Casey keeps the home fires burning at Cork Summer Show

Paddy Casey is torn. The chart-topping singer-songwriter has written his next album and is ready to go to the studio. However, his former record label, Sony, plans to release a Casey ‘Best Of’. Should he put out the new record and potentially be in competition with himself? It’s a tough one.

“I’m not against Sony doing it,” he says. “It can only help the cause. That said, it wouldn’t be good for me to put out a new record at the same time. I’m going to have to wait until the new year.”

Casey parted from Sony several years ago, having given the label one of its biggest ever Irish hits with his 2003 album Living. He was unhappy over the promotion of the follow-up LP Addicted To Company. Today that is water under the bridge. Casey has no regrets, harbours no bitterness towards Sony. “I’ve finished but they are still mates,” he says. “They are nice people.”

With his next LP on the back burner he is focusing on a new venture, a collaborative project with singer Kim Hayden, a finalist on The Voice. Casey has always written and recorded alone. Working with another artist is a step into the unknown. So far he is enjoying the adventure.

“I saw her on TV one night,” he says. “While she didn’t win The Voice, she made the final. I thought she was great. I contacted her, asked if she wanted to write some songs. We ended up doing a few together. They were tunes that suited the duet approach. I think we are putting out an EP. It’s going to be fun.”

He is surprised at how smoothly the sessions have gone. Until now he’s always been fiercely individualistic.

“I’ve ‘written’ songs with people before. Usually I’ve just gone off and written something completely different afterwards. So this is a new experience.”

Casey grew up in Dublin — he now lives down the motorway, outside Naas in Co Kildare. His career began in the late 1990s when he was ‘discovered’ by a Sony executive at Dublin’s International Bar. His 1999 debut album Amen (So Be It) proved a surprise hit. It was thoroughly overshadowed by Living, which spent the best part of a year in the Irish top 20.

Surveying Casey’s career, there’s a temptation to resort to that old Spinal Tap saw about an artist’s appeal growing “more selective”. Living made him famous: in 2004 he performed for five nights at Dublin’s Olympia and played the RDS. Twelve months later he supported U2 on their Vertigo tour. However, he has conspicuously failed to follow up the success of that record and is a superstar no longer. In truth, he doesn’t seem to upset about this.

“At the time I didn’t pay any attention to it — I was busy,” he says. “You also have to remember I was only successful in Ireland and maybe in parts of Scandinavia. I did some decent tours in America. The venues were really only the size of [300 capacity Dublin room] Whelan’s.”

Though Casey is not banking on another smash-hit album he’d still like it to do well. In his opinion, it comes down to one thing: radio play. Nothing else truly matters.

“You want to write a song that gets on radio,” he says. “It’s a great feeling to write a track knowing someone is going to put it on. As far as your career goes, I still think radio is extremely important.”

* Paddy Casey plays Experience Fest/Cork Summer Show at Curraheen, Cork, on Friday. Other artists playing at the weekend are Jack L, Ham Sandwich, Frances Black, Mary Coughlan, Hermitage Green, the 4 of Us, the Fureys and Something Happens.