Michelle Burke told David Hennessy about her show Mind How You Go before she premieres it at Edinburgh Fringe.
Scottish-based Cork singer- songwriter Michelle Burke is about to debut her new music-theatre show at the Edinburgh Fringe.
This is a return to the fringe for Michelle who launched her previous show, Step into My Parlour at the festival before touring Europe with it.
Michelle’s new show, Mind How You Go, is a deep-dive into her surreal family history.
Through a captivating fusion of storytelling and original music, Mind How You Go explores identity, migration and family folklore.
Directed by acclaimed BAFTA Scotland award-winning Gerda Stevenson (Federer vs. Murray, Off Broadway Tour; Blue Black Permanent, Margaret Tait) and accompanied by Scottish pianist and composer James Ross (These Are the Hands; Landscape to Light), the rabbit hole exploration of Burke’s ancestry explores what it means to be Irish in Scotland and the powerful call of home.
From her great-grandfather’s imprisonment during the War of Independence to tales of glamorous American cousins, moving statues and Angela Lansbury fleeing the Manson family to Conna, Co. Cork, the show connects past and present in a rich, lyrical journey.
The show has evolved from Burke’s latest album, produced by Duke Special.
Michelle Burke says of it: “The show reflects my rural Irish Catholic upbringing and how these stories continue to resonate in my life – through the lens of my adopted country, Scotland. It homes in on my complex relationship with ‘home’.”
How did Mind How You Go begin?
“A few years before the pandemic I asked Duke Special- Peter Wilson, he’s a musician from Belfast- if he would be up for producing my next album.
“He was and it was never intended to be a show at all at all so I kind of rocked over to Belfast with a scrapbook full of kind of stories and ideas but a lot of the stories- I didn’t really realise there was this thread to it at the time- They were all kind of family stories and stories about home or from home.
“So I co-wrote four or five songs for the album with Peter and then he produced it all.
“And then I co-wrote some songs with Kathryn Williams who’s an amazing songwriter who lives in Newcastle, a song with Boo Hewerdine and another younger guy from Scotland called Stewart Robbie.
“We were nearly finished the album, finished recording and everything, and the pandemic hit so, like everybody else, kind of lost my momentum and I was like, ‘Oh, I don’t know what to do’.
“And then the world went mad for everybody, didn’t it?
“I suppose that kind of forced pause made me kind of think, ‘What do I actually want to do with this project?’
“I had done a few projects with Gerda Stevenson, who has directed the show, but in a completely different setting.
“I did a few commissions for the Festival theatre in Edinburgh but they were more like care setting theatre tours.
“We had worked together on three shows for them and I kind of thought, ‘God, it would be amazing to have an opportunity to work with Gerda but without the remit of a specific project like that’.
“So just between the jigs and the reels and years going back and forth, and plenty glasses of wine, I kind of thought, ‘You know what? I actually think there’s a show in this body of work’.
“So I got funding from Creative Scotland, luckily enough, to do a development in the Tron Theatre here in Glasgow last year.
“It feels like this project has, in one form or another, been tipping away for quite a while but I think it is because I did the Step into my Parlor as well.
“I was kind of not sure if I wanted to just gig the songs.
“If I hadn’t done that, I wouldn’t be doing this because I think I kind of got the bug a little bit for it, even though I never intended for it to happen.
“I kind of thought this was going to be something a bit different but it is very different because I suppose Step into my Parlor was kind of all trad, folk, parlour-y songs and Irish songs so this is very different.
“I do feel quite vulnerable to be honest with you.
“It feels like quite a new venture.
“I do feel a bit vulnerable but here we go.”
That’s inevitable with its personal nature, isn’t it? Gerda Stevenson has described the show as ‘the story of Michelle Burke’. There’s a lot of you in it, isn’t there?
“Yeah, totally.
“I mean one way or another a lot of the songs are about my family or family stories.
“I don’t know how you feel about this but when you don’t live at home anymore, you see it from a different place, don’t you?
“I’m a visitor at home but that’s kind of strange.
“There’s always for me the draw of home.
“It’s a funny thing.”
Do you find you can write about your home place from a perspective you could never have if you lived there?
“Yeah, absolutely.
“You just see it from a different perspective.
“I suppose it becomes a different thing.
“But to me, it’s still home.
“Cork is still home.”
It’s also your family history. There’s the story of, is it your great grandfather, who was imprisoned during the War of Independence?
“That’s right, yeah.
“My great grandfather and my great grand uncle- Uncle Tom, we’ll call him, they were political prisoners in Spike Island and my granddad, actually he’s gone now but he spoke about it.
“He remembered them being dragged out of their beds.
“He was five, I think, at the time but what’s really interesting about it is for my Step into my Parlor project that kind of all came about because we found a scrapbook in my granddad’s old loft.
“In that scrapbook were some postcards that they had sent from Spike Island and they’ve kind of made their way now into the show.
“I suppose what’s really interesting about those postcards is how human they are: Things written on them like, ‘Did you get the eggs?’
“There’s one really funny postcard where Uncle Tom is writing to his sister asking if one of the local girls was still available, if she had gone off with anybody else.
“It’s really interesting that you just how human that is.
“But then there’s obviously the struggle for the independence the other side of it.
“So it’s really interesting.
