Anthony Ruby: Cork artist goes with the musical flow on Black Water Rising

You may have seen his murals at the Mutton Lane and other locations, but Ruby is also an accomplished musician

Mon, 21 Oct, 2024 - 02:00

Marc O’Sullivan Vallig

As a visual artist, Anthony Ruby is probably best known for his Pana Shuffle mural in Mutton Lane in Cork, which remains one of the most enduring legacies of the city’s tenure as European Capital of Culture. Ruby also works as an educator, teaching art at the North Mon, and he exhibits regularly in Dublin and London, where he completed his Masters at Wimbledon College of Art in 2009.

Ruby also has another life as a musician. Over the past four years, he has recorded a selection of his own songs and trad tunes, which he's about to release on his debut album, Blackwater Rising.

“I’ve been performing trad music for years,” he says. “I play regularly in sessions at the Corner House and the Sin É. But I only started writing songs around 2011 or 2012. I was in a band called the Diviners with my brother Ciarán and Eoin Jordan, and I sometimes sang my songs with them. But then I moved on, I felt I needed to concentrate more on my own material.”

When Ruby felt he had enough music for an album, he turned to Cárthach Ó Nuanáin for assistance. “Cárthach is a great friend of mine who teaches at the School of Music. He’s a producer and sound designer as well as being a musician. We produced and mixed the album together, recording at Flashpoint Creative Studios on Wellington Bridge, which Cárthach runs with Niall Dennehy. Cárthach plays a lot on the album, and Niall did the graphics.”

Ruby’s original songs are very much in the ballad tradition and, as one might expect of a painter, his lyrics are rich and colourful. “I love songwriters that use a lot of visual imagery,” he says. “People like Bob Dylan, Shane McGowan, Bob Marley and Nick Cave. I think John Prine is brilliant. They’d all be a big influence.

“But my writing is informed by art history as well. There's one song, for example, 'The Ship of Fools', which I wrote in England about 12 or 13 years ago. That was inspired by the Netherlandish artist Hieronymous Bosch’s painting The Ship of Fools. It’s a fictional song, set in Cork in 1502.”

Anthony Ruby designed the cover of his album.

Ruby was also inspired by scenes from his childhood in Ballyphehane. “There’s one line in a song of mine called Ripples that goes, ‘Inside the walls the animal screams, they shot the evening sky.’ That’s a reference to the old slaughterhouse on Tramore Road. When I was growing up, we’d be playing football on the green, and we'd hear the screams of the poor pigs being slaughtered, you know?”

Another song, 'Snakes and Ladders', takes its inspiration from subjects as diverse as Indian mythology and the dictatorship of Nicolae Ceaușescu in Romania in the 1970s and ’80s. “There’s a line, ‘He broke fiddle players’ fingers in dark Bucharest.’ Apparently if there were fiddlers busking on the street, Ceaușescu would have their fingers broken. I found that really disturbing.”

Alongside Ruby’s own songs on Black Water Rising is a selection of traditional jigs and reels, which he performs on the uillean pipes. As with his original material, he is supported by Eoin Jordan on bouzouki, Ilse de Ziah on cello, Tim O’Leary on double bass, Joe Ó Nuanáin on fiddle, and Colm Ó Nuanáin on trumpet.

“I grew up in a house full of instruments – my parents both loved music – but I didn’t start playing the tin whistle till I was 17, which is quite late,” says Ruby. “I was a student at the Crawford College of Art and Design when I got to know John Mitchell and Pat Moynihan at the Pipers’ Club on the Dyke Parade. That was in the mid-1990s, I suppose.

“I was interested in traditional music anyway. I was listening to the Bothy Band and Planxty when I was 15 or 16, and we grew up listening to the Dubliners and Luke Kelly. So I was no stranger to pipes at that point. But I said, I'd love to learn them, so I did. I remember waiting to get the bus home after my first lesson; I had a book on Francis Bacon in my hand, and my practice pipes slung over my shoulder.”

Anthony Ruby in 2004 beside his mural, The Pana Shuffle, on Cork's Mutton Lane. Picture: Denis Scannell

Some of the traditional tunes Ruby has recorded go back to the early 19th century. “There’s a slow air called 'Amhrán na Leabhar/The Song of the Books' that was written by the Kerry poet Tomás Rua Ó Súilleabháin. The story goes that he was travelling from Derrynane to Portmagee, and he sent all his books and manuscripts ahead by boat while he walked there himself. But when he got to Portmagee, he discovered that the boat had capsized, and all his manuscripts were lost. I found this tune on a Séamus Ennis album.”

Ruby plans to launch Black Water Rising online from November 18, in the week leading up to the physical launch at the Corner House on the 23rd. “It'll be on all the usual platforms; Spotify, Apple, whatever. Then I've got 200 vinyl copies that should arrive from Holland in the next few weeks, and I’ll have another 100 CDs to sell at gigs.

“I love the vinyl. I love the idea of pulling out the record, and having the sleeve with the lyrics, you know. I'm trying to build up my vinyl collection, but hopefully I won't have too many of my own left around the place.”

It’s no surprise to learn that Ruby designed the album cover himself. “I worked on different images for that,” he says. “I had a series of black and white charcoal drawings that I was going to put together for the cover. Then I went against that. I had different paintings and I settled on one called Drift, which I think fitted best. It was a case of less is more, visually. And I think it suits the mood of some of the songs.”

After four years, Ruby is delighted to have the album completed and ready to go. “It’s been a labour of love, to be honest,” he says. “I'm just glad to get it out there.”