 Brilliant, Mickey sort of stepping out of his comfort zone there and he done it so brilliantly and we applaud him well done Mickey absolutely legend of the song and as I say it's available Spotify Apple Music iTunes Amazon Pandora and Deezer but it's worth the checking out Mickey Duffy of course and We look forward to Mickey popping up to see us again. I'm sure sometimes soon But only we welcome our first guest and I've just trying to figure out my head when the last time we were talking to But Mike Blake you're very welcome. Thank you very much. It's good to see Mickey. Well, Mike was a lot Definitely before the pandemic. It certainly was I'd say about 2017 movie Well, you haven't changed neither of you. No, thanks very much. That's it. That's the complimentary house things. What's your great? Yeah, yeah, right in a way right now in the odd gig here and there and the odd gig such you like it does I don't do that much. I prefer him to be studio at home and sit and muckin about Waiting for things to annoy me and writing songs about them Is that your style your general style pro test type songs Unfortunately, there's a lot of material out there An Ireland the last time I was here, but no, it's gone to red We're looking forward to that. We want to get straight into a piece of music if you don't mind The first track you're going to do first. It's another child another war. This is a beautiful song Thanks, and the background is just for people that aren't too familiar with it. Well, basically I was kind of inspired to write this when Israel invaded Gaza back in 2014 and I I suppose I wanted to kind of put into words how I felt about it and Christie Moore then had a benefit to in vicar street and he heard this and asked me to come along and sing it Yeah, so that was kind of the the release of it at the time But I suppose the the words sort of explain what is about better than me So I might just whenever you're ready, Mike Amsterdam in 44 Behind a secret Addictor She takes the diary from the draw to mark another day For two years now as darkness falls safe within these attic walls She finds it harder to recall when life was not this way She scribbles down her hopes and dreams all that one sunny August day They came to steal her life in Amsterdam and 44 Another child another war she clings on to her rushes to find refuge through the term always For two weeks now as rockets fly looks on as her little world Slow she seeks solace for a while But sometime in the dead Palestine just like before Another child another war and so it all begins again Oh the children victim to a tyrant and still we never learn Slife is lost in see just to try to justify How dropping bombs on children is an act for fatherland or promised land on nose in command I should say I modified that away With the Ukrainian war because you say you say you saw not the last time you were here I think he did because it just came back right and then you you korean bit But on it that's going god, maybe you didn't but I think he did you know definitely last time But unfortunately you do you have to you did nothing much has changed, you know It's got nothing changed actually and and it's a great point you're putting across another Another child unfortunately caught up in this stuff But anyway, like the albums and stuff are just how do you send it to me when I was something outside that You don't sort of you're more into releasing stuff online Yeah, yeah, I think you know albums in this day and age But absolutely nearly I think Because I brought out oblivious back in 2017 and then I discovered it was just easier to kind of release things Usually on youtube now be my main sort of Media Not of me now just okay, you know, I like using visuals So that kind of connects with people as well. So all the songs I that that I do there would be a youtube video Do you make them yourself? Yeah? Yeah Yeah But it's just a series of photographs usually It just kind of reinforces I suppose what I'm trying to say and uh, you notice the Well, obviously through Spotify and stuff too, you can sort of see your Listenership or the figures and stuff like that and you'll get it on youtube too. And you find that a better platform Um for you, you know it for me. Yeah, I suppose everybody's different, you know They're kind of hard to break through and and sometimes you're surprised at what's popular And then you think you've come up with something brilliant and it doesn't really I know but I you I blame the algorithms for those ones. Oh Very good. Yes indeed. So, uh Do you you're involved with the Kelly band too? And that's what you call Moylor the Moylor Kelly band. Yeah I think you're seeing me in in here a few years ago. Do you know a fiddle player from leatrum? Oh, we did He's he's not as well. So there's a gang of us down in Russ Kalman leatrum slago And we're we're playing a gig now at the all-erland in Mullingar. We won the all-erland dairy In the flat and uh, we won the all-erland senior Kelly band. So Yeah, we meet up now. How many members in that? 10 has to be 10 in the Kelly band. Yeah. Oh, is that the way