“And actually he wrote poems and myself and Peter (Duke) have set one of those poems to music and it’s in the show and on the album which is nice.
“I suppose it’s still his voice because we haven’t changed any of the words or anything.
“It feels nice to do that.”
What’s the feelings of that? Is it emotional to put your late ancestor’s story into song, into the show?
“Yeah, I often wonder what my grandparents would think.
“Do you know what? I’m terrified of what my parents are going to think of this show to be honest.
“I’m so nervous.
“I suppose it is emotional.
“I think it’s interesting because I didn’t know him so I often wonder.
“I often think, ‘Have I inherited some of his beliefs?’
“I suppose it’s emotional but it’s also nice to be able to give voice to it, I suppose.”
Folklore, or is it even family folklore, is also something that comes up..
“It’s more family.
“I was telling Boo that my grandmother was a massive fan of Angela Lansbury- Jessica Fletcher, Murder She Wrote.
“I remember growing up she’d come to mind us and we’d be always watching Murder She Wrote and all that craic, but she actually moved to Conna.
“Jessica Fletcher, Angela Lansbury, moved to Conna, to the parish because she was trying to get her kids away from the Manson family because they were teenagers in Los Angeles and they had kind of got involved with them.
“But my granny’s sister then, Auntie Sheila, who I actually don’t remember, worked for her so my granny kind of almost felt like she knew her vicariously and anytime we passed the household she’d be, ‘That’s where..’
“So we have a song called From Cabot Cove to Conna in the show about that.
“When my aunts are always after a few drinks, they’re always talking about the summer of 1969.
“My grandad’s brother had emigrated to San Francisco.
“He had six kids over there and he sent my granddad a cheque to buy him a Hillman Hunter car for when he came home so he could show all the kids around or whatever.
“And we found a photograph of him at San Francisco Airport in a dickie bow and with the kids with him.
“He had saved up for ages but this car sat outside my grandparents’ house for months and months because nobody was able to drive it so they were allowed to sit in the car after supper and pretend they were going on adventures.
“And my uncle said it almost opened up the world to them because of the possibility even though they couldn’t actually go anywhere.
“We kind of talk about that.
“They arrived home the day Neil Armstrong landed on the moon funnily enough, there’s loads of drama around that as well.
“It’s a bit of craic as well, the show.”
Religion also come up..
“Yeah, there’s a song on the album and features in the show called The Calling.
“I’ve always been quite fascinated with the notion of that.
“I have family myself, aunts that are nuns and an uncle priest and so that we talk about that.
“I mean my grandmother was the sacristan in the church and thought the sun, moon and stars shone out of the priest’s arse and it was so funny because even her voice used to change when she was talking to him, that whole idea of the power so we explore that a little bit, the power of the clergy in Ireland.”
There’s mention of moving statues as well…
“There is.
“I remember when I was in primary school and it was on the news, ‘Oh geez, her hand had moved’.
“We made the trip to see if we could see any bit of a stir at all, you know?
“It was a big deal.
“I don’t know if you’ve seen any of the YouTube clips, there’s hilarious YouTube clips online.
“That was a big deal in my house growing up but I think people just got kind of a bit carried away with it.
“It was mad.
“I even remember in school, it was a big thing.
“I wrote a little story about that. It’s in the show.”
Identity, and its complexities, is at the centre of the show really, isn’t it?
“Absolutely.
“Like we were saying at the start when you’re away from home I don’t know is it more heightened when you’re away from home.
“I’d sometimes wonder, ‘Is your Irishness more heightened?’
“I suppose because you’re away, you see it different.
“I know when I worked in the States for a bit- this is a good while ago now- you would meet people there and they’d have a very skewed idea compared to us who just are from Ireland, where it’s very rose tinted or something?
“Sometimes I think it’s a lot cooler than they think it is.
“It’s a lot more modern.”
You’re bringing this to Edinburgh and it will be its proper debut although I’ve seen clips of you performing it somewhere..
“Yeah, that was a work in progress performance where we invited people in but we’re launching it in Edinburgh, we’ve never gigged it.
“It’s going to get its first outing on 1 August.”
Before Step into My Parlour, you were in Cherish the Ladies, what did that experience do for you?
“It was great.
“It was kind of like an apprenticeship.
“You learned so much from Joanie (Madden).
“It was amazing and great fun.
“Good craic. And great gigs.
“They have been on the on the road for so long.
“When I was with them, we went to Alaska which was really cool and then a lot of shows with orchestras.
“That was terrifying the first time I did that but it was amazing.
“I just learned so much, it was great.”
You say it was never your intention to write a show like this but do you think you’ll put together another show like this?
“Yeah, you never know.
“Hopefully this one will have a little bit of life.
“I’ll get this on the go first anyway and you never know.
“It’s taken me so long to get this one out.
“The Fringe is where I launched Step into my Parlour as well and that grew arms and legs and toes and shoulders and all the rest.
“I think The Fringe a great place to launch a show because I think the audiences are so open to things there so hopefully it’ll go okay.”
Mind How You Go is at ZOO (Playground 1), High School Yards Teaching Hub, Edinburgh, EH1 1LZ Friday 1 – Sunday 24th August 2025 as part of Edinburgh Fringe Festival. Tickets are available from www.zoovenues.co.uk
For more information about Michelle, click here.