Luke Clerkin told David Hennessy about his debut album, how he took inspiration from the Greek legend of Orpheus and his special show at London Irish Centre in 2023.
Dublin singer- songwriter, Luke Clerkin has just released his much anticipated debut album, Orpheus.
The album explores themes such as mental health, love, heartbreak, healing, and grief.
The process was not without issues with injuries to Luke’s hand and other issues interfering with the process. He had hoped to launch it earlier but took the time to get it right and will launch it in Dublin this week.
The title comes from the Greek tale of Orpheus and Eurydice which Clerkin relates back to his own experience of getting out of his ‘own way’.
Luke is a two time Sports and Cultural Council Song-Writing Competition winner.
His music has gained international airplay and support, whilst also topping the Irish Singer-Songwriter Charts on multiple occasions.
Luke became known for playing over 250 gigs in 2015, as a way of honing his craft.
Since then he has headlined famous Dublin venues such as Whelan’s, The Workman’s Club, and The Button Factory. His music has brought him all over the world, with multiple tours of Germany, as well as festival slots in America, The UK, and Ireland.
The Irish World spoke to Luke back in 2023 when he was playing his first ever London headline show at the Camden Chapel on the top floor of the London Irish Centre.
It was then he told us of his plans for the album.
It’s a little while since we talked before but you were working on the album that time so it’s full circle really..
“It really is actually.
“We were aiming to release it in October of 2024 and then so many things just got in the way and a lot of personal stuff happened.
“A lot of grief came into my life.
“I was in a relationship and that fell apart and that was a massive thing on the album as well because I had to kind of deal with the emotional weight of that.
“And then I hurt my hand, twice actually.
“I had to stop after two months of recording because I couldn’t play anymore.
“I got a repetitive strain injury and then I got another one just as we finished the album so I decided to postpone the release.
“I think I was just burning out.
“We were trying to just get everything over the line and everything just wasn’t perfect.
“I didn’t want to just force it out there and just not be happy with it and then sit here, like I am now, three or four months later and not be happy with it.
“Now I’m able to do it three or four months later with something that I’m actually happy with.
“It was never going to be a perfect record.
“We recorded on a shoestring budget but we’ve gotten it to the place where I’m happy with it and that’s all that mattered with me so postponing it was probably the best thing I could have done.
“What’s really mad is that we actually had the launch planned and then I decided a month or so before to shelve it and then by the time the launch was going to be happening, I wouldn’t have been able to play the guitar anyway because I had the second hand injury, so I probably would have had to cancel the gig anyway.
“Now we’re about to do the launch in Whelan’s on the 6th which is kinda surreal.”
Does it sound funny to be talking about a debut album as if you’re a new performer when you’ve been around for a good while? Does that seem a little bit strange even in a way?
“Yeah, maybe If COVID hadn’t happened, this probably would have been happening three or four years ago.
“I think COVID slowed down a lot of things for me, a lot of progress.
“Before COVID, I was doing a lot of stuff so I had to kind of start again, essentially.
“It feels weird but it feels like if I don’t do it now, I won’t ever do it.
“A lot of this album is me serving the songs that had got me to where I was before COVID and got me to where I am now.
“Some of these songs are 10 years old.
“Some of these songs are only two or three years old.
“One of the songs I actually wrote the night before I recorded it in the studio.
“That song is called For What Its Worth so that’s the newest song on the album.
“It had to be done.
“Now I can park some of these songs and who knows what will happen to them, whether I’ll continue playing them or not but it’s about just serving them, serving where they got me on my journey and then moving forward.
“I’m just really glad I’m here.
“From when I was talking to you over a year and a half ago nearly to now, I’ve done so much and I’m proud of myself for getting here and to this point and to get to this moment and just moving forward.”
Serving the songs that have got you here is very much the purpose of including Stones.
That song has been very meaningful for you and helped a lot of people in their own mental health struggles, hasn’t it?
“Yeah, this is the third version of this song that I’ve done now and I feel it’s the closest that I’ll ever get to how I want it.
“On the album it’s the most emotional version of this song that anyone has ever heard.
“Every time I listen back to it, I cry. I cry myself. Tears come to my eyes because I remember where I was when I went into the studio to sing it and where I was with my mental health and how I was feeling.
“I went in there and I work with one of my best friends, Gavin Doyle, who produced the whole thing.
“We’ve been working together for 12, 13 years in different capacities but he was there from when I first wrote Stones.
“I remember showing it to him and he recorded live versions of it and stuff like that and then I went into the studio that day to record it.
“I just remember feeling really vulnerable and just really sad and you can hear my voice crack throughout this recording.
“It’s so raw and it’s so emotional and you can hear it in me, we kept it because it just adds so much to the depth of the track and it adds so much to the album as well.
“That song has stood to me.
“I played it the other night and I was like, ‘This is the most important song that I’ve ever written, and it’s the most important song that I’ll ever write’.
“Because it’s stood.
“It’s ten years old this year and every time I play it, it’s like I’m playing it for the first time.
“It’s that feeling and that emotion that goes into it.
“I wrote that song to remind myself to just look after myself and to remind others to do the same.
“It’s stood with me and if I do park some of the songs, that song is not going to be one of them.”
The great thing about the song is what it has meant to other people, isn’t it?
“Yeah, I’ve had so many people over the years text me and say, ‘Thank you for writing it, for sharing it’.
“And they come up to me after gigs in tears and feeling full of emotion.
“I wrote that song in a bedroom in Tallaght and it’s able to do that.
“I used to say it when I did a lot of mental health work, when I used to do school talks and stuff, ‘If there’s one person moved by what I do, then that’s my job done’.
“And I’ve done that numerous times over with that song, and I hope to do the same with the album.”
