Frugalisto: Sustainable Living, Walking The Earth And A Pinch Of Revenge

It's fair to say Ireland has, over the years, produced more than its fair share of folk/rock singer-songwriters — indeed, they're as common as pints of Guinness lined along the bar of a Dublin pub. However, not many have had a career as long and storied as Luka Bloom.

Like the famous Irish brew, Bloom's music is thick and rich, textured and enjoyed by people all over the world. Unlike Guinness however, his music isn't necessarily at its best when it's closer to its source. For it's in Australia, half a world away, where Bloom has found a home away from home, a place where he's as welcome as he is in his country of birth.

"I made a promise that I would try and sustain my relationship with Australia because of that feeling I had the very first time."

"My first tour to Australia was in 1992," he recalls. "I remember coming back from that tour thinking 'I never imagined I could be in a country that's so far away from my home, and feels so much like home'. And I made a promise that I would try and sustain my relationship with Australia because of that feeling I had the very first time."

This he's done — his trip over here in March will be his 12th all up, a solid run up and down the East Coast (along with Adelaide and Perth), incorporating the 40th anniversary Port Fairy Folk Festival, his relationship with this country as strong as it's ever been.

And while he'll be alone onstage — just him and his guitars — he's not coming by himself, bringing with him a brand new album in Frugalisto. His 21st album since 1978's Treaty Stone, it's a record that pays a small amount of homage to the Antipodes, this place he's been coming to for nigh on a quarter century.

"I'm making a bit of fun in that song, I'm regarding that song as my revenge," he laughs on the track entitled Australia, from the new record. "Revenge for all the sappy, sentimental songs that Aussies and Americans have been singing about Ireland for fifty years. And I think it's quite hard to believe for people in Australia, that someone from Ireland could write a sentimental love song about the country that is Australia.

"But the reality is that last Easter Sunday, I woke up in my home in the west of Ireland and totally realised, 'Oh god, I should be in Byron Bay', I wanted so badly to be at the Bluesfest, visualised the people who'd be there, the backstage fun… And I suddenly realised that this is the first time this has happened, the first time I've found myself missing a place that wasn't Ireland. And so literally that day I wrote the song."

It sits nicely amongst the other songs adorning the record, an album inspired in part by new friends and a sustainable lifestyle, hence the title. "I've met this group of people [in West Ireland] who happen to be surfers, and not just surfers, but they're a group of people who are very devoted to changing the way we live our lives… They've become a great inspiration," he says.

"They're all about sustainable living, walking the walk… That's where the word Frugalisto comes from," he adds. And also the inspiration — it's an album that sees Bloom's time in music a long way from over, no matter how far he is from home.