Let It Brew

Coming soon to the Brunswick Music Festival, Irish folk legend Paul Brady will be joined by (very) occasional cohort Andy Irvine, who some call the Woody Guthrie of Ireland, or so I've read. Brady is no slouch in the accolades department, with his recordings having found fans in no other than the incredibly famous Mr Bob Dylan and the supreme wordsmith Leonard Cohen.

Irvine and Brady will each put on a solo show, and then join each other on stage like old friends meeting at a party to play some of their early material – from the band Planxty and their duo material from Andy Irvine & Paul Brady.

Brady explains that he and Irvine may have started working together over 30 years ago, but they haven't exhausted the potential of their sporadic collaboration by any means. “Andy and I worked together for the first time in the mid-'60s and spent several years writing and recording together at that time,” he says. “But since then, we've moved in very different directions. There were quite a few decades where we never worked together at all.”

It's only very recently that Brady and Irvine picked up at least somewhere in the region of where they left off years ago. “It's in the last couple of years that we started on various occasions to work together again, which we're very much enjoying. Having said that, Andy has his show and I have mine – we are doing two individual gigs to sing some songs we used to play years ago.”

The collaboration between the two artists is a curious one in that whilst they have both been feted for their songwriting, it has produced no original songs. “Andy and I never wrote any material together,” Brady admits. “Mainly we were interpreting traditional material. We're not currently writing together either. I think the main interest people will have in seeing Andy Irvine and Paul Brady on stage together is to hear the music that has brought us together.”

Brady's solo show is no less likely to satisfy the curiosity of fans – he's bringing, or borrowing, many of the instruments recognisable in his recorded work. “I'll be playing guitars, piano, bouzouki, mandolin and perhaps some tin whistle. My compositions over the past decade have been based on guitar and piano, but the traditional music I've played has often been on mandolin and bouzouki. As I'll be throwing in music from my whole back catalogue, I'll have these instruments on stage with me.”

In 2012, Brady released the compilation, Dancer In The Fire, which spans much of his career, but he reassures us it was certainly no 'greatest hits' package. “I definitely wouldn't call this record a best of. In fact, it's probably the opposite of that. A lot of my material that I thought was the best stuff I'd done didn't capture the public imagination, or that of the critics, as much as my bigger hits. So this compilation is a choice of my own favourites from my back catalogue – the music I've most loved.”

Despite his prolific recording history, Brady sees himself very much as a performer. He doesn't so much take on a stage persona as his stage presence takes over his body. “Rather than me inhabiting a slightly different persona, I feel like there's a different thing inhabiting me. I think it was handed down to me by my father, who was a very talented actor. He had a one-man-show and as a child I enjoyed watching him bring life to his pieces. I've always tried to write songs in a way that were like short stories or plays. I've always become the character of the song. Frankly, when I get on stage something happens I don't understand. And I hope I never do because it seems to result in something that's exciting.”

Paul Brady will be playing the following dates:

Friday 15 March - Celtic Club, Melbourne VIC
Sunday 17 March, The Basement, Sydney NSW
Friday 22 March - Fly By Night, Perth WA
Sunday 24 March - Brunswick Music Festival, Estonian House, Brunswick VIC
Thursday 28 March - The Irish Club, Brisbane QLD
Saturday 30 and Sunday 31 March - National Folk Festival, Canberra ACT