it works? That's very very strict. Oh, yeah And do you know what do you play? Do you play an Indian role? I'm the piano player Yeah, I let me do a few songs as well. I said I do the protest songs to kind of bounce things out about you But many albums have you in total. Oh, no, just of the one album You just oblivious of the first one probably have about 35 songs Sit on line. Yeah Oblivious was the one I remember. Of course. It was just an amazing album. Absolutely an amazing album. Remember, it's clear and that song That song is don't be Christy Muir as well. It was yeah I mean I started writing songs about 12 years ago and the first one I wrote was called leatrum a brief history And it wasn't very brief at all. It was about six and a half minutes And then I got a phone call probably months later The first thing I'd ever put up online and you're you're kind of a bit nervous obviously never sang in public or anything Did you know? No, no, no, I was always a musician piano player accompanist and all the bits and pieces But so um, I got a phone call and somebody said, oh, this is Christy Muir And I thought it was one of the lads in the kelly band or something No, but it turns out it was like he got my number from charlie megettigan who lives down You know close to me. So christy knew charlie and he said I really like that song You're doing but it's a bit long like and can you send me all your other stuff like is it a nice that's the only thing I have So since then when I write something he said, you know send me on It does acknowledge that when you send it on to him like, you know, oh, he does. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Oh, no, he's a great lad Now you'd always get back to you But yeah, yeah, no oblivious obviously was was a I was delighted when he decided to do that one and he said that was the one that kind of Encapsulated the 1916 centenary firm so and and For yourself make it sort of Big honor kind of thing christy Yeah, it doesn't get much bigger than that for a folk singer, you know, so when you say you didn't you're only sort of writing and Recording the last 12 or 13 years. Yeah. Yeah. Why was that? Why did you not know for um Or busy I was always involved in music, you know in the primary school teacher as well but um, so The first thing that inspired me was that Whole, you know, it was the crash. I suppose and I said, you know, everybody was angry about that and the different ways of expressing themselves So I kind of went down the trying to write a poem first And then put a bit of music to it and it all kind of fell into place took about a year and a half and totaled that first So um, but you know, it was something different. It's comparing the past and the present, you know, but like this when most of my songs do that But the the the song writing process for you What is it involved? What way does it start for you because I'm always there's something I've always intrigued everybody's different ways Yeah, I suppose It's hard to sit down saying I'm gonna write a song Right, so if anything occurs to me at all I make a wee note of it on my phone So if I have a bit of time and I've a wee studio at home now that you know, I've kind of built up over the years If I have a bit of time at all I'll sit down and look on my phone is up Right, let's see if it comes up with a a rhyme and a couplet for that or you know an idea for that or Another way I do it is actually would google the images and see what comes up For those images and they can kind of inspire me now one of the next one. I'm going to do is like Very very interesting that it is. Um, so it kind of visual Yeah, you know inspiration I suppose As I say, it's always good for you know, if there's young people listening and I always just find Everybody has so many different ways of doing and I love to hear. I always genuinely love to hear How people You know put their songs together and what inspires them and stuff. So they are you still teaching Mike? Oh, I am. Yeah. Yeah. Some are holidays. Some are holidays now. That's right. You enjoy it's getting tougher Well, I'm in a little country school. I suppose was little there's about 240 kids in it, but um, I enjoy it Now I have to say like kids keep you grounded I'll let you away with much of the great sense of fairness, you know And yes a great sense of right and wrong in terms of what's happening in the world. So we'd have a lot of discussions and So, you know, I get a big kick out of it. You get inspiration from children Again, a lot of me songs are about children as you know, so I suppose right about what you know The other one and what what what what annoys you or what you love or You know, that's very true. We're we're going to get another song. We take a commercial break here If you don't mind, but the next one you're going to do first Uh, it's called Vova And it's about Putin Another character right after this break. Mike Blake livens to do don't go away Do you suffer from high cholesterol? 