Singer- songwriter and now playwright Mick Flannery told David Hennessy about his new album The House Must Win which is made up of music from his new stage show of the same name.
Mick Flannery, one of Ireland’s most acclaimed songwriters and singers, releases his latest album this month.
But it is different from any previous album.
The House Must Win is made up of the music from the stage show of the same name which is written by himself and largely inspired by Flannery’s 2007 debut album, Evening Train.
This is a moment of coming full circle for Mick as when he started writing back in 2005, it was a stage show he had in mind when putting together songs that would instead announce him as a singer- songwriter.
With a cast that includes Tommy Tiernan, Ferdia Walsh- Peelo, Niall McNamee and Tabitha Smyth, The House Must Win has played to the Pavilion Theatre in Dun Laoghaire and Cork’s Everyman.
From Blarney, Co. Cork Mick Flannery is award-winning, double-platinum selling artist and has released seven studio albums, three of which have reached No. 1.
His last album In The Game, a 2021 collection of duets with Susan O’Neill, was nominated for the Choice Music Prize and won the RTE Radio 1 song of the year two years in a row for tracks Baby Talk and Chain Reaction.
The House Must Win album features guests such as Anaïs Mitchell, Yvonne Daly, Jenn Grant, Lisa Hannigan, Jeffrey Martin, Tabitha Smyth, Susan O’Neill and Marybeth O’Mahoney.
Mick took time to chat to the Irish World about the new album.
This album, and the stage show it comes from, have been a long time coming. It goes all the way back to your 2007 debut album Evening Train..
“Yeah, it’s kind of funny how things go really because I was a very young man writing that first album.
“To have it incorporated into this was a challenge because the story I had written for that album was quite simple and I had to extrapolate it out a good bit and make it into a bigger thing for this production.
“It had to say a bit more than it was saying in its initial version.
“It’s been a steep learning curve for me, especially the script writing stuff.
“That was all new to me and very different from songwriting.
“In script writing the admonition is that you show, don’t tell and I had to put my brain in reverse gear to do that because with songs, pretty much all you do is tell so I made a lot of cheesy drafts that went into the bin but I learned a lot.”
It’s kind of full circle in that you had a musical in mind before making that first album, didn’t you?
“Yeah, I had this one song (Creak in the Door) that has this mother berating her son about the whereabouts of the other (son).
“I don’t know exactly where that song came from but as a young person, I was struggling for material to write about so I took this avenue trying to extrapolate that story so that I could have a story to write songs to.
“I did try to write the dialogue and I sucked at it so I stopped pretty quickly.
“The whole thing just seemed like too big a challenge to me.
“I finished the songs first and I was happy enough to keep writing other songs rather than get stuck trying to finish a script at the time.
“I was young and what I needed was experience gigging so that’s kind of what I focused on instead of trying to become a script writer at 20, so it stayed on the back burner for a long time but my manager is fantastic and she was like, ‘Why is this not finished?’
“And I had no good answer for her, so here we are.”
Here we are. As we speak the show is playing at Pavilion Theatre in Dun Laoghaire. It must be a proud moment to see it come to life..
“I’m just very happy that people seem to like it and enjoy it.
“I’m glad that the band enjoy it and that the cast enjoy it and that they’ve had a good time in general enduring the kind of process, that it hasn’t been unduly stressful or taken too seriously.
“Myself and Sheena (Keane, manager) are very new to the theatre game.
“We’re novices and so we’re learning at the same time as trying to do and I think people are kind of giving us license for that and I guess it makes the whole thing a bit more fun, the fact that it’s a little bit cowboyish.”
What was it like making the album, putting the stage show on record?
“It was good fun to be honest.
“It was somewhat of an afterthought.
“It was quite a rushed affair.
“We did the whole thing in seven days or something like that.
“It was a kind of a selfish undertaking on my part.
“Liam Robinson (Hadestown) is the man who arranged the music.
“His arrangements brought the songs, old and new, to places that I could not have imagined myself.
“I could never have done what he is able to do and when I heard the cast and the band singing the songs to his arrangement, I was jealous.
