony Exploder. April 5th at Roy Thompson Hall. For tickets, visit TSO.ca. you