JIM MCKEE is well known for his work as an artist. His vibrant canvases, depicting scenes of west of Ireland life through layers of thick oil paints, bright colours, and impressionistic forms, has won much praise for the Co Tyrone native.
However Jim has been a musician for as long as (or longer than ) he has been an artist, writing songs since the 1990s and performing in various trad based musical groups in Galway and Tyrone. Only now though is his music really coming to light, and only now is Jim McKee the singer-songwriter beginning to emerge from out of the shadow of Jim McKee, the artist.
Jim has just released his debut solo album Just A Piece Of and it will be officially launched at a concert in Johnston’s Hostel, Kinvara tomorrow at 8.30pm. The album will also receive a Galway city launch when Jim and friends play the Róisín Dubh on Tuesday November 25 at 9pm.
Jim will then tour the album around Ireland before returning to the Róisín on Monday December 15 at 9pm as part of the Co Galway based trad band Island Eddy.
Just A Piece Of is an apt title for Jim’s debut. It’s a summation of his life up to this point, his years living abroad, and growing up during ‘The Troubles’ in the North of Ireland.
“Some of the songs are 17 years old,” Jim tells me as we sit for the interview on a Monday morning. “In a way I’ve been working on it for 15 years but it’s only now that I’ve been able to record it and that a CD has been released. A friend of mine described me as ‘an overnight success that’s been 22 years in the making!’”
The album was recorded in Kenny Ralph’s studio in Tuam and features such musicians as Brendan O’Regan, PJ McDonald, Garry O’Briain, Stefano Muscovi, Johnny ‘Ringo’ McDonagh, and Maureen Browne.
The 14-track album is a delight, revealing Jim as a very able songwriter. His honest, poignant songs and often gentle vocals strike the listener as genuine, a welcome occurrence at a time when singer-songwriters are two a penny.
Unlike many others Jim has lived through it and has the right to sing about it. You suspect that even the American TV ‘cops and robbers’ escapades of ‘Gone Fishing’ have a ring of truth to them.
The opening track, ‘All Around The World’ came from a time when Jim was living abroad and badly missing home.
“I’ve lived in England, South Africa, Paris. When I wrote that song I was living in Norway,” he says. “It was St Patrick’s night, I was in the Arctic Circle and I was looking down on the world. All I wanted was a familiar face. There’s a line in the song ‘You’re like a bad dream that won’t go away’. I was talking to a Kerryman who had lived in England for 22 years and I asked him if he missed Ireland and that was his reply to me - ‘It’s like a bad dream that won’t go away’.”
A major theme on the album - reflected in both its artwork and the songs is the violence that engulfed the North from the re-emergence of the UVF in 1966 to the IRA ceasefire of 1994. Jim was working in Portsmouth when he heard of the IRA ceasefire of August 31 1994 and his song ‘But The Truth’ was his immediate response.
“I wrote it in my flat in Portsmouth and I’ve not changed a thing since that time,” he says. “I’ve now recorded it for the album exactly how it was written.”
The central collage of photographs on the CD booklet features a variety of images including Republican and Loyalist graffiti.
“I grew up in an estate in Cookstown that was both Catholic and Protestant. That graffiti was all over the pace and you got both sides,” he recalls. “I don’t talk about the violence in the North unless it’s to someone from there because it’s very hard to understand what it was really like. It’s 10 times better now than it was then and I wouldn’t want it to go back to the way it was. Talking is really is the only solution. Through talks you well get the answers.”
Jim says that writing and performing his songs has been a “healing” experience and having now dealt with emigration and the North on Just A Piece Of he can move on and look forward.
“I’m in a happier place,” he says. “The songs just keep coming. I have around 30 new songs written and am working on my second album. I’ve also written a couple of songs for Island Eddy.”
Jim, and his young son Dualta are today based in Kinvara and the Burren. As well as music and art, he is passionate about Gaelic games. Of course, being a Tyrone man in a hurling mad area of south Galway, Jim is ‘Tyrone for the football and Galway for the hurling’.
“Without doubt,” he laughs. “I was at the All-Ireland final between Tyrone and Kerry! It was unbelievable. I was there with Dualta and my friend Padraig Brennan and his kids. I was in tears at the end of the game. It was great to see Tyrone win, but beating Kerry! That was the cream on top of the ice-cream!”
Just A Piece Of is available in Zhivagos. For tickets to the Kinvara show contact Johnston’s on 091- 637164. Tickets for the Galway city show are available from the Róisín Dubh and Zhivago.
