LUKA BLOOM LIVE IN FITZROY - 18.5.23

It was utterly beautiful. 

With the front of Fitzroy decked out in over 100 candles, Luka Bloom appeared with his Lowden guitar, that voice hewn out of the Bog of Allen, or close by, and these amazing songs and instrumentals. 

My wife Janice and I had just spent 3 days driving around the Wild Atlantic Way in Donegal. Luka’s songs of place, mainly Irish place were a perfect way for our heads and hearts and souls to remain there for another couple of hours.

When I think of Luka Bloom I think of a songwriter of place. There are mountains and rivers and oceans and sands. Nobody else could make being a bog man so full of life.

It’s the poetry. Luka tells us of an English teacher who encouraged him to write his first song at 16. Wave To The Shore is the title track of his new re-recorded career overview and you cannot help but wonder what a high bar the young Barry Moore was setting himself.

He tells another story of being at his sister’s house and a neighbour asking him what he was writing about. After uttering something she responded, “Ah the beauty of every day things”. What a title to another great lyrical song set in God’s favourite piece of earth in the west of Ireland. 

Not that Luka Bloom is out there somewhere in County Clare hiding from the world. He wrestles that guitar, he says, like therapy. 

I Am Not At War With Anyone, his response to the Iraq war is rewritten for Ukraine. 

Don’t Be Afraid Of The Light That Shines Within You. Was written when three nuns asked him to write a hopeful song for tough times. As the crowd turned it into a hymn with the candle light effect this was spiritual.

City Of Chicago was a Christy Moore song long before it was a Luka Bloom one. Luka shared that it was written when he left another brother to the plane for a new life in America. It made him think of those leaving in the famine. He wrote this song in half an hour and when his other, song collecting, brother asked him if he had any new songs… unconvinced about it Luka gave this one to Christy who sings it every night! When the crowd sang on it tonight Luka seemed more than convinced and a little moved.

The Man Is Alive moved me. I used this song and a few Psalms in the last ten minutes of my father’s life. That Luka was only 18 months old when he lost his dad is another story. Then he has us in Vancouver, a favourite city of ours.

I cannot let it go without mentioning that here on our anniversary, just a few hours in from Donegal, Luka dedicated Dylan’s Make You Feel My Love to Janice and I. Complete. What a night! What a catalogue of songs. 

The utter utter beauty of everyday songs.