Sipping a flu-fighting hot whiskey in a Dublin hotel, singer-songwriter Damien Dempsey is furrowing his brow trying to recall the highest points of his career to date. Not the most forthcoming of interviewees, and most certainly not the shameless self-promoting type, the likeably modest Dubliner takes a little prompting.
“Well…yeah, I suppose the Springsteen gig would have been a high point alright,” he eventually concedes, speaking in his gloriously unadulterated Northside accent. “There’s been loads of them. Supporting Springsteen, supporting Dylan, supporting Willie Nelson. Singing with Ronnie Drew on his last album. Doing an album with Barney McKenna and John Sheahan. Doing the ballad for Ronnie Drew, you know, singing on The Late Late Show. Singing to Ronnie, with Sinead O’Connor and Shane MacGowan and U2 and all them, just looking across going, ‘Jaysus, this is mad! What am I doing here with all these?’”
He chuckles. “It was great, though.” While he may have supported Bob Dylan and Willie Nelson, Dempsey never actually got to meet either of the American music legends.
“With Willie Nelson, we done the Wembley Arena and the MEN Arena and the Point Depot and Belfast and Glasgow and all around the UK,” he recalls, “but I never met him once. He didn’t soundcheck, he’d just get off the bus, do the show, and get back on the bus.”
He never came out to say hello? “Nah. I got friendly with his band though. A few cool heads. He was just smoking his doobie, and didn’t really mix with anybody, you know.”
Although he only supported Dylan on the Irish leg of a 2004 European tour, the Big Zim was apparently equally antisocial, also never leaving his tour bus until just before show-time.
“Yeah, wild out of their heads, those guys,” he shrugs, miming a spliff being smoked. “But then, I got to see The Boss. I got to hang out with him, and have a singsong with him. He was a lot more open… just more of a human.”
Alongside his friends Glen Hansard and Josh Ritter, Dempsey supported Bruce Springsteen’s Wrecking Ball tour in Kilkenny last summer. Was that his biggest ever live audience?
“I suppose it would have been,” he nods. “There was about 30,000 people there. And it’s just his crew and all, they were just so friendly. His band as well, lovely people.” The day after the show, Dempsey and Hansard wound up on a late night session with Springsteen in his hotel. “We played the Saturday, myself and Glen. So we went back down the next day to watch the Sunday show. And it was an incredible show. Two-and-a-half hours in, he just goes, ‘I’m going to do the Born to Run album from start to finish’.
“And, Glen knows the sax player, Jake Clemens, and he said, ‘We’re going down to Mount Julliet if you want to come down’. So three o’clock in the morning we were down there. At the bar, singing songs, and you just see Bruce’s head coming in. He came in and took off his jacket: ‘I’m going to miss my flight, but fuck it!’ He missed his flight, and he stayed there and got the guitar out. We had a singsong with him. It was great. Thanked us all, thanked me and Glen for being with him.”
Did he give you any advice? “No, no advice. But I have a feeling I’ll see him again when he’s back in Ireland.”
Born in Donaghmede in 1975, the endearingly shy Dempsey – or ‘Damo’ as he’s known to his many fans – is now 38 years old. We’re meeting to discuss It’s All Good, hisjust released ‘Best Of’ compilation, which features two brand new songs and 27 tracks chosen from his six studio albums.
He says that it wasn’t his idea to release the album. “We had a five album deal with Sony,” he explains. “They had the contract, you know, at the end of the five albums, they had the choice that they could release a ‘Best Of’ if they wanted to.”
Not that he’s complaining about it. “Yeah, I probably wouldn’t have done it myself,” he admits. “But now that I have it there in my hand, it’s a good auld calling card, you know. We release it in the UK and Australia and all. So hopefully, yeah, people like it.”
An early graduate of the Ballyfermot Rock School, Dempsey’s rise to fame has been slow and steady rather than sudden and meteoric. While he’s never really had a discernible breakthrough moment, since the release of his 2000 debut, They Don’t Teach This Shit In School, he’s gradually sung and strummed his way into the Irish public consciousness.
He tells me that he gets recognised on the street a lot. It doesn’t bother him. “Ah, it’s sound, yeah. No bother. Brighten someone’s day up. An auld handshake, and a smile, or a signature. It’s when people are gargled, that’s when you have to leg it, you know. They don’t know when to leave you alone then. That’s the only thing you have to watch. If they’re a bit too drunk, falling all over you, spilling their gargle all over you. Saying they love your stuff, then saying you’re only a bollocks!”
Asked what’s the biggest risk he’s taken in his career, he grins and replies, “Probably keeping me auld accent.”
He’s had more than a little help along the way. Long-time producer John Reynolds (who now also manages him) hooked him up with the likes of Sinéad O’Connor and Brian Eno in the early stages of his career. Another unlikely ally was Morrissey, who took such a serious shine to the young Dubliner that he signed him to his record label (Attack) and invited him to play support on his 2004 US tour.
In last year’s barbed and bestselling Autobiography, Moz devotes a few lines to him: “By Monday we are sitting in the bar of the Four Seasons Hotel in Dublin, where winsome Damien Dempsey is singing his Margaret Barry songs loudly, dispensing relief and joy to all except the duty manager – who tells him to shut up. He of sweet heart continues, and we inch our chairs closer into a tight circle. The duty manager’s shoulders sag, but Damien captivates and enchants with all the love of one blessed and unselfish. I see myself crying at his funeral, missing him already.”
