 That's Norman Borland and Too Cold at Home, an old Mark Chestnut song. That was Norman's last single, and I'm delighted he's joining me in the studio. Norman, it's lovely to talk to you again. The last time we spoke was a while back. You better put up your microphone, it works better like that. How are you? I'm not so bad, I'm grand. Thanks for asking me into it. Come here, since last I spoke to you, Norman, it's been very busy. Yes, I'm getting there. I'm getting there since I did a lot of recording over lockdown, as you know, because there was very little happening in the enemy. So, yeah, we started recording in 2020, and it's been good so far, yeah. I know you were supposed to do an album launch a while back, but shoot one thing and another, it didn't get around to it. But I know you have one coming up in July, haven't you? You brought out a lot of singles there lately. I think I've done eight singles over the last couple of years, you know, so, yeah. But the new album, yeah, I mean, we had planned to get the new album out, but it just didn't happen, you know, everything happened in Covid and whatnot. So, yeah, we'll have an album release now in July. So, we're really looking forward to that. For any of our listeners now who doesn't know all of you or your music, tell us a little bit about yourself. You're originally from Fannad, aren't you, and you were working in Scotland? I'm originally from Fannad, born and bred in Fannad and County Dindigal here, yeah. I left here in 1975 to go to work in Scotland, and I spent most of my life there. So, I've been home nearly six years now, so I just came home to do music and just starting to get into it, you know, whenever Covid struck, so I just put everybody and me, everybody else, back two years, you know. So, we just decided to start doing a few singles, and we're Brian Kerrigan there, at Harmony Recording Studios, and one led to another, and led to another, and led to another. So, at the minute I have, well, there's an album coming out, but we actually have 19 songs recorded, so there's enough for two albums, I suppose. And can we really tell you, you know, the social media these days, you know, like, I know you've worked, you have done a few videos and sang live on the hot country show, I do a few things, and I've seen, following your career, I see where you've been in Scotland, you've been doing support here and support there, and now you have your own band as well, whenever you do a full gig yourself. Yeah, we do, we do. And it's nice to have the band, you know, and, you know, I can go to just a two piece or whatever, I don't do, it's all live stuff, whatever I do, you know, I like the band set up, but, and going to the hot country stuff that I'm doing, you know, there's always a resident band there, you know, so, but yeah, Hugh O'Brien from Hot Country has been really good for me as well, you know, because I got some videos done, Steve Blurred's videos for me, again before lockdown, so they were good to get me going as well, you know, and then they're releasing the singles from 2020, and then Anthony Sullivan down there in Tullamore, he does my social media stuff, so he's been great for me as well, you know, and yeah, you guys, you know, without you guys playing the music, then it wouldn't be anywhere, you know, but... And I see you've been nominated for an awards over in Holland, is it the red carpet awards? The red carpet awards, yeah, it kind of came out of nowhere that, but don't ask me how it happened, but yeah, I think there's seven nominations, and total, so, do you know what, you know, whether you won or whether you don't won, the nominations, to me, the nominations are enough, you know, that is a one, because you know that people out there are listening to your music, and that's in Europe, and that's huge for me, you know, I mean, that's really the icing on the cake, knowing that, you know, you have a following. Yeah, how do you go about picking the songs now, just before you had too cold at home, which you had, you lied to me, the old Charlie Pryde song, one thing I noticed about you was great, you're picking songs that other artists haven't, you know, here in Ireland in the last couple of years, you would find artists, local artists, and they all seemed to pick the same songs, and like, I've noticed about any of the songs you brought out, and you had let me heard some of the songs that's going to be in your album, and there were good country songs that might have been out years, but not recorded by a lot of people. How do you come to getting your selection of songs? You know, I listened to an awful lot of music, as we all have have to do, and for me as an individual, an individual artist, there's no point in me recording stuff that has already been over-recorded, if you like, by other people, because that doesn't make me any different, you know, so, and I'm not trying to stand out from the crowd or do anything like that, you know, the old country music that we had, God, there's an awful lot of it, you know, there's piles and piles and piles of it, and just to research it and find something that actually suits you, you know, and suits my type of voice, suits my type of style, and you take the older stuff, especially the buckle-one stuff, you can take that and, you know, modernise it, put a different beat to it, put a wee bit more drive into it, a wee bit more natural sound, and that's what I'm trying to create, and I've kind of created, between myself and Brian now, you know, we've kind of created our own sound, you know, and it's nice taking the old stuff and, you know, and putting your own feel to it. Yeah, Brian, you record most of your stuff up for Brian, he's