All set for one ‘L’ of a New Year’s Eve

Jack Lukeman headlines a gig at Everyman Cork tomorrow, writes Ed Power

FOR Jack Lukeman, Christmas came extra early this year. The popular troubadour spent much of the summer and autumn applying the final touches to his new collection of seasonal compositions, Northern Lights: Songs for the Winter Solstice. It was, putting it mildly, a surreal experience.

“I played a gig at the Unitarian Church in Dublin last December and, as I often do, recorded the performance. I feel that, if you don’t get the songs down, sometimes they run away from you,” says Lukeman, who found early fame covering the music of Jacques Brel and Kurt Weil under the sobriquet Jack L. “I got around to listening back to it in August — which is strange and yet very familiar, if you are a musician. They say that, in this business, you are always awake when everyone else is asleep.