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No no flamin doors You know industrial doors garage doors roller doors insulated doors. Ah, okay, mic. Give me that number again 91 48 2 3 4 Flemings engineering solutions for 150 years call us now on 07 4 91 48 2 3 4 Best music on your station with Paul McDevitt It is and you're welcome back. It's monday night sessions, of course and we're in studio. We're delighted that Mc Blake is with us And this next song game mc is called Vova, I'll just tell you a bit about it first. I kind of started off as a poem We were talking about the lyrics after you come first and I just um We had a mother and daughter staying with us down in leitrim for 10 months from ukraine And um it was amazing as the ring they should prove to keep me up to date what was happening on the ground with her friends over there He was horrific And I decided to try and write something about Putin and it was going to be an angry one anyway And uh, I kind of went on the internet again and found photographs of him when he was younger and stuff And there was one particular photograph of him sitting on his mother's knee When he was probably about nine or ten you might have seen it's a black and white one And he just looks very sulky and that they didn't get his own way Like and I don't think much has changed since but if the other kind of things I've found about him he he does things that would make like Donald Trump blush Like he's just on top of a a horse and he's bare chest See that without looking for a bear to wrestle or something and and then there's a there's a comic book called superputin Where he goes around like saving the world and he can fly and stuff and it's kind of amazing It's in russia in russia. Yeah, you can google So this is what yeah, yeah, and uh, so he's a real Megalomaniac like narcissist, you know, so um, then I put this poem up and uh, I send anything that I write to christie as I was saying So, um, he suggested another verse because he said, you know, I can see where he's going What about all the good russian people? He said you want to give them a shout out towards the end So he wrote the last verse of this and asked him yesterday. Did he mind if I did this has never been performed publicly So I asked him did he mind if I stuck this verse in and he said no problem So looking forward to this it's called boba because boba is um, it's a kind of a pet name for vladimir apparently so And the other thing about putin was that a lot of his family were killed by the nazis And the fact that he can't kind of connect with that and say this is what he's doing in ukraine You know isn't it funny but you say so it's someone that I never thought about Looking anti A lot of it's hard to get the you know, but if you look for the images, it's uh But um, we'll go for this anyway, so when you're ready The kremlin palace amongst your fawn and chums Your paranoid delusions feed the monster you become Brainwashed teenage conscripts cling to your every word As you take rushes noble name and drag it through the mud Do not your family tell you how they suffered how they died A savage fascist army tortured raped and crucified Your babooski murdered your uncles disappeared And now you seek to resurrect the monster they so fear But there's need a narcissist your ego's off the scale As a fellow can say Great lyrics and that But I I can I can hear christie moore singing that actually, you know what I mean? That's a song I think he would have at least that list without a doubt and a very prominent song at the minute In there to finish it all off But uh again the way things are going at the minute doesn't look You probably be adding another verse with another war onto to you the way things go But just growing up music wise who would uh, who would you have followed? And kind of drawn out my favorite song I don't have to say is randy newman And um, I think he can do it all he can do the sarcastic stuff the protest stuff the love songs, you know Um, tom waits. So what I'd like to obviously bob dillon Yeah, you know, so He kind of drawn as many influences. Yeah, and it seems to be that sort of one style. Yeah. Yeah. Well. Yeah, you do get that But even you know some of the traditional Irish melodies or the the songs the comments Like I was just looking there the hills of glen swilly and uh, you know lovely leetrim. They all had a protest verse in them And if you look into there's a there's a verse in the hills of glen swilly about lord leetrim being killed Up and fan it but it was left out because they sanitized them all you see because they just wanted to dance to them I'm same with lovely leetrim. There's there's a verse in that that larry conningham left out About the the selton hill massacre, which was which happened down in leetrim So a lot of these songs that were kind of If I like to think that they were kind of just to hide the important verse in the middle But then the important first Because they think it's better just to be dancing Well, yeah, keep it keep it simple. Keep it simple. Do you do you read much? I'm a terrible reader. I listen to audiobooks all the time I couple hours every day walking and going to sleep at night, but I have no