There’s a mental health theme through the record, isn’t there? I’m thinking specifically of songs like Supernova and Home, would I be right?
“Yeah.
“Because I got diagnosed with ADHD just over a year ago now, I feel like this is an ADHD brain’s perspective of life.
“It’s all a reflection and it’s all to do with my mental health because I use songwriting for my mental health.
“It’s my therapeutic way of dealing with things.
“It’s one of the many things that I do.
“Songwriting is my cathartic expression and then there’s another song on the album which is Over Time.
“Over Time is specifically mental health based because I wrote it for somebody who was feeling very self-conscious and lacking a lot of self-worth because of how someone else made them feel in a previous relationship.
“I wanted to be able to show them, ‘I know you’re feeling bad right now but over time, you will feel better’.
“And that’s the main mental health-based song besides Stones.
“Then you could even say Orpheus.
“The song Orpheus is about relationships and the importance of communication within relationships.
“I feel that’s just a massive thing because it’s about letting people know how you’re feeling because if you don’t, things will get worse.
“It mirrors what I say in Stones. There’s a little cheeky, ‘Forgive me if I’ve said this before’ because I’ve said it before in my song Stones but this is now in a different context.
“It’s a different context because I wrote it for my partner at the time and it was like, ‘We are going to get through this. No matter what, we’ll get through it but we just need to learn how to communicate with each other and learn how to let go of what held us back before, and we will get through this’.
“And a song like Constellations is about that as well because the whole track is basically me dealing with my own mental health struggles and my own anxieties and everything else.
“The overall theme of it is essentially about getting out of your own way because I feel like a lot of us are in our own way and especially me, being an ADHD brain, I strive for perfection because I can’t always do things correctly so I have to work twice as hard sometimes to do things.
“With this album, I had to do that as well.”
Tell us about the song Confession Box. Where did that come from?
“That’s a story.
“I think it was 2018.
“I was on tour with the Circle Sessions.
“But throughout that night, I met someone who really basically helped me change the way I saw the world.
“I met her and we ended up just kind of having real soul talk.
“We ended walking around after the gig.
“Basically the story chronicles that night and how we eliminated any barriers and we just talked straight from the soul.
“It was just a really stunning night for me and just to experience that on such a deep level only meeting the person.
“It ended up being a situationship but it had a beautiful start to it.
“Unfortunately For What Its Worth is about looking back on that situation as it progressed.”
Tell us about the song, Postcards…
“This is probably the most delicate song on the album, at least the second half anyway.
“I had a friend, someone who was really close to me and I had feelings for her for a long time and I never told her because I didn’t want to ruin the friendship.
“And another friend had known what was going on and she came from America and she was getting postcards to send back home.
“Instead of sending the postcard back home, she wrote on the postcard, ‘You need to tell her before it’s too late. She looks at you like I look at the moon’.
“That’s where that lyric comes from.
“My friend told me to tell this other person how I was feeling and eventually I did.
“Ricochet is about the same person.
“It’s about the weight of not being able to tell the person how you feel and then Postcards is about telling them and what comes afterwards and me getting that closure from that.
“Nothing came from it but what came from it was that I was able to move forward and then I was able to actually find a relationship which led to Constellations and Orpheus.
“It’s that situationship to something that was never meant to be, to something that was to be, and learning throughout that process.”
Tell me about the title Orpheus because you had that title over a year ago when we first spoke so it’s obviously one you’ve had in your head for a long time.
Why does it mean so much and why do you feel it sums it up the record so much?
“I just love the story.
“I had just written the Orpheus song as well.
“I love the Greek mythology story of Orpheus trying to get Eurydice back after she gets killed and how he goes down to the underworld and talks to Hades, and asks Hades, ‘Can you get her back?’
“And Hades tells him, ‘She’ll be behind you this whole time but you need to trust the process and if you walk out of here and you turn back once, she’ll disappear’.
“And that story of him going up to the surface and Eurydice just about to step on the surface but then turning around, not trusting Hades or trusting in faith or the universe, whatever you want to call it and then her disappearing.
“To me, that represents the idea of getting out of your own way and trusting the process and trusting that things will help you, things will carry forward but you need to kind of allow them to.
“And that comes in the form of opening yourself up to opportunities and just letting things flow.
“It goes back to Stones: Always let your feelings flow.
“I think it represents the whole album because I don’t know how this sounds but I feel like I am Orpheus in this situation and I need to trust myself.
“It’s about opening myself up to it and not getting in my own way.
“I tend to do that a lot because of my ADHD brain, and I overthink a lot.
“Then I maybe get in the way of my progress because I overthink a lot, or doubt myself, or give in to other people’s doubt of me in that way as well.
“So it represents who I am.
“It’s also sometimes I can’t trust the process enough and it’s a reminder for me to be mindful and to be in the moment and to just allow things to happen rather than trying to force them to happen.”
Back to that London gig of late 2023 at the London Irish Centre.
How did you enjoy that?
I’m reminded of how you were actually born in Hackney so it was somewhat of a coming home, right?
“It felt like it was meant to be because I had a lot of family come and see me play.
“It was just really special.
“And people who I’d made friends with within the London scene came to see me as well and it was just really beautiful.
“I look at London as a second home, essentially, but Dublin is always my home.
“It’s in my songs.
“But I was never sure of my relationship with London because I never really went back and then only in the last few years that I’ve actually started to sink back into it and start to find my place there and find my people.”
Will you be back soon to play the album tracks?
“I, at some point this year, guarantee that I will do a London show.
“I just can’t guarantee when it will be.
“I want to do it because my family are there and I do have such a grá for there and especially the London Irish Centre.”
Orpheus by Luke Clerkin is out now.
Luke launches the album at Whelans in Dublin on Thursday 6 February.
For more information, search Luke Clerkin on social media.
