The Celebrity Cafe is now featuring Kilroy Was Here on their top independent albums list. Visit the site and submit your own rating for this album.

Larry Kirwan talks with Bill Nevins about beer, politics, 'rebels' and good sex. Read the interview online at the Rootsworld website.

I can't even remember deciding to make Kilroy Was Here. I do know that the inspiration didn't come like the proverbial flash of lightning but rather, after a period of mundane gestation. This must have been going on while we were making Trouble in the Land but I can't, for the life of me, recall any distracting tug on the shoulder. However, I did know that the childhood memory of waiting at Wexford Railway Station for the early morning arrival of my Father - back from sea - would eventually provide a song. And with Kilroy itself, so close to the surface, it was only a matter of time before that song too broke through.

Why a solo album? After all, it's not as if I can't try out any song within the constantly expanding boundaries of Black 47. But something demanded that I keep these songs separate. They seemed to call for a different touch - a change in instrumentation. Also, there comes a time for everyone when you have to leave the comfort of your family to gain new experience. Then having achieved that, you can return and let everyone be the richer for it. I have no intention of leaving Black 47 but a band only remains strong by constantly renewing it and challenging it with new ideas.

For some time, I've been reading the poetry of Garcia Lorca, thinking about the circumstances of his death and trying to come to terms with his notion of "duende." How do I, an Irishman, explain the Spanish concept of duende? Broadly speaking, it's a particular overheated, even mystical feeling that is occasionally generated between a performer and an audience - a rare knife-edge, hair-raising, nails-scraping-off-slate connection that once experienced can never be forgotten.

I want that experience and, to that end, I need a body of songs that can, perhaps, evoke it. With Black 47, as you all know, it's a rare show where we don't reach a moment of transcendence - when the band and audience merge into one. At this point, after 11 years, we've become junkies for that high - some of you have too - and we're lucky that we can mainline it so many times a year. I guess I want a new high - one that I'll have to work hard for but one that will ultimately improve me as a writer and performer.

But most of all I want to get back out in front of an audience with just a guitar and see if I can do it the way I started off in Wexford, so many moons ago. And speaking of Wexford, it permeates the album - not the successful Wexford of today - but the one I remember, grey, gloomy, rain-soaked , lightning streets, full of teddyboys, sailors home on leave, Presentation schoolgirls, bookies, messenger boys, Sister Philip, Tommy Swift, mini minors, Franciscans, altar-boys, culchies on old black bicycles, country boys sweating in black suits on Curracloe Beach, Sunday walks to Ferrycarrig, Norman castles, Yola and memories of '98, Eddie Calvert's trumpet, showbands at the Parish Hall, girls in seamed stockings who thought you
were an eejit, opera and rock & roll all mixed into one grand, big yellowbellied stew. No wonder I'm so messed up! Still, I want to bring some of those drunken Sunday evening memories (the day I wrote most of this) back into rock & roll and, hopefully, merge the two worlds I'm a part of - theatre and music, once and for all.

And so, I called up my dear friend, Stewart Lerman, the engineer/producer extraordinaire and informed him of my aspiration. Characteristically, he answered, "great, man, the first thing you should do is get the songs together on acoustic - nothing fancy - then come up here and lay them down. When can you do that?"

"Next week." I replied with less sense than determination.

"How about noon on Friday? I can fit you in right before Loudon at 1:30."

And so Friday it was, with the band setting off for a gig in Boston at 2. But before that, I had some frantic rehearsals - with myself. It's one thing mumbling the songs at home - quite another to go into the illuminating nakedness of a professional studio. Were they all in the right key? Could I play the guitar parts and sing them simultaneously. Was I just over-reaching? All the usual self-doubts that precede any kind of a recording.

I barely remember the session. We laid down 13 or 14 songs in a blur and then I hopped into the van for that, oh so familiar, dash up old Route 95 - the scourge of the working musician. Stewart burned me a cd and that acoustic session became the foundation that Kilroy was built on. (Perhaps, we'll release it in a limited form some day - strictly for Black 47 people.)

About a week later, Stewart called and inquired, "what do you want to do with this thing, man?" And so I told him that I had a yen to approach the project a little differently - use a jazz drummer and a double bassist and have the lead instruments be trumpet and violin. "Wow," said Stewart - a man who loves the challenge of the new, "sounds like a concept. But can you be a little more specific - like eh - anything in particular it should sound like?" Hmm, I thought. How about a cross between Sinead O'Connor and Triple H? Nah, wouldn't fly; so let's try using Sketches of Spain and Astral Weeks as bookends. This appealed to the intrepid record producer no end and we were off in a canter.