“I said, ‘Sh*t, I never got the opportunity to sing with these arrangements. These songs sound so much cooler than I could have imagined so f**k it, let’s record this instead and get some guests on’.
“And that’s what we did.
“It was great.
“I’m very glad we did it.”
Speaking of guests on the album you were blessed with people like Susan O’Neill who you have done a lot with, Lisa Hannigan who you go back a long way with. There was also Anais Mitchell and Tabitha Smyth who stars in The House Must Win and many more..
“Yeah, a good friend of mine Jeffrey Martin is on it as well, Jenn Grant.
“It was kind of hilarious how rushed it all was.
“I was texting people like Lisa and Jen saying, ‘Any chance you would throw a vocal on this?’
“It was just hectic. Good craic.”
There are a number of tracks from Evening Train that have been rewritten lyrically for the show. Is it a bit strange for you to now have two versions of certain songs?
“Well it’s a confusing idea to be honest because I get them mixed up when I try to play them live, I get caught in the middle.
“I end up kind of confusing myself sometimes.
“The original album, to my mind, was set in America but for the production of the musical, we decided to leave it be in Ireland so that meant a couple of things had to be adapted.
“We were a bit stuck with the use of the word dollar but that ended up being mixed into the larger metaphor in the play anyway so we hopefully got away with that.”
What was it like adapting your own work but as a younger artist?
“I’m glad that the songs still make sense and that they’re simple enough in their formation that they didn’t need to be too adapted.
“I mean I would have been slightly reluctant, I guess, to kind of change too many lyrics but I understood why I was being asked to.
“It’s just things run a lot better when it’s clear and concise and obvious to the audience what’s happening and there’s no red herrings in there so those changes, they were necessary really.
“I wasn’t permitted to be too precious which is fine by me.”
There is a lot in the story such as brotherhood and unrequited love as it concerns two brothers in love with the same girl. Do you remember where the story first came to you from?
“I guess I was young, a young boy essentially writing those songs so those type of things would have been high in my mind.
“I suppose when you’re young, you’re more anxious about who you are and where you fit in and do people like you? Do people like you in comparison to X, Y and Z other people?
“That type of insecurity kind of runs through especially the lead character Frank and his character is wondering, ‘Should I be more like my wild brother? Would I garner more attention and be more attractive if I was somewhat freer in my personality?’
“And then the other themes are, what is the right way to think or what is the right path and do the previous generation have it right or can things be improved? How much of the previous generation’s wisdom should I ignore and how much of it should I perpetuate?
“That’s kind of in there too.
“I guess some people would have certain philosophies on life that they cannot waver from and it causes them to be too dogmatic or strict in their thinking and, even if it’s unintentional, it can lead to a repression of the younger generation.”
You spoke about a brother asking if she should be more like his wilder sibling but the irony there is that the girl they both love, who first chooses the wilder of the two, starts to desire Frank’s reliability..
“Yeah, that happens alright and I guess it’s up to the audience as to what they feel about that wilder brother.
“He is a risk taker and he is, as he sees it, taking on the big dogs and trying to make his way against the overarching system but the system doesn’t fight fair, so I hope the audience are kind of left wondering, ‘Is this guy really a villain and is he really so unreliable or does he kind of have a better handle on what’s happening and does that maybe make him a more tragic figure? Is he a rebel with a cause?’”
Choosing to set it in the 1970s mean it is a different Ireland than what we know today we are seeing..
“I suppose it has its coarseness and it’s grittiness.
“There’s the obvious absence of modern technology which, to be honest, to me it feels just much easier to tell a story without those things: The audience doesn’t ever have to ask themselves, ‘Well why didn’t he just text him?’
“The choice of 1971 was connected to the title.
“The House Must Win is intended to be a metaphor for democracy.
“In a democratic society, the people choose the house.
“They vote for the house that they live under and that’s a theme, the house we want to win.
“1971 was where the American government, under Richard Nixon, decided to separate the gold standard from the dollar.
