JAPE, THE solo alter ego of The Redneck Manifesto bassist Richie Egan, makes a welcome return to the Róisín Dubh on Friday May 29 at 8pm as part of the venue’s Once Upon A Time In The West festival.
This year has been a good one for Richie as in March his album Ritual won the Choice Music Award. The follow-up to 2004’s excellent The Monkeys In The Zoo Have More Fun Than Me, it saw him add elements of dance and techno to his indie-rock sound.
It also contains two of his finest songs in the pulsating ‘I Was A Man’, and the gentle ‘Phil Lynott’, a personal ode to the Thin Lizzy frontman. Richie’s great friend David Kitt was thrilled when he won the Choice award.
“It was great,” Kittser told me when I interviewed him in March. “When he was making the speech it was like Barack Obama’s acceptance speech. It felt like the right guy had won. Everyone in the room approved of the result. It’s a really good record. It’s good for Richie. He’s paid his dues. We were both in bands since we were 15 and lugging gear up flights of stairs and slogging away for years.”
Looking to the future, is there any chance of the pair recording a collaborative album?
“I hope so,” says Kittser. “We wrote a song for Christmas and we hope to have it finished for next Christmas. I’d love to do something. I think it would work quite well. When we were writing the song together it was a very natural process and we’ve played in each other’s bands so we are used to each other. I hope it will happen. I have been working on my own for the past couple of years and I hope to do something more collaborative.”
Support is from Le Galaxie. Tickets are available from the Róisín Dubh and Zhivago.