a great studio up there, he gets lots of artists up there these days, doesn't he? Yeah, yeah, Brian's, Brian is brilliant, and, you know, the nice thing about Brian is we can sit down, we can talk about the song that we're going to do, we can talk about the structure of the song, and that's very important rather than going into a studio and them telling you what you're going to do with it, you know, so it's really a team effort, you know, with me having these nominations, it's not me, it's team, it's a team effort. No, but when it's done right, you know, because I noticed about a lot of the songs you chose, they're kind of men's songs, if you know what I mean, because I was watching some of the artists on the last series of Glore Chair, and you had some girls singing songs that were men's songs, it was one or two lads singing girls' songs, and even though they were good songs, you know, like when you hear a girl singing forever and ever in men, and she's coming from there, going to love them, and she can't get down to that Randy Davis go first, you know, you have a good voice, you know, but for the songs you've chosen, like, like, you like to meet a Charlie Pyre, that one we just played, and we're going to play another one now in a minute, you're very single. Well, you know, again, you know, I'm sort of the Randy Travis, Don Williams, Alan Jackson, George Stitt, you know, Buck Owens, you know, all the older ones, they're kind of sitting my kind of style, and my tone of voice is a bit, you know, because I have a sort of baritone voice, you know, so, but yeah, you know, the song has to appeal to me before I'll sing it or record it, and again, you know, as I say, there's no point in recording stuff that has been over-recorded by anybody else, and no, female songs, I get your point, you know, female songs and male songs, sometimes it doesn't work, you know. And I know you were just after coming up from the orchard there tonight, so I'm not going to keep you much longer. You have a busy summer lined up, where are you performing? We're, yeah, well, I'm doing a video for Teardrops Over You, and that's happening this Wednesday night in the Station House Hotel here in Ladder, Kenny, so Glenala photography and video they're going to be doing the video for me. So the band will be there as well, and we've got some dancers coming that have been learning a dance for it, a partner dance for it, so that's going to be happening, then we're going to do maybe an hour and a half, an hour and an hour and a half of live music with the band then after that. So, you know, anybody that wants to come along, just come along and be part of the crew and be part of the video. It would be great to see you, even if you're not dancing, just come and, you know, be part of the audience. I can have a wee dance then afterwards. And I must tell our listeners, you had invited me to take part in the video. I did. You've seen my awards performance on Antbodies for us at 11. You played in the middle, and you were going to throw me into everybody's guitar, even though I can't take it, I'll owe you. Cheaters, cheaters. Well, we're going to be doing that, and then in a couple of weeks time, I think it's a couple of weeks time, I'm on the Hot Country Awards, in Monaghan with Hugh O'Brien, so I'm delighted to be part of that as well. And then the week after Easter, then, we're away to Scotland with Hot Country to Cambridge. So, yeah, it's busy. It's grand. Come here, you're busy. Tell me about the song we're about to play now, Teardrops Over You. How did you come across that song? Teardrops Over You, again, you know, going through YouTube and listening to different stuff. And I came across Ronda Vincent singing it with her mother and her brother. And just, you know, as the song we done, the first couple of lines, you just, you can feel it in the back of your neck, you know, the air. You just think, what a beautiful song. And again, you know, not, I can't find anybody that recorded it before. And the song really appealed to me. It appealed from my style and my type of voice, and I thought, I'm going to record that. We recorded it. We released it about three weeks ago now. And, you know, having Ronda Vincent actually comment on it was just unbelievable. So, you know, there again, Ronda Vincent out there in America, listening to other artists, even here in Ireland, not just me, everybody else. There's a huge audience out there, you know, through social media, you know. And I'm absolutely delighted. I mean, I'll frame that comment from her, you know, because she actually wrote that song, you know. And that means an awful lot when the songwriter actually makes a comment, you know. Yeah, it's amazing how social media, you know, like, before the pandemic, now, if you were up here and I was interviewing you, people would hear you. They can actually see you now as well as... Oh dear. Painful, isn't it? But it's great, you know, when it goes out in video on that, it's great. Because not time when I come on on to do me show, I would do a short video, a little promo of that. And it's amazing when you look at the Facebook page, then to see how many likes you got on the people. You've seen it. It's great. Well, come here. I want to wish you all the best for the future. Thanks very much. And I'm looking forward now. Unfortunately, I'm lucky down at Wednesday night, I'd be on here. I'm killing myself, but there you go. You're going to be with me on the... Sacrifices have to be made at times. Yeah, you're going to be with me on the album release anyway, so we're looking forward to that. Well, here it is. Tear drops over you. Norman, thanks very much. Thank you. Thanks very much.