Culture That Made Me: Nathan Carter on Johnny Cash and James Bond
Nathan Carter plays Cork Opera House on Friday, June 30.
Nathan Carter, 33, was born in Liverpool, England.
His mother’s side of the family come from Co Down. He moved to Ireland aged 18, originally living in Donegal, but now he lives in Fermanagh.
In 2007, he released his debut album Starting Out, the first of more than a dozen solo albums.
In 2012, the success of his fourth album, Wagon Wheel, and its title track, which is a cover of a Bob Dylan song, helped establish his reputation as Ireland’s most popular country and Irish performer.
- He performs at the Cork Opera House, Friday, 30 June, 8pm. See: www.corkoperahouse.ie.
I love country artists from the 1990s. People like Garth Brooks.
He’s always had a great knack of picking good songs. He's an amazing performer. He puts on a serious show.
I went to see him four times when he was here last year. I’ve been to a good few gigs since and they’ve all been a downer after watching Garth.
There’s just something about him on stage. His energy. He’s electric. He’s not that young anymore but he’s still running around on stage, smashing guitars and jumping off things.
My karaoke tune is ‘American Pie’. I’ve loved it since I was a kid. I used have a Walkman, running around the house listening to it. Seven and a half minutes long the song is and I knew every single lyric. It’s probably my favourite song of all time.
I love the Dubliners. They had a way of singing their songs that affected people. Their music appeals to all generations.
If ‘Dirty Old Town’ or ‘Whiskey in the Jar’ comes on in the pub people in their teens up to ninety-odd, they know the songs and they sing along.
I’m drawn more to Ronnie Drew as a singer. I know people absolutely love Luke Kelly’s voice, but I always liked Ronnie Drew.
He was a cool character. He sounded like no one else. His voice was unique.
I grew up surrounded by music from the Clancy Brothers. They were the first of their generation to bring Irish music to the masses in America.
They set the way for a lot of other musicians in that scene, bands like the High Kings.
The newer generation of folk singers all aspired to be like The Clancys. They were the trailblazers.
My granddad was the one who got me into country. He was a big fan of Merle Haggard, Johnny Cash, Charley Pride.
I was the very strange kid at school. My friends were into Eminem and Westlife and I was into Johnny Cash and Glen Campbell.
I grew up surrounded by that old-style country. Good stories, good melodies easy to sing, easy to play.
“Three chords and the truth,” as they say.
I always thought Johnny Cash was very cool.
He seemed to appeal to all age groups and the fact that he played in Folsom Prison.
I watched the biopic movie with Joaquin Phoenix when that came out years ago. He was unique.
Great songs, great lyrics. Singing with U2. He kept reinventing himself all the time. One of those legends. There's not many of them.
Vince Gill is probably the best singer I've ever heard live. His pitch and his tone is unbelievable. He’s very underrated.
He wouldn’t be as famous as some other country singers, but he has an unbelievable voice.
I saw him in Nashville, playing at a club. It was a Monday night. It was himself and the band. He was amazing.
Elvis was probably the best at taking other people’s songs and doing them his way, interpreting a song completely different to anyone else. He had a great stage presence, a different way of singing songs, with a big powerful rich voice. His band live were incredible.
There was a guy who wrote songs for Glen Campbell called Jimmy Webb. He wrote 'Galveston', 'By the Time I Get to Phoenix', 'Wichita Lineman', a lot of Glen's biggest songs. Unbelievable lyrics and the melody was outrageous in them: “I hear you singin' in the wires/I can hear you through the whine/And the Wichita lineman/Is still on the line…”
I've loved Home Alone since I was a kid. It reminds me of Christmas. It’s a go-to film that’s on a lot in the house. I thought it was very funny that Macaulay Culkin would take on two robbers and completely destroy them. A great film.
I was a big fan of James Bond growing up. Pierce Brosnan was my kind of hero whenever we were watching the OO7 movies. His film Tomorrow Never Dies was one of the best Bond films I've seen. I'm a sucker for action films, I can sit and watch them all the time. James Bond is so cool as a character.
The TV series Blue Lights is one of the best I've watched in a long time. It's about the police force in Northern Ireland, the PSNI, set in Belfast. A great watch. Very much an insight into how the PSNI live and what they do. It's not an easy job.
I’ll Be Me There is a very good documentary about Glen Campbell. It's about when he got diagnosed with Alzheimer's and the last year of his life on tour. He was forgetting a lot of lyrics. A very sad watch, but he was really good at highlighting Alzheimer's, spreading the word about the disease, trying to let people understand what it's all about, the day-to-day struggles of living with Alzheimer's.
The 2 Johnnies podcast is a good show. I listen to them when I'm on the road, driving to a gig. It passes the journey very quick when you put the two lads on. They're comical.
They're genuine, normal lads. It reminds me of two guys sitting in the corner of a pub chatting. It’s very funny.
20 Feet from Stardom is a brilliant documentary about backing singers who never made it. A lot of backing singers were involved in these great songs, big hits, but they never got due credit.
It’s an interesting look at life through the eyes of a gigging musician, which I’m familiar with. I relate to an awful lot of it – life on the road as a travelling musician. It’s not for everyone.
You choose to live life that way or you settle down, get a nine-to-five job. It’s a completely different way of life to what most people live. It's one of the most interesting documentaries I’ve ever watched.
