 is certainly what is coming to town, both tonight and on the 19th of March. And as I live and breathe, the man, the myth, the legend is in the studio here with me. The one and only, Declan Nerney. Come on, David. Thank you, Jude. That's some introduction I can tell you have. It's telling you. It's great to have you on the program. How are you getting on? All right, not too bad at all now. And it's great to see yourself and everybody here in Highland. It's quite a while since I've been up in the studio here now. And you're very, very welcome back. Thank you very much. Always popular as ever. And the pot chain tastes great. The pot chain is great. Now, that's your fourth cup of it, so you'd want to be going careful. I think five is the limit before you start to think about driving. So that's all right. One more. Declan, you are up and down the country, as always. And you know, you're still going as strong as ever. How many years have you been on the road now? Oh, God, don't ask me that question. Well, I'll be 35 years and me on the band here, with the exception of the couple of years of the lockdown. But it was fought to the bone from day one, really and solely. And it has been a great journey, I have to say. And I'm still enjoying it. You know, you get your day in the sun as everything is. And you accept that and you've got to appreciate that. And we really do. And we're still getting a little surplus now, particularly with the concert tour. The concert tour is going really, really well. I think it's the fact that maybe we have a bit of a story to tell now on various bits and pieces. And a lot of the older songs are coming back into play again. Now, where we would have recorded earlier albums. And I'm having to revisit them now and pick tunes from it that are being requested for the concert spots and little pieces that are being handed up, you know, notes for requests. Which is a great scenario to be in. But Declan, you're one of these people. You have dedicated almost your whole life to this industry because, you know, before you were out there at the front as Declan Ernie, over the Christmas period, when we're at home, we always find ourselves as a family gathered around the TV, watching old videos. And over Christmas, we were watching back a charity night from Frankie's of Ruffeau. And Brian Call was there. And Brian Call was singing away about the China doll and whatever else. And the next thing, the camera pans over. And there's a young Declan Ernie playing the steel guitar in Brian Call's band. Well, that was my job. That was my job between Gene Stewart and Brian Call was I was the guitarist and very pleased and very happy and very honored, I have to say, to have been in that position. And it was, you know, back in the day to be in a band of that stature of Brian Call and stuff. It was a job to behold. And, you know, a lot of people were in for those type of jobs. And I was lucky enough to be secure that one. Again, great experience from it, I'd say, in a way. But I remember that particular night in Frankie's that was actually a charity do. And Brian, give him a stew. Most nights, he wouldn't. He was the great, in my estimation, he's the greatest of them all. He was the greatest country singer we ever had. He's not a singer. But he had one little fault that he'd be late sometimes, you know, he'd be looking around. You'd have to play, takes people like you and you'd have to go round the intro maybe three or four times. But he eventually appeared in on the door and he didn't have time to change his suit. So he got straight up on the stage, just come straight up the hall. That's why he was in the court. And he was the court upon him and the whole thing. We were playing away there and straight in from tune to tune, like he was. But that was the type of him, man, that was the way he got on and people loved him for the way he was. But definitely was a fantastic donor. I could never understand this. I thought, God, that man must be fair and cold standing up there with a coat on him on the middle of the stage. He often had a bigger, heavier coat on it out of them. But Declan, the point I'm making is you served your apprenticeship in those bands and probably a lot of the knowledge that you would have got out of that scenario would have transferred to become the foundation for what has been a hugely successful career for you. Yeah, well, it was better than a hit record, being honest about the whole experience of that there, because you got to know the parts of the country where country music was popular, the type of people, you go chatting to people, talking to them and you built up a really... Had a relationship built up was multitude of people before it commenced this thing at all. And it gave me a fair opportunity as well to be able to select songs and pick songs because Brian used to give me that opportunity as well to pick songs for the band. And mainly before I started singing country and area songs at all, I was what was called the pop singer of the band. Really? I was doing all the tunes by Wham and Rod Stewart and Queen. I used to be singing, I want to break free and Brian wouldn't have been a huge fan of that sort of music, but he accepted because he thought I knew what it was that, but sometimes we would be playing songs just because it was a nice guitar solo in it. But it was going down well and we got on a storm, I have to say, it was a great year. And how did it evolve to country music for you then? Back to Brian Coles, then again, we were playing in New York one night in a place called The Putschings Still in New York in Queens and Brian's throat gave up. He got laryngeitis and we had to start, we had three sessions to do, three quarters of an hour and I said, what are we going to do? So the man that owned the premises, he says Ava Nairland's The One Up the Stairs, it was one of the older type ones, put a songbook in it and it was in green. So he brought it down and he says to me, he says, if this is any good, he uses their songs in it. So lovely lyrics and the girls from Donegal and all of these songs in it. So I started, I had a fair idea of the ears of the tunes. So I was reading them, I had it stuck with a piece of cello tip to the speaker and I was reading them off it. In the middle of New York. In the middle of New York and I was singing the songs that people were clapping and cheering and I thought maybe they're only chatting because I'm reading the words of it here and I'm doing me best. But they actually enjoyed it and the next night's wound out, I started singing my native town's remission, lovely Lathrom and songs like that there and they're going down well. You know, I didn't get a chance to be, to emulate anybody else. I just had to go with whatever I had of me on and I stuck with that. And you had to be yourself and that is something that has stuck to you throughout time. And I want to ask you a question because it kills me to say this now to you, but I'm a fan of Declan Nerney and I always have been from a very young age. Thank you very much, Teva. You know, I don't want to be giving you a big head, like, you know, but... Oh, hold on. Hold on to Bruce. You know, one of the things that you are notorious for is the Nerney beat that you brought to the dance halls that you played with. And it's widely regarded as the best dance and beat for the consumer, the people that go to the gigs, the likes of myself when I was younger, to dance to. And like, that's something that you obviously worked on and crafted and created because you don't give the dancer a minute to even breathe. You just flat to them at the whole time. Well, it's back to the older days of it. You know, even Gene Stewart's times and all, they always reckoned that, you know, not two nights, no two nights are ever the same. And there shouldn't be. If you went out and just played the song as it is and at that particular tempo, the particular halls you go into, there might be a younger audience, middle-aged audience or an older audience, and you will have to play the tempos to that there. But by and large, back in the day, from the recording tempos of the songs, I would have had to move them up a couple of pints to just get that extra piece of energy and get that drive into the songs. And if you listen back to music, God, that's very fast. But at the dance, it was perfect. Yeah, and it's something that I always really admired about your band when you were out and live. That energy that you brought to the stage was just ferocious. Yeah, well, you kept your band happy. If you have a happy band on stage, it'll come through the speakers. You know, and a lot of us would convey our energy through movement on the stage and stuff. But you've got a guitar strapped on you and to still be able to do that and put the energy into it that you do is amazing. Sure, everybody. When I started, everybody taught... There was three things wrong with me at the start. Everybody was saying, oh, his voice is too high. You see, nobody would like him. He's playing the guitar, and that won't work, and he's not six foot tall. How wrong were they? So I decided, right, that's a great... That has to be the best initiative for me to prove them wrong. You were going to show these people. But having said all I've said, I wouldn't encourage... I think a frontman in a band, he needs to be out there and he needs to be there. There is the exception to the rule, we'll say. In our case, it worked. But I wouldn't be encouraging it in general. Lots of chaps have asked me similar questions, and this would be my response. Declan, I've got a lot that... The time is just flying here. You may...