James Vincent McMorrow: 'All of my biggest shows, I was fairly lit, I was pretty jarred'
James Vincent McMorrow
When singer-songwriter James Vincent McMorrow thinks back to his early years of success, the memories carry the dark glow of too much merlot and the sinister haze of hangovers that make you question the existence of God and the meaning of life.
“The trappings and the idea of what it is to be a singer-songwriter are often quite tortured and involve a glass of wine when you’re writing,” says the 39-year-old Dubliner. “My first album was very much based on that. As it got bigger and bigger – and to cope with the “bigness” of it all – drink became this thing. I was using it to cover a lot.” McMorrow is speaking from the terraced Dublin home he shares with his artist wife, Emma, and their two year-old daughter, Margot. It’s a week before he is due to perform to a socially-distanced audience of 500 at Dublin’s Iveagh Gardens – a pilot concert that will hopefully mark another stage along the return to normality (he’s predicting tears, from both performer and punters).