“They unanchored the dollar and it led to inflation because they could print dollars at will.
“They didn’t have to be anchored to anything tangible and so that kind of formed a new system of money which has let people down is my thesis.
“It’s caused the value of money to depreciate rapidly even within a person’s life: You could spend 20 years of your life working for a certain amount of currency and by the time you retire, the 20 years of work has halved in value so essentially inflation stole ten years of your life which I think is an unworkable system.
“That’s one of the main reasons that I chose 1971, because Nixon made a decision to start printing money.”
We see it in the play and in life. I know the game of poker comes into the story. You can see people betting their lives on a hand of cards..
“That’s the impact of what inflation will do to somebody in the knowledge that they’re holding their savings in their hand and they know within ten years, this will be worth half what it’s worth now, so people are forced to gamble with it.
“They’re forced to try and put it into something that will cause it not to devalue itself whereas people should be allowed to save their time in the form of their currency and safe in the knowledge that their time will stand to them but that’s not possible so they are forced to take risks with their time.
“So yeah, you’re right.”
Of course you have none other than Tommy Tiernan in the cast. I understand he was involved from very early on..
“Yeah, Tommy’s been a great supporter of me for a while now.
“He’s a great actor and he brings a lot to the character and he’s a gentleman too so he brings great vibe and atmosphere to the gang.
“He’s just a fun person to be around and he’s a very interesting person.
“He’s obviously very thoughtful.
“It just seems to be part of his personality that he’s very interested in people, interested in the way they think.
“He has all the attributes just very naturally that make him so good at doing his talk show.
“Those things just appear very naturally to him.”
We know Tommy to be a great actor, comedian and talk show host but never a singer, was he reluctant about the singing?
“He had his reluctances about the singing element but the musical doesn’t demand too much from his character in that regard.
“Tommy has one solo song where his character rails against his family and the song is almost kind of punk in its arrangement so beautiful singing is not required so we actually don’t know if Tommy is a beautiful singer or not because we haven’t asked him to sing beautifully.”
It’s a very different thing with cast members like London- based singer- songwriter Niall McNamee, Ferdia Walsh- Peelo who starred in the film Sing Street and Tabitha Smyth who features on the album..
“Yeah, they’re fantastic.
“Very professional, very on it and very sound.
“They’re a pleasure to watch and a pleasure to hang out with.
“We got very lucky really with the gang of people that we got.”
You have already taken the show to Dublin and now Cork, would you like to take it further afield, perhaps to the UK?
“Yeah, I’d absolutely like that but there is no definites yet.
“We put these two runs together as what they call a proof of concept showing and so I guess we’re hoping that what we’ve made is a viable thing.
“I’m proud of it either way but I am definitely hoping that it will have legs, especially for my manager Sheena’s sake.
“I feel like Sheena has put so much work, and it’s the unseen work, into all of this project.
“I just don’t want it to be the end of the road already for all that work and it seems as though the audiences are enjoying it so I guess that’s the best barometer we have.
“I mean that’s what people buy tickets for so my hopes are there and I’m trying to keep them as modest and as realistic as possible, but I do have hope.”
Could you see yourself writing another musical?
“Yeah, I wouldn’t rule it out.
“There’s one concept album in particular that I feel might be within reach.
“The album I did with Susan O’Neill is already a concept album where we threaded the songs together in a certain way.
“We probably need more songs or some more needs to happen.
“We need to brainstorm it but some of the cornerstones of it are already there.
“So yeah, I wouldn’t rule it out.”
may or may not be complete sharks’. And there are sharks.”
You said you are proud of this production but is it perhaps the thing you are most proud of?
“I think by virtue of how much work went into it, I would have to say yes.
“And I’m proud of Sheena too the two of us, as I say, being somewhat kind of maverick in this world of theatre.
“We got no big sponsor, we got no arts council stuff so it really was a kind of a grassroots, homegrown thing which makes you feel more proud of it, I suppose.”
The single I’ll Be Out Here (musical version) is out now.
The House Must Win album is out 22 May.
For more information, click here.
