Shrugging off the paparazzi

He says his life would bore the media, but Luka Bloom is happy with the point he has reached, which includes becoming a homeowner, writes Tony Clayton-Lea.

In a surreal conversational twist, Luka Bloom, aka Barry Moore, is sitting in a Dublin hotel talking not about his forthcoming album, the excellent Between The Mountain And The Moon, but about the shape and texture of taps, sunken baths, mosaic tiles and stoves. Such interior- design gossip does not sit comfortably with the rugged singer-songwriter, but with a new house to step into any week now, it's clear he has been thumbing the pages of glossy magazines instead of sheet music.

After 30 years as a peripatetic performer, and about to be handed the keys of a house after decades of renting, Bloom doesn't feel as if he's settling into a phase of cosseted domestication. He's viewing his move from flat-dweller to homeowner as another journey.

Soon to be based in a small village close to Kildare, three miles from where his mother and father are buried, four miles from Newbridge - where he grew up - and close to familiar places and people, neither does he view it as a nostalgic move.

"Or even a settling move," he says. "I see it as an adventure. I grew up in a town, whereas where I'm going to be living is very rural, so it's a totally new experience for me. I've lived in cities since I was 17, and now I'm moving on. You could say I'm an aspirational bogman."

As Barry Moore, the younger brother of Christy, Bloom started his career at the age of 16, in 1972, supporting Planxty - "a beautiful tour that I still remember well. I was a shy little fella, singing a mixture of my own and English folk songs".

He was a very serious teenager, he says, too young to be a hippie and too old to be a punk. While other people were listening to The Beatles and The Rolling Stones, he was more attracted to solo singer-songwriters such as James Taylor, Joni Mitchell and Neil Young. He was also drawn to guitar stylists and what their playing sounded like, which was as crucial to him as their songs. He developed a style of fingerpicking prevalent among folkies such as Nic Jones, Bert Jansch and Davy Graham. "My guitar-playing was always more important to me than who was on Top Of The Pops."

Tendonitis in 1979 put him out of action for a couple of years, and by the mid-1980s, having embarked on a further bout of work, both solo and with the band Red Square - "we did great rehearsals, paying a mortgage or two in studio time, but we never really amounted to anything" - Bloom felt he had arrived at a creatively interesting point. Yet because he had been struggling for so long in Ireland, financially at least, he regarded himself as trapped.

No matter what he felt, Ireland wasn't particularly interested in his artistic endeavours. Hurt more than bitter, although he could clearly see bitterness on the horizon, creeping in like a fog, he knew he needed to get away.

"Resilience is more important than talent," he says. "But talent is the spark, and without that there's nothing. If your songs aren't generating any kind of momentum for people, then it's a sad, pointless exercise." So he took himself off to the United States, where, thanks to Suzanne Vega and James Joyce, he landed as someone called Luka Bloom, a moniker that was as pretentious as Iggy Pop, Bono, Sting or the Edge, didn't necessarily sound Irish and was easy to remember. The name, he says, is a mask, literally a stage name, a trade name. (A nickname, too - some of his family call him Luka.)

"At the time I wouldn't have seen it as a mask, but I've now come to see it as one. I can't really understand how this happened, and I'm sure a psychologist would have a field day with it, but I know within months of having this name, and being in America, I had more confidence.

"A lot of self-consciousness slipped away from me, and I found I took myself less seriously, which was something I needed to do. Somehow, using this stage name allowed me to do that. It also allows me to be onstage to do whatever I have to do, and then to walk off stage and to revert to being a gobshite that one wants to be in daily life. It creates a clear divide, and that's important."

The mention of the term "burden of self" elicits a shrug. "Not consciously. I don't analyse it at that level; it was purely about making a living. It wasn't about escaping from Christy or my family. All I ever dreamed of since I was 16 was living in Ireland, writing songs, playing gigs and making a living.

"Somehow, becoming Luka Bloom, going to America, created the platform to make that possible. Luka Bloom has proved to be a very lucky name for me, but I don't take it any more seriously than I suspect Paul Hewson takes the name of Bono."

I ask him whether he is comfortable in his skin. He says the only way he can answer such a question is to say that he lives alone and that he's very happy to be in that situation. "I regard myself as a sociable loner. I write songs and for the most part it's a solitary process. I've always been like that. Loner sounds dark, but it isn't really. It's important to be comfortable in your skin, because if you're not, how can you really enjoy the company of others?

"I like being alone, to be honest about it. I have beautiful friends and I love my family, my brothers and sisters, my son, but I'm very comfortable to be with myself. That's a good thing."

Bloom has more or less come full circle in his 30 years as a performer, yet he describes his creativity as a work in progress. Although he flirted with major-label record deals through his associations with Warner and Sony - the former a relatively pleasant experience, the latter less so, he says - he is now the owner of his current labour.

Everything comes back to him, it seems, by asking what kind of a life he wants to lead. He says one of the things he learned about his interaction with the music business is that he's allergic to contracts.

"There are two very clearly defined paths in the music world: one is the pop star/rock star route, which involves contracts and heavy- hitting business people; the other isn't. Very often the dream - a person or a band wanting to make a promise to themselves and to deliver it - is a noble one. But that way is not for me. There were times when I courted it, when I was living in America and on Warner, on a bit of roll. But, ultimately, it wasn't the way I wanted to live my life."

Bloom is into normality, he says, living a life so quietly in the public domain that its integrity is not impacted upon too much. "From the point of view of media or celebrity, I'm a complete bore. There is nothing interesting about my life to people in that world, and so I have to create a life that doesn't depend on fame or celebrity. A life that involves connecting with people who love music."

Between The Mountain And The Moon is released at the end of the month. Luka Bloom plays The Spirit Store, Dundalk, tonight