Enter the one and only, Fabulous Freddie Parcells. Now Fred and I go back almost 20 years at this point. He's been called The Hendrix of the Trombone and that's obvious to Black 47 devotees. But his greatest talent may be as an orchestrator. I told him I wanted to mix trumpet and violin in a manner that Gil Evans wouldn't turn up his nose at. This was enough for Fred, being an ardent admirer of the Miles/Gil oeuvre. "I can dig Gil's shit, man," he cryptically replied. I gave him a copy of the acoustic cd and the whistled trumpet/violin lines that were kicking around in my head - with the understanding that he add whatever he heard, then put the whole kit and kaboodle into charts and tallyho, Bob's yer Uncle, Fanny's yer Aunt, we'd be on our way!

But the jazz drummer and bassist got a gig in Europe right before the first rehearsal. What to do? Let there be no panic on the Titanic, declared Stewart. Leave it in my hands - all we need are two cats who can read. (Sounded a bit like T.S Elliot contemplating a Broadway run.) Well, to tell the truth, I was a little panicked - cats or no cats. But not to worry, Stewart got in touch with Paul Ossola, a close friend who had been bassist in my old band, Major Thinkers. (What goes around most definitely comes around.) He also picked another friend of Black 47's, Frank Vilardi, as drummer.

Then Stewart dropped the bombshell that he wanted Dave Tronzo to sit in on guitar. He must have seen my raised eyebrows - after all, I was trying to get away from electric guitars.. "Don't worry," he reassured, "you'll love him. He even reads". Jesus, the literacy level was shooting up. Stewart had obviously missed his calling - the next time they need a Chancellor of the New York City Schools - be advised that their man is wasting away on 14th Street. But he was right. There is nothing quite like The Tronz on slide. Duane Allman on crack, I thought, during one inspired riff.

Having spent what seemed like years of my life slaving away in studios in vain attempts at pop perfection, I had become impressed with the jazz greats who could often knock out a couple of albums before their breakfast. Indeed, our own Beatles had recorded and mixed their first album in a couple of sessions between gigs. Bearing all that in mind, I suggested that we just do two, four hour rehearsals to keep the thing on edge, maintain a sense of mystery, as it were. Stewart, however, was of the opinion that after three hours any self-respecting musician was fit only for the pub. When he saw the concerned look on my face, he again was the soul of reassurance "don't worry, just think of it as adding a little more mystery." I tried to affect an air of nonchalance but if this keeps up, I'm thinking, we'll need to put out an alert for Sherlock Holmes.

But, as is often the case, he was right. On that first day in the rehearsal studio we began with Walkin' With Her God and it was obvious each of these musicians had done their homework. The song gelled instantly and floated around a very mysterious pocket. Paul was playing bass to break your heart, Tronz's slide had me back on unmade beds gazing at the cracks in the ceiling of East Village apartments, Fred's bone captured that narcotic Avenue D mariachi and Frank's driving, but delicate, rhythms seamlessly stitched all the ribs together. Song after song fell into place, some not without effort, but always with the desired quotient of enigma intact.

We recorded the whole album in two days. I sang live on each track while playing my Martin acoustic, with a pickup feed for effects. Now my intention was that I would re-sing the vocals, which is the norm.
But, because of the nature of this album, with the voice leading and dueling with Vilardi's sense of timing and Paul's evocative bass, when I came to do the "real" vocals - even though they were often technically better - they never sounded as "right" as the originals. And so, unusual for this digital day and age, all the vocals are live, for better or worse. The Lord protect me from the critics.

I had assumed that my buddy, Angel Fernandez, would play his wonderful trumpet (remember him on
Who Killed Bobby Fuller, Paul Robeson, etc) but he was on the road leading the Marc Anthony band.
He suggested Rich Viruet. What a trip! He is one brilliant trumpeter and a real character to boot. Remind me to tell you about him someday! He brilliantly knocked off all the intricate parts that Fred had orchestrated while devouring a mountain of chicken wings, rice and beans. Faith Glassman put all her passion into the beautiful violin parts. Mike Fazio layered Kilroy with the sweep of his effected pedal steel guitar. Lisa Gutkin added her gypsy fiddle on Spanish Moon. Dashing David Conrad, in between drafts of his new book, added cello, his new axe, to Girl in the Rain and, of course, the incomparable Geoffrey Blythe blew his heart out on Only Livin' Boy in New York and History of Ireland, Part 1. Then Stewart and I took turns on guitars, Fender Rhodes and his old Hammond; Suzzy Roche added her exquisitely haunting vocals to the first three tracks, Copernicus translated and added lyrics to the Lorca song, my old employer and comrade, Malachy McCourt, added his wry touches to the re-writing of Irish History and that - as the Bishop said to the actress - was that.

Over the next three months or so, Stewart and I snatched moments in between his sessions to massage and polish, what became for us, a labor of love. I can never thank him, Fred, Suzzy, the musicians and all those who gave me such love and support. I dedicate this album to them....and, of course, to you.