“He gives me a nice mention there, alright,” Dempsey smiles. “I can see him crying at my funeral.”
Have you been in touch with Moz recently? “He was in town there a while ago, we were going to meet up for a drink, but I was gigging. Next time he’s in town we’ll meet up. He usually gives me a shout. We meet up, and have an auld chat and a bit of slagging.”
What’s the common ground there? “We just talk about songwriting and all that, you know? Bit of history. He’s big into the history.”
The earliest song featured on the new compilation is a 1990 composition called ‘You’re Not On Your Own Tonight’, written when Dempsey was just 15 years old and still trying to figure out what to do with his life. As a quick glance at the radio hits on the track list will attest (‘It’s All Good’, ‘Serious’, ‘Almighty Love’, ‘Patience’, etc.), the songs have been flowing ever since. Well, except for a two-year struggle with writer’s block before recording his most recent album, 2012’s Almighty Love.
“That was horrible,” he says. “I’m not too sure what caused it. I don’t know. I was just blocked, I suppose, artistically blocked. Declan O’Rourke advised me to read The Artist’s Way, this book, you know. That helped me. Unblocked me.”
O’Rourke famously had his own battles with the blank page. “Yeah, he had the same thing. Paddy Casey as well. There was a few of us, we all got the same stuff. Just ran out of songs. The well just dried up. But it’s back now. Songwriting is back.
“I’m writing a song about all of the bullying going on right now,” he continues. “Text bullying, Facebook bullying, leading to young kids killing themselves, you know. I’m just writing a song about that at the moment. And another song about the flouride in the water. I think that’s a big thing. I think we need to say, ‘I’m not paying the water charges unless they take the fluoride out of the water’.”
Following in the sozzled, semi-socialist tradition of the likes of Luke Kelly, Shane MacGowan and Christy Moore, and taking more international inspiration from his hero Bob Marley, much of Dempsey’s output has been scathing about the inequalities and ills of contemporary Ireland.
However, the more upbeat and positive Almighty Love showcased quite a different side of him. “I wanted to give solutions on the last album, rather than re-enforce it,” he explains. “I didn’t want to talk about the politicians and the banks, because I didn’t feel they deserved an album to be written about them. But, I suppose, like I said about the fluoride, they test it on rats and it makes them docile and passive and all that. So maybe that’s why the Irish people aren’t out on the streets.
“People were expecting the last album to be all about the banks, you know, and they were a bit upset when it wasn’t. I want to be free as an artist. I don’t want to be put in a box: ‘He’s a protest writer’. I don’t want to be in that box.”
The most recent song featured on It’s All Good is a brand new one entitled ‘Happy Days’. It’s not typical Damien Dempsey fare. “Yeah. People are saying, ‘It’s a recession, what are ye singing happy songs for?’ I’m just saying that if you get a happy day, you should grab it with both hands and make the most of it. In the Third World they’re not listening to Radiohead, you know. They’re a great band, but I think it should be upbeat positive music. And in the boom years, the Celtic Tiger, I was trying to bring people down off their pedestals, and down off their high horses, and tell them they’re not made of gold. Now, in the recession, I’m trying to lift them with the music.”
He’s a true believer in the sacredness, spirituality and healing properties of music. So much so that when he was asked to be judge on The Voicerecently, he turned it down.
“I encourage people to sing,” he says. “I think everybody can sing. It’s an ancient thing, it’s a spiritual thing, it helps us. I encourage everybody to sit on their beds and sing all their favourite songs if they’re feeling down. I couldn’t really be saying that, and then be sitting there judging people saying, ‘Your singing isn’t good enough!’ I could have done with the money, to tell you the truth (smiles). But there’s always going to be talent shows, you know.
“It’s a little sad with the whole Voice and X Factor thing, though, that kids think that music is all about getting famous and rich. It never was, it’s only very recently that you were going to get rich and famous. These are new things. Music was always just about helping us through life. Getting us through tough times. It’s a spiritual thing, you know. I think kids have the wrong idea about it now.”
2014 is already shaping up to be a particularly busy year for him. Having toured Australia last November, selling out the Sydney Opera House at one point, he’s set to return there soon (“It’s going great for me down there, they seem to really get me for some reason”). After Oz, he’ll be touring across New Zealand and America. Upon his return to Europe, he’ll be straight into John Reynolds’ London studio to start recording his next album.
“Yeah, for release next year, hopefully. I’ve about 40 songs there, so I’m going to start sticking them down with John now in May when I’m back from the tour. So fingers crossed, there’s a few good ones there.”
Does it have a working title yet? “Yeah, I think it’s gonna be called Layman’s Terms,” he confides. Suddenly a concerned look crosses his visage. “Actually, I’d better copyright that one quick before somebody strokes it on me!”

It’s All Good: The Best Of Damien Dempsey is available now through Sony Music.
Catch him in Roisin Dubh, Galway (February 27); Dolan's, Limerick (28) and Forum, Waterford (March 1)