"What’s the story Niall?”

“You tell me,” comes the editor’s laconic phone reply. I know it’s delivered with his characteristic vaguely mischievous grin.

It’s a conversation that has gone on for the bones of forty years, ever since a 50p piece was deposited in my guitar case on a spring Saturday on Grafton Street in 1986.

I had been pestering Niall Stokes for almost two years at this stage, hoping I could fill the illustration gap in the magazine. I’d been highlighting this to him at every gig I spotted him at. So far I had got nowhere. But that day, I guess he saw the desperation in a busker never cut out to be one – and as the coin hit the case he uttered the words, “Bring in your portfolio on Monday.”
I never busked again, and have made a living drawing pictures ever since.

AMERICAN PASSPORT

“The story” –  this time – is my recent Gill Books production The Story of the Great Irish Famine. That tale also begins much earlier, but we’ll start in 2024.  It was Easter and I had just finished a talk at the School of Visual Arts in New York.  My work done, I wandered to a park, along with photographer Patrick Glennon. It was a cold, clear day good for thinking – and, as I have often discovered, talking about my work to students gives me an opportunity to reflect in a way I would never do otherwise.

The students were mostly from overseas, including many from Asia. They were dreaming big, full of enthusiasm and optimism – but I was remembering my great-grandparents, who had a come to this same city in the decades following the Famine. I’m sure they had dreams too, but sadly they both died young. I imagine tenement life and rough working conditions got the better of their constitutions, weakened – like many others – by the poverty that lingered long after the famine that gripped Ireland during the 1840s.

They left behind two young sons. One, my maternal grandfather Jack, was sent ‘home’ to Co. Galway, where an aunt in the village of Craughwell raised him. He dodged the bullet a few years later when – together with friends from school – he attended a British Army recruitment drive for WW1, which promised great adventures. However, being underage and not having a parental signature, he was refused; his mates went… and some died in combat.

One of the first songs I learnt to play on guitar in school was ‘The Band Played Waltzing Matilda’. Written by Eric Bogle, it is the tale of an Australian soldier returning from the Gallipoli campaign with wicked physical injuries that could never be healed.

When Jack came to visit, I’d have the guitar out and would lay it on thick when it came to the lines: “And as our ship pulled in the circular quay/ I looked at the place where my legs used to be/ And thanked Christ there was nobody waiting for me/ To grieve and to mourn and to pity…” At this point Jack would reach into his waist coat pocket and place a one pound coin on the arm-rest. I would do this at least once a day until finally my father said enough was enough. At 14, I wasn’t really thinking beyond the coin!

Jack had been a motorcycle enthusiast and a regular at the TT races between the wars. Not long after he stopped driving, he went rapidly downhill. He was buried in 1977 with his American passport in the breast pocket of his suit. He had always seemed ready to go back.

Funeral by David Rooney.

WORKHOUSE CENTRE

That same year, I picked up the first issue of Hot Press in Salmon’s newsagent in Ballinasloe, ten miles from the village of Eyrecourt where Dad was the local Garda Sergeant. Leafing through it, from the Rory Gallagher adorned front cover, I knew I had found my tribe. There were more people on the island like me!

You have to remember that there was no national radio reflecting these interests or views at the time, and in the West no mind-corrupting foreign TV channels. Hard to believe I know – but back then Radio Luxembourg was the sole, crackling, sonic window for pop music – and then, only if the atmospheric conditions were correct, receivable in my case on a small transistor radio my Aunt Molly had sent to me from New Jersey.

It was in the strangely privileged comfort of a girls’ boarding school in Banagher, across the border in Co. Offaly, that an art teacher Shelia Hough changed the trajectory of my life by turning me on, and tuning me in, to art. Two years later, I was in the National College of Art in Dublin, where I developed a fascination with scraper-board etchings… and seven years later I was published in Hot Press for the first time.

During the ensuing decades, one Mike Connolly – on trips back home from London where he worked in the BBC music department – would pick up copies of Hot Press. The Rooney illustrations must have had some subliminal impact because in 2010, at a meeting with Fergal Keane and the production team discussing how to augment their documentary series ‘The Story of Ireland’, Mike recalled my work. The production assistant was tasked with tracking me down and shortly thereafter the phone rang here in the studio.