concentration Do you exactly seems me? You want to see I oh, there's a book. I'll get that book, right? And then the next thing and you put a bookmark on page 20 Oh, yeah, I have more books for you. I've actually read a book twice I sort of forgot that I had you know made out of the concentrations exactly the same But what I don't know is recently I got them I hear yokes you see and I put them on and like yourself I listened to What book did I listen to? Norman wisdom right right Norman wisdom reading his own life story all very good. Yeah, I just loved it like you know And there's a great book I'm going to put them on the audio and it's uh, james connelly the life of james connelly As you say you're you're focused it's a different way and it seems to stay in my head for some reason You know the wind what's the plans make going forward this year? What well as I said, we have that gig now the kelly band And mulling garen I think we have won the week after in the colman center in gurchine the home of traditional music down there But I'm just writing away at home happy to be doing that as I said, there's there's a lot of material out there I'm walking away and making a lot of walking I do a fair bit of two dogs. Don't let me sit still I'm right down along the canal and leetrim village there. So there's what's up here in the village itself There's there's a good seven kilometers of a tow path. There's what kind of dogs you have I have a jack russell and uh, bijan free shih tzu mix, but they're both rescue dogs. Oh, actually and uh, I yeah, they keep you keep you. Oh, they'll keep you going Mike uh, the the next song you're going to do first next song it was on the album in 2017 and This one was inspired again. You ask where songs come from a pair of queen victoria's underwear and basically the rougher auction in 2014 in kent And the description of them thought it wasn't even yeah. Yeah the description of was on the you know the In the auction brochure and it described that the waistband was 59 inches and she was only 62 inches tall And uh, it just kind of got me thinking like she must have had some appetite at a time when we were over here Yeah, she was the queen of england and ireland at the time of the five five or two And uh, yeah, and there've been there've been books written on her appetite Oh, yeah, yeah, she was a right glutton now and if if she had people around You know members of the family round for a meal to be seven or eight courses And if you didn't finish before she was finished the the waiters took away your stuff and what her next plate But um, again as I said the the juxtaposition of her over there having massive meals and us over there Not starving, you know, so I kind of looked then into Did she make any effort to contribute to the famine relief effort and who else helped helped us and came from unlikely sources There was a sultan in turkey who gave us Quite a large donation and then the Choctaw Indians of course over in america That's right That's a story that only came to me, but just last four or five years. There's a nice monument down in cork and uh, That's beautiful. You know what you mean silver colored fellers, isn't it? And the nice thing about the Irish government has a Scholarship for third level that they've that they give to a Choctaw Every year to come and study in ireland. So that's a nice little bit of But uh, no, that was a great story that I couldn't believe that and I didn't know I didn't know about the sultan of um, yeah Yeah, um, I think he's connected with Dr Had a united football club. I think it's Sunday. I'm well as well. You can look all into this You know, but you know the thing about it. Hey, I'm going to look under because I'm taking notes here And you know if somebody Research something because of something that here is a history that's novel and you're going to cut us relevant You know It said that queen victoria was as round as she was tall And when it came to bang quitting she could out eat them all She trolled through seven courses in 30 minutes straight And ask about the irish once she licked the seventh plate She told the royal treasury to send 2 000 pounds To show her starving subjects that their queens love you know A few crumbs from her table and her conscience was appeased When the poor man's famine was the rich Man ohton lord of turkey He heard a violent splity irish Your majesty, I'd like to send 10 000 pounds to feed Your subjects in hibernia in their time of but the christian queen could not be bettered by a muslim more So she told him that he could not send a greater sum than to save the royal blushes His charity decreased as the rich man's fee Across the wide atlantic of the tears The chopped tar died in thousands all a lot and sent it on the tide Blight is often quoted as the root of ireland's woes Country from time to over left these shores Safely carry ireans chief econ the century has come and gone And still we never learn see his cast aside where profits are gone It's not with food his history From the album remembered clearly and uh you said you didn't do well There's a