Mick Flannery: 'My type of music is conducive to growing old'
Mick Flannery's new album, Goodtime Charlie, is out on Sept 15.
Mick Flannery turns 40 this year, and in a way, it feels like the Co Cork songwriter is coming home. Throughout his career, he has cut a fascinatingly uncompromising figure – his grainy voice and introspective demeanour anchoring songs of impressive power and empathy. Middle age holds no fears for him – he’s had one foot in it his entire life.
“I guess my type of music is conducive to growing old,” he says, preparing to release his wonderfully grainy new album Goodtime Charlie and looking ahead to a performance at Cork’s Sounds From A Safe Harbour festival on Thursday, September 7.
“It would be different if I were in a metal band or something high energy – an angry type of music. It’s hard to see the same passion. You know that Metallica are rich – what are you so pissed off about? I always acted beyond my years. In general I used to hang around with people who were a bit older. That might have had an effect. I had a good few older friends – musicians who were much older. Even my closer friends are older. That has an effect on your outlook.”
But if he’s weathered the passage of time remarkably well, he has also progressed as a songwriter. During the pandemic, Flannery put out two intriguingly contrasting projects showcasing his expansiveness as a writer.
In The Game was a collaboration with Co Clare songwriter Susan O’Neill and a major critical hit. American Songwriter heralded its “poignant emotion and heartbreaking plotlines” while indie superstar Phoebe Bridgers was so impressed she invited Flannery and O’Neill to open for her in the US.
Flannery followed that with 2022’s Night at the Opera, a concept LP about NFTs and chess. The record was received as a bit of a curio – one of those albums that artists with a long career ahead of them put out to keep things interesting.
Goodtime Charlie is also interesting – while harking back to the robust balladry of In The Game and early Flannery records such as Evening Train and White Lies. Having discovered the joys of collaboration on In The Game, he continues down that path via duets with Valerie June, Tianna Esperanza (whose grandmother is Paloma “Palmolive” McLardy of The Raincoats) and Anaïs Mitchell, likewise bound for Sounds From A Safe Harbour.
“During the album process with Susan and the interviews we did afterwards, people asked what did I learn?,” he reflects. “One of the things is that, in her style of writing, she likes to leave room for the band – for the musicality of the songs to seep through. To allow the listener have a break. In my songwriting, I was so obsessed with the narrative of the story being told straight and direct, I kind of forget I was making music and that it needed to breath. In this album, we have three or four extended outros. You allow the listener to sit and listen to the mood of the song.”
Flannery, who grew up outside Blarney, says that he had to work at finding himself as a musician. Early on, he was not particularly confident in his abilities – particularly his playing style. It’s been a story of steady progress. And even more so, of following his own rules and charging a singular course.
“My own musicianship has taken a while to develop – for me to be confident. My ability as a musician is not as good as the rest of the guys in the band. There’s things they understand about time signatures that I find hard to understand. Sometimes I don’t want to understand them: they tell me I do odd things. I say, ‘okay I know there’s something weird, I don’t know how to quantify it’. Part of me wants to keep the ignorance: that’s a thing I fall into naturally. My aunt, who writes song as well, she has the same kind of intuition. She has the same odd approach.”
In The Game introduced him to a wider audience. But there have been challenges in recent years, too, such as the recent passing of his father. It's been a tough time, but in terms of his music at least, he's looking towards the future, and Goodtime Charlie seems set to build on In The Game’s success. It also carries the blessing of the family of songwriter John Prine, who signed him to the label set up by the songwriter, who passed away from COVID-19 in early 2020.
“Fiona Prine runs the label with her sons and some people that have been carried over since John’s time. John set it up, Fiona has taken it over. I got on a conference call with them all to say hello. It was lovely to hear some of their personal memories of John. It seems he was universally loved by everyone he met. It’s nice to be attached to his memory.”
- Goodtime Charlie is released on September 15. Flannery plays The Pav, Cork, Thursday, September 7, as part of Sounds From A Safe Harbour
