I could think of worse ways of launching a novel than to enlist the tuneful assistance of fiddler Martin Hayes and his guitar accompanist Dennis Cahill, and young sean nos singer Iarla O Lionaird. Sinead O'Connor also joined in as guest of honour at the London launch of I Could Read the Sky in the Shepherd's Bush Empire recently, but for these two Irish gigs, due to studio commitments, she will be replaced by Mick Lally, who will render extracts of the book in his inimitable and personable Connaught style.
I Could Read the Sky is certainly an odd book. Written by Timothy O'Grady, a Poguesy-looking character of Irish descent from Chicago, it's a first-person memory novel of a scarred old Irish emigrant labourer. Boots up in the bed of a blighted English morning, his mind runs back over his lambent childhood in the west of Ireland; his brief, ecstatic marriage; and his hard years of labouring in England - from the humiliation of sharing lodgings with pigs, to seeing his best friend fry when his jack-hammer hit a mains cable.
Dotted throughout its pages, Steve Pyke's black and white photography complements the text with bleak shots of the windswept west of Ireland (abandoned houses, crumbling shrines, etc.), or portraits of old-timers in their kitchens, and indeed the headlamps of novelist Dermot Healy's eyes beaming out from the shadows of his beard and thatch.
For the Dublin and Limerick gigs this weekend, Pyke's images will be projected on a screen behind the musicians as they play (Martin Hayes's sister Helen will also be called on for a couple of songs), echoing the loss-and-emigration themes in extracts of the book read by Lally and, in sections, by Timothy O'Grady himself.
Oddly, it is hard enough to nail the novel to a particular period of this century, or indeed to ascertain whether the memories of the old man stretch back to Leabasheeda or Fenit, Connemara or off-Donegal islands like Gola, where O'Grady spent a considerable amount of time. Like the music, it is a portrait of an experience, a document based on time spent in Ireland and on conversations with the old guys at Irish pub sessions in London and Chicago.
I Could Read the Sky is also being filmed for Channel 4 as a co-production between a London company and Nicholas O'Neill's company Liquid, here in Ireland. Shooting was completed before Christmas, and editing begins on Monday in preparation for Cannes in May. And although Lally was first choice for the central part, he was already contracted to Glenroe, and Dermot Healy successfully screen-tested for his big-screen debut.
Music is part and parcel of the project, and it's easy to see why Martin Hayes - now resident in Seattle, but a Feakle-man originally who learnt his music from old timers like his uncle and Clare fiddler Paddy Canny - would warm to it. Hayes is also a friend of O'Grady's, and contributed to the many quasi-mystical references to music in the book.
And apart from finding himself in good company, you can see why Iarla O Lionaird would go for it, from his current university-educated urbane persona to his own memories of setting and harvesting spuds, down in the Cuil Aodha Gaeltacht in west, west Cork, where he grew up singing in Peadar O Riada's choir. It should be a very interesting night.
I Could Read the Sky: The Gig takes place today in Vicar Street, Dublin (tickets £15: booking 01-6097788), and tomorrow in Dolan's Warehouse, Limerick (tickets £10; booking 061-314483)