John Spillane: My proudest achievement is being a dad

John Spillane: 'I think my greatest quality is that I don’t have any greatest quality, just a load of kind of grand and not too bad qualities'. Picture: Fionn Hennessy-Hayes

I grew up on Laburnum Lawn, in Wilton, in a semi-detached house on a gentle slope on the southside of Cork, just where the city melted into the country. At the bottom of our garden was the Ditch, and beyond that the Orchard, then the Meadow, then the Quarry, a wonderland of wild and tangled natural woodland and water.

I remember having a family picture taken with my father standing behind me and smiling. I was a baby and his happiness went through me. I was one and half when he died and though they say it isn’t possible I think it stayed in my memory cos the picture was on the mantelpiece shortly after that, when I was two.

I don’t know if I was born to be the person I am because I don’t believe that things are pre-determined, that everything is ‘written’. I think that the future is not only unseen but undecided.

I’ve been lucky so far and the challenges I’ve faced are nothing compared to what I’ve seen my fellow humans face. I’ve never been sick or lost anyone close to me.

My proudest achievement is being a dad. I have a daughter and three stepchildren. I have a wonderful time with my granddaughter. We were picking rushes and making St Brigid’s crosses yesterday.

I was 26 when I became a father. I was quite spaced out and directionless before that. When I became a father, everything got really busy and I had to step up to the mark. It focused me in a way that applied to all the rest of my life, including the music as well as bringing home the bacon and finding a place to live. It was the best thing that ever happened to me.

I think my greatest quality is that I don’t have any greatest quality, just a load of kind of grand and not too bad qualities, but that I have enough of them that when put together it means I can survive in this world and even, sometimes, have a laugh.

Looking at the news, the war in Ukraine, the mother and baby homes, it’s kind of relentless and it can be easy to get swept into the negative. You have to find a place where you can have a laugh.

My wife Cathy is the person I turn to most — for advice, guidance, comfort and just a chat.

I have composed the lessons I’ve learned from my life into a series of songs. ‘I’m Going to Set You Free’ was a big song for me. There is a sense of liberation about it, of cleansing the fear, something like that. ‘I won’t be afraid anymore’ was a very significant song and album. A lot of people are afraid to step outside their boxes.

For me, it was tied up with music because I was at it for years and I wasn’t getting anywhere. I wasn’t really setting the world on fire. I had writer’s block in my early 20s. Once I found that personal courage to write the songs I really wanted to write, I opened up the door for myself. That song became an anthem for me.

Everyone is full of advice — things like ‘you should get Dolly Parton to sing one of your songs’ or ‘you should just sell a million records.’ The greatest advice I was ever given was ‘keep on doing what you’re doing’, to keep plugging away.

I would like to be remembered by a snatch of a song, by a melody that comes into your head. In my game, you have to be careful of being egotistical and I’ve had some friends who’ve had big problems with their egos. Anything to do with fame — the whole thing is illusory.

You might think you’re important and that you’re going to be remembered by a plaque on a park bench. You might not get a plaque. If I can get through life without any hassle with the people I love, you know, that’s not a terrible thing.

I would not try to change anything from the past and I am much more interested in this real world than in any imaginary, might have been, parallel universes. It’s a waste of a life really, to be thinking that things shouldn’t have happened. So you have to kind of absorb things and move on, not to be looking at it from a victim’s point of view.

I’m not an eco-warrior, I’m just your common Joe Soap, really. When it comes to small stuff, like recycling and my carbon footprint, I try. Climate change has impacted on everyone’s lives. Just to look at a David Attenborough film to realise that our fragile world is being destroyed by human activity. I have a lot of songs about nature and I’m involved with Rights of Nature, which is trying to preserve nature against human incursions.

The robin from the ditch surprises me quite often with her flaring red breasted feathery jacket, the only bird where the female takes on the role of the male. I always think it’s my mother, messaging me from the other world.

People scare me the most. I find people who are angry and ignorant scary. Racists are scary. They would concentration camp you and your kids. Religious people are scary. They would burn you at the stake. Trump is scary. Putin is scary. Authoritarian regimes are scary.

If I took a different fork in the road, I would have been a forester or a woodsman. But I (and everyone else) probably spend way too much time thinking about things from the past and alternative universes instead of saying, ‘well, it is what it is.’

• John Spillane’s new album In Another Light is out now. He plays Balor Arts Centre tonight and The Glens, Manorhamilton February 12. For more information, visit johnspillane.ie