The Story of the Great Irish Famine.

“Are you the guy who does the dark scratchy artwork in Hot Press?” a voice enquired. He was talking about my scraper-board illustrations.  “I am,” I replied. The task was laid out in Mike’s cut-to-the-chase style. He needed 100 illustrations spanning the whole history of Ireland – all to be completed in three months. Having checked my empty diary, I agreed – only to realise that would be one per day. Work commenced in the winter of 2010 and I hit the Famine era when the snow arrived in Wicklow and piled four feet outside the house. My partner Susanne, seeing what was coming for me, had wisely headed off on a trip to India.

Over the ten days I was occupied with the Famine, something happened…

The Viking and Norman Invasions had washed over me, the Reformation and Plantations left me unmoved: a childhood fascination with horror serves well when illustrating history.

The Famine was different. I was now channeling something I knew about deep within me, a race memory perhaps, something passed down in spirit and whispers.

I began to remember: my mother’s tales of Connemara women who had left the hard fields and come to Tuam, where she lived, to ask her to write letters to relatives in America seeking support – and then reading the replies to them once arrived; the wild look on a stranger’s face at The Ballinasloe Horse Fair, in which the ghosts seem to play a part; and those troubled Irish men and women who are all over the city of New York.

Declan O’Rourke had been mining a similar vein with his excellent Chronicles of the Irish Famine album in 2017 and – in the years that followed – in his two Famine-themed novels. Declan is a good friend and we had discussed my Famine work from the series from time to time.

Two years ago I was at home with my Dad in Eyrecourt and heard something on local radio about the Workhouse Centre in nearby Portumna. A few phone calls later and plans were underway to get large prints of the Famine work installed in the centre. They had now found a permanent home.

Come the launch in August 2022, Declan did the honours with an extraordinarily touching speech. And then last year I found myself at Declan’s book launch, standing beside Nicky Howard from Gill Books, Declan’s publisher. A casual conversation led to my mention of the Famine work – and the subsequent sharing of it with Nicky, in the form of a music video for an Echotal track of mine of the same name. Nicky got back in touch a few weeks later with the idea to turning this into a book, expanding on the existing work with new pieces. And so here we are...

Eviction by David Rooney.

THE ARTIST’S ROAD

A lot of dots have been joined in this  ‘Story’ – but they all start with that 50p piece in a guitar case in 1986.

Later, on that New York night, Patrick Glennon suggested that we repair to The Blasket Pub and in classic New York style we played songs in the bar late into the night, taking turns on the owner Liam’s Spotify. I was only there for a few days but I fell into the comfort of familiar Irish music from my youth, a track from Paul Brady’s album with Andy Irvine. When I was about to leave, Liam gave me a souvenir baseball hat from the bar. As we parted, he briefly took on the look of someone who might never see home again. I could discern the longing is in his eyes.

Back in the Chelsea Hotel – yes the School of the Visual Arts put me up there! – I was still thinking about the paths taken and the twists in the road.

I’ve been fortunate to have made a living drawing pictures for almost four decades. It’s an odd way to have spent a life… essentially the four year old me who never wanted to go to school got to run the adult show.

The child is the artist. Unlike the lives lived by my father, and my only brother John – who as policemen were genuinely tested, and tested themselves, and in the process truly helped people – the artist’s road is, I suppose by necessity, a self-centred one. The hope is that we too can do some good – though the nature of it remains elusive.

I hope, at least, that the Famine book shines a light on people who – though I never met them – dwell deep within.

Perhaps even within all of us…

•  The Story Of The Great Irish Famine by David Rooney is published by Gill Books.

As Christmas and New Year hurtle ever closer – capping off another phenomenal 12 months of Irish music, sport, film, literature and more  – we're thrilled to present the brand new Hot Press Annual!

Inside, you'll find captivating conversations with Fontaines D.C., KNEECAP, Jazzy, LYRA, The Mary Wallopers, Gurriers, Daniel Wiffen, Irish Artists For Palestine and more – all taking us through their highlights of the year. Plus, the HP critics deliver their verdict on 2024 – including all the top albums, tracks, movies, books, quotes, photos and events...