Michael Kellycatches up with Foy Vance topping the bill at Sugar Club
The singer-songwriter genre has been so overdone in recent years that the mention of the phrase is pretty much guaranteed to send people running from the room. Foy Vance has been lumbered with the singer-songwriter tag himself once or twice, but you need only listen to about five seconds of his debut album, Hope, to know that he doesn't belong among the hoards of Irish balladeers. "I've never been comfortable being called that," he says, "but I suppose you have to be depicted as something.
In fact the guttural gospel growls and late-night soul vibe on Hope are more reminiscent of Tom Waits' debut, Closing Time. Where does a nice boy from Bangor, Co Down, get a voice like that? "I grew up in the US. My dad was a preacher, and he moved us around the Midwest, so the first music that I was exposed to was the congregation coming around to our house to sing old hymns and gospel music. My dad was a great singer and a fine guitarist. He had a voice that came right out of the earth."
These are heady times for Vance. He's been on Jonathan Ross's radio show and supported Bonnie Raitt and Pete Townshend, and his tunes have provided the soundtrack to Dr McDreamy's shenanigans on the TV series Grey's Anatomy. Tomorrow night he supports Sinéad O'Connor at the Olympia in Dublin before headlining at the Sugar Club on Monday and Tuesday.
This autumn he has been touring UK jails, including Belmarsh and Wormwood Scrubs. Very Johnny Cash. "I wanted to see the inside of a prison. Murdering someone was one option, but it seemed to make more sense to just go in and play some music," he says, tongue firmly in cheek. "My intention was very Johnny Cash at the start - you know, go in there and be a rowdy bugger, and be all punk and anti-establishment. But I discovered that the wardens cared a lot about the prisoners, and it was they who were pushing for people like me to come in and give these guys something to engage with. In the end I felt very fulfilled by the whole thing."
Foy Vance plays the Olympia Theatre, Dublin 2, tomorrow night (supporting Sinéad O'Connor) and the Sugar Club, Dublin 2, on Monday and Tuesday. Tickets for Sugar Club gigs cost €19.50 from www.ticketmaster.ie