Dempsey’s den

Damien Dempsey thought he was going to freeze to death.

“It was April, when the sea off Dublin is at its coldest,” he says. “I was wearing nothing but a black shirt and black jeans. I was soaking wet and couldn’t stop shivering. Without question, I was in the first stages of hypothermia.”

The suffering yielded the memorable photograph on the cover of his latest album, Almighty Love. The iconic smokestacks of Poolbeg power station in the background, Dempsey rises from the water, arms outstretched, eyes closed. It is a powerful image, almost as powerful as the music on the album.

Though oozing self-belief, Almighty Love was not easy to make. Dempsey struggled for months, years even. The plan was to record an upbeat and throwaway album, to subvert the stereotype of him as a po-faced chronicler of Ireland’s woes. He wanted his audience to jump around, have a good time. This was not easily done.

“In the past, I’d written a lot of heavy stuff,” he says. “I’d seen the way the people dance at festivals. They’re sort of carefree. The idea was to give them something like that. I wanted to go in a different direction. With the economy and all, everybody had their heads down. Why not give the fans a reason to be happier? That’s what I set out to do.”

The plan didn’t quite work out. Dempsey wrote and wrote, but the songs didn’t make sense to him, nor to his long-term collaborator and producer, John Reynolds. This upbeat Dempsey didn’t ring true. Both of them knew it. But it was a while before they said as much.

“About halfway through, what I realised is that this isn’t why people like me,” says Dempsey. “They like me because I write songs that touch them. Yeah, they do jump around at my shows. Ultimately, it’s the lyrics that speak to them, help them through their day. I give the people joy and hope. I was going off-track. John sat me down for a chat, but I’d already realised what had gone wrong. Sometimes, you need to stick to what you’re good at. I basically started from scratch.”

On previous albums, Dempsey was fiercely critical of the effect of the Celtic Tiger on Irish society. With Almighty Love, the expectation was that he would say much about the economic downturn. In fact, the album is apolitical (aside from one song about bondholders). It’s a very personal album — not preachy in the least. Some fans and journalists felt let down.

“There have been a few comments about this album, people expecting me to attack the Government and the banks, and all of that,” he says. “There’s this idea that it’s my role to go out and say those things. I see myself as an artist. I talked about the Celtic Tiger on previous records. I had written a couple of songs in that vein. John Reynolds said to me, ‘Well you don’t want to be repeating yourself’. He was right.”

Rather than addressing the woes of the nation, he looked inward for inspiration. Several tracks recount personal tragedies — the deaths of people close to him from drugs and suicide. It was his way of honouring his friends, he says. By writing songs in their memory, he focused on the good times, celebrated their lives.

“You sing the song and you remember,” he says. “You see them in your mind. It is a memorial to them. It’s part of the grieving process, in a way. You remember the person with a smile on their face, as opposed to just focused on what went wrong.”

It’s five years since Dempsey’s last collection of original material, To Hell of Barbados. Up to then, he had released four albums in five years. Looking back, he says he was drained of inspiration. The long layoff was necessary. To write songs, he had to accumulate life experiences. He needed to get out of the studio and into the real world.

“I had to go back out there and have a life,” he says. “I’d written a lot of songs and I needed to take a break from it. Let the reservoir of ideas fill up again. I’d been hugely productive.”

Dempsey is from Donaghmede and sings in a broad Dublin accent. Nowadays, people love him for his authenticity. Early on, however, it was a huge drawback.

“I’d go around to labels with my demos and they wouldn’t want to know,” he says. “In the UK, particularly, I was told, ‘He sings in his real accent — it will put people off’.”

It wasn’t until cult contrarian, Morrissey, started championing him that perceptions changed (“I’m the world’s biggest Damien Dempsey fan” the former Smiths singer told journalists in 2004). “To have someone of his stature saying nice things about you, and bringing you on the road, makes a big difference,” says Dempsey. “It was great experience, as well — touring with him meant you were playing to big venues. You learn an awful lot.”

Though Almighty Love is not a political record, Dempsey does retain his strong beliefs about the direction Irish society is taking. He wonders why the country is not out protesting.

“There is a lot of poverty on the streets nowadays,” he says. “I would like to see more anger. People going on marches. I was very young at the time, but I remember there being loads of protests in the 1970s and 1980s.

“The public in Ireland is wedded to its iPods and mobile phones. They should get out and march. The thing about protesting is that you meet people, you get a wider sense of what is going on. That’s what we should be doing.”

In the meantime, Dempsey is happy sticking to what he does best — writing great songs.

* Almighty Love is out now. Damien Dempsey plays Cork Opera House on Saturday