Home is where the heart is for revitalised John Spillane

JOHN SPILLANE has a question. “Have you heard my new single, ‘Life In An Irish Town’?” he asks, leaning forward in his armchair. “I think it has the potential to be a hit. I mean, it’s not for me to say. But I think it could do well. It is about to go to radio so we’ll find out.”

In the dark corner of a Dublin hotel bar, Spillane has been explaining how he came to make his new album by accident. “I was asked to present a television series by TG4,” says the singer-songwriter, originally from Wilton in Cork.

“The idea is that I would wander around Ireland, visiting a number of small towns. I would work behind the bar and get talking to the characters. It was a great gig. However, I don’t have any ambitions to be a presenter. So I wrote a song about each town.”