Jack O'Rourke: Lockdown album inspired by a Kerryman's secret love for music
Cork singer Jack O'Rourke is about to release a new album. Picture: Miki Barlok
In April 2017, Jack O’Rourke and his father attended a concert by American singer-songwriter John Prine at Cork Opera House. The gig was hugely moving and O’Rourke was struck, in particular, by Prine’s ability to push past the usual singer-songwriter cliches and connect with the audience at a deeper level.
“He’s got such incredible songs, that go beyond break-ups. He latches on to the characters. The sort of people you might know from your own life: eccentric misfits,” says the Cork singer. “When he died, it was a Bowie or Leonard Cohen or Prince moment for me.”
Prine passed away in April 2020, at age 73. He was an early victim of Covid. For O’Rourke it was another unsettling flashpoint as he adjusted to lockdown at his parents’ home in Ovens, a village of 1,700 outside Ballincollig. Yet as he privately grieved he took inspiration from Prine’s music, too – and in particular from that ability to compose songs that transcend the four walls of the musician’s immediate experiences and which strike a more universal chord.
O’Rourke incorporated that storytelling philosophy into his new album, Wild Place. It’s a wonderful record from an artist who has become one of Ireland’s most consistently fascinating singer-songwriters. He first broke through six years ago with the single Silence, informed by his experience of growing up gay in small-town Ireland.
Silence became an anthem of the 2015 marriage equality campaign. It was released in conjunction with Amnesty International, which described the track as “a beautiful, poignant and powerful track”. O’Rourke’s follow-up long player Dreamcatcher peaked at six in the Irish charts, confirming the arrival of an important new talent.
Wild Place marks a departure for a performer known for his lush and emotive music. The LP has that familiar intensity but now his songs are more expansive. O’Rourke is throwing open the shutters and looking out into the world. An example of his changed approach is the single Opera on the Top Floor.
It was inspired by a man in Kerry who, through the 1970s and 1980s, kept secret his passion for opera music. O’Rourke was told the story by Aidan O’Connor, owner of the Mike the Pies venue and pub in Listowel. He immediately recognised it as the kind of subject from which John Prine might have spun storytelling gold.
“Aidan has always been very good to me. He was also supportive early on of people such as The Strypes and Fontaines DC. One day he said to me, ‘Come up to the attic’. He told me about his uncle who was a man of his generation – one of the lads but someone who never married or had children.”
In the attic was the uncle’s perfectly preserved study: what might today be called a chill-out room or man cave. “He would collect opera vinyl. He had countless recordings of Wagner and Mahler and everything else,” says O’Rourke. “And he would paint. I thought, ‘what a fascinating story’. There was a sadness to it. Maybe at the time he couldn’t share his music. And this happened around the time John Prine died. And I thought, ‘Prine would pick up on stories like that’.”
Wild Place is full of contradictions. Technically speaking, it is O’Rourke’s “lockdown” project. Yet if introspective and contemplative it brims, too, with joy and optimism. And though recorded at Crawford College of Art and Design bang in the centre of Cork city, its heart is in the countryside and the singer’s childhood memories of growing up amongst nature.
“It came from being at home,” he says. “My parents are real naturalists. My dad would say, ‘this is this type of fungus, this is a heron’. It references that a lot.” He took solace from the lockdown. Of course there were negative aspects and nobody would wish to downplay the severity of the pandemic. Yet the quiet and the calm undoubtedly filtered through to his songwriting.
“It came with pros and cons,” he says, “I feel we’ve gone back to the rat race a bit too quickly. It certainly made me appreciate where I’ve grown up.”
O’Rourke works as a teacher at Gaelcholáiste Mhuire at the North Monastery in Cork city and daily Zoom sessions with his class brought structure and human contact to his life. It wasn’t the same, however, as sharing his music with an audience.
“I missed gigging,” he says. “I’m quite an introvert. However, I love the exchange of playing in front of people, particularly at intimate gigs You might have a setlist for a gig and then it carries off into something else. Zoom kept up the contact and the communication. A lot of the teachers and the kids weren’t comfortable using the camera. So it was great to get back to [to face to face communication] in both senses.”
O’Rourke is still perhaps best known for Silence. That track was hugely personal and was embraced by campaigners for marriage equality. He’s very proud of it – but feels that on his Wild Place he’s trying something different in writing songs that aren’t necessarily tapping into his own private pain.
“It [coming out] was a big deal for me,” he says. “It’s like anything – when you are something, you internalise it. And if there’s any ridicule you take it on the chin and wear it like a weapon. I think we’ve come long way from my generation or generations older. I deal with that on Silence.
“And I was very conscious that this record have a universality to it. I think with this album… not that you ever 'decide' to write the song a gay or queer themes, but, on the new album, there’s a universality to it..that it could be about anything. I loved back in the day when you could have a Neil Young album and he might work with an orchestra. And then he’d do a country album – he followed his muse wherever it went.”
- Wild Place is released November 5