kind of half fun element. Well, yeah, you can't keep it all No, but uh Obviously there's a message in the two as well, which is brilliant pointed pretty good indeed. Um Your uh your song writing is excellent. It's really enjoyable and it's relevant and it opens my ears And I say something else so it gives me food. I'd have to come back here more often. This is great. Definitely Don't don't make it six years the next time We're all be getting on the bally shannon folk festival. You won that a couple years ago I did they had an online song contest Oh Unfortunately, they couldn't have it a year before last so I kind of put in an entry for it and I I love kind of delving into like history of an area so I try to incorporate everything in bally shannon and it you know and uh It's um, they asked me back last year then to perform and I did I did the support for charlie We get again in paul harrington on their 25th year anniversary of it, which was also postponed So it was actually the 27th or 28th year But I think it's on again next week now in the great lineup again this year Charlie's grateful He is he is charlie up here. We're delighted with his company a couple of times. He's up here Chris No, he lives about three miles from me Oh, no, we're we're the only two members of the donnie gall born leach from song writers association as far as we know Very good. You're looking for new members Excellent hey, and as I say the gigs your gigs are talking about is the keely band gig since yeah, yeah Do you know I totally get that from yourself for talking to you and stuff you can understand, you know, you don't You just don't need the pressure Well, that's it. I I enjoy the right. Yeah, of course. You know more now. I like doing the odd gig Of course people asked me to do it, but I don't go looking for you know You're at It's in your own choice your own terms they say, you know come here make the final track I'm gonna do first the final one uh during cova to kind of got into writing poems Because as you know, some of the songs go on but they're they're quite long So I decided it was going to start writing a few Sonnet type based thing 14 line poems. Yeah and um A lot of them went in the kind of soccer direction when uh, you know, one of them really took off there It was why Ireland won't be supporting England in the euros And they're all online again, but that could something like a hundred thousand views in the day I put it out the day before and again, you don't know how these things are going Yeah, yeah, so that's on youtube, but this was one another soccer related one where You might remember, uh The Irish player Chloe Mustache. She was Interviewed by Rob Wooten from Sky. Yes after they sang the Ill-advised song shall we say and then the changing room again a bit of crack I don't think there was any great political plan But you know they got carried away and whatnot, but he said to her and I thought this was awful It's back to the previous song again. Do you think you need to educate yourselves about these things? Yes, I started thinking right look at all the things that have been left out In the English schools about English history, you know and English people today friends of mine I never knew we did that, you know, I said it wasn't you It's a poem no no uh Music to it. I'll just put a wee bit of backing and again I just decided to get back to Rob on it and uh, I don't know if you heard it I tagged him on on twitter, but they didn't reply. No, I don't think so But he's heard it you can guarantee. Well, you never know You need to educate yourselves cried Rob from Sky TV We're awfully offended by that Celtic symphony Perhaps Rob needs some lessons as to why such songs were written To reflect on all the brutal acts of not so great great Britain He'll learn of concentration camps his boys built in Transvaal How the greatest Britain ever starved three million in Bengal The genocide in Ireland and Ritzar overlooked Conveniently airbrushed from his own school history books And what of the Elgin marbles and the bronzes from Benin The national treasures Filched as trinkets for the Queen The stolen jewels of India The pilfered tons of gold How three million Africans were kidnapped shipped and sold So when your books include the shrouded past crimes of your nation Then you have a right to preach On the need for education No, no, but do you know what you put history on the poetry in such a way that you can listen to it And it's amazing. Brilliant. Thank you very much indeed. Come here. Our time's gone past us here. And I just want to say Thanks very much for coming on. Thank you so much Brilliant poem lad drumshamble in the house Where can we hear it again? Well, if you if you follow us in Highland radio Yeah, it's online. Mick Blake music on YouTube. You'll get it. It's on YouTube. Yeah Looking forward to the show Paul for Martin McFadden. Good to see uh, Mick Blake on tonight's show top man For there you go. Come here. Uh, there's a lot to say. I hope to see you again. Definitely not It's an absolute pleasure for us. Thanks again, Paul. Thank you very much