A Conversation with Keith Harkin – HuffPost 11.12.12
Mike Ragogna: Hello, Keith!
Keith Harkin: How’s it going?
MR: It’s going very well, thanks. So it looks like you’re traveling around the country playing all sorts of dates right now.
KH: Yeah, been on the road since the middle of August and I’m on the road until Christmas. I’m out with Celtic Thunder at the moment, who I also sing with. I’m also doing lots of promotional stuff, radio interviews, television every other day for my own self and the Keith Harkin album.
MR: This is all pretty terrible, isn’t it. You hate doing this, don’t you.
KH: No, actually I don’t! I’m doing solos for Celtic Thunder and for myself for five or six years, so it’s all I kind of know how to do, to be honest.
MR: Just kidding. Keith, let’s actually give everybody a history lesson on Celtic Thunder. Can you go into how it started?
KH: Celtic Thunder actually started with our producer Sharon Browne; she is also my manager. Sharon was holding auditions over in Ireland for a show for five solo artists to sing, five male solo artists from Ireland or Scotland to sing at her show with a full band and full orchestra. I auditioned for the show right at the start and I’ve been in the show since the band happened. We’ve toured Canada, Australia and America for the past four years, a couple of double platinum records, a couple of gold records in Australia, America and Canada, so it’s been just flaming ever since. We have seven albums, each one reached number one on the world Billboard charts, last year number one in the world on the Billboard chart of music, so Celtic Thunder’s been doing great and I’ve been there since the very start and I’m still doing it at the moment. I’ve been writing music for Celtic Thunder also, I have three different singles out of all the albums that have been sold, so it’s been an interesting ride.
MR: Now, interestingly you say you wrote a lot of the music for Celtic Thunder, but I also want to throw out there that the solo album includes covers. How did you decide what was going to go on this album?
KH: Well, really, the album’s actually fifty-fifty, it’s six originals and six covers. We originally thought about doing an album of covers, which we were supposed to do, and then the guys asked me–David Foster and Jaymes Foster and Jochem van der Saag who produced the album–they all were looking for maybe a few more originals that I wrote, so when I was on the road in Australia in February and March, I wrote a few more songs and recorded seventeen in total. So now, there are six originals and six covers on the album. The covers are “Have I Told You Lately,” by Van Morrison, Colbie Caillat, a very famous singer, is doing a duet with me on that one; “The End of Innocence” by Don Henley; “Everybody’s Talkin'” by Harry Nilsson; and “Here Comes the Sun” by The Beatles. I also have “The Heart of Saturday Night,” the Tom Waits tune, one of the classics, favorites, and then I put six originals in. The guys asked me if I could write songs as good as the six originals they would put them on the album and they picked six songs so I was more than happy.
MR: I wanted to get into “Orange Moon,” one of my favorites on the new album. Can you go into its backstory, maybe let us in on your writing process and how you wrote that song?
KH: Yeah, well, I think most people can sit down and just write a song. I can. I just sit down and purposely write a song. I have no technique or formula to it. Some people write the melody first or some people come up with lyrics. Some people write the guitar part first and then do whatever. I just sort of sit down with a guitar and keep playing until the first line comes out, and then once I get a first line I just build the rest of the song on that line. How “Orange Moon” actually came about, I was actually on Fox-TV in March this year, it was four in the morning and I was calling from Buffalo, I was on TV in Buffalo at night and we had to get to New York for a six AM start on Fox-TV and I couldn’t sleep. I just finished a show in Buffalo at like two in the morning and I was on the bus driving with our old driver. I was sitting up front and the sky was bright orange with a bright orange moon, hence the inspiration for the song “Orange Moon.” Driving into New York, and that’s what it’s all about, really. It was a song that came about in about fifteen minutes.
MR: Fifteen minutes?
KH: You know, it’s not even fifteen!
MR: And on the same album is your cover of “Here Comes the Sun,” the total opposite.
KH: Yes, of course, “Here Comes The Sun.” “Orange Moon” and “Here Comes The Sun,” two different concepts.
MR: You have a double duty with Celtic Thunder and your solo career. That’s a lot of work.
KH: Yeah, I’ve been juggling a lot of work for the past year and a half. I had two weeks off last November and I got the call to go to L.A. to record for two weeks, so everybody else had two weeks off from the tour with Celtic Thunder and I went to record and actually haven’t stopped working since then. I recorded the whole album. Also I’ve been touring with Celtic Thunder all year. I did a solo tour in March, back and forth to L.A., in between, trying to record, and I’ve done a month’s residency in a casino up in Atlantic City and since then, I’ve been literally juggling everything now since I came back on the road. I’ve recorded maybe sixty songs this year in the studio, so it’s been a crazy year to say the least. Being on the road now is the easy part. Believe it or not, all the hard work’s been done.
MR: You’re somebody who’s very focused as well as busy.
KH: I’m kind of glad I’m on the road at the moment, because if I wasn’t on the road and doing something and I was kind of waiting on doing whatever else with my own album, I’d probably go up the walls waiting. So I’m kind of glad that I’m kept busy and kept my mind going.
MR: Tell us about the early days of Keith Harkin, what got you into music, and what your inspiration was from.
KH: What got me into music is probably my mom and my dad. They’ve got great taste in music. I’ve been singing since the age of four, started playing guitar when I was eleven. My dad got me into Tom Waits when I was like fourteen or fifteen, all of my favorite artists are stuff my dad got me to listen to like Neil Young, Tom Waits, Harry Nilsson. I’m a huge Glen Campbell fan, Crosby, Stills & Nash, all the really old-school sort of artists. I just love that kind of music and that’s kind of what gave me the inspiration, because back in the day, those guys were just either a band, or on their own, so I kind of aspired to do the same kind of thing myself, the same sort of music because nowadays, I think people have too many smoke and mirrors to cover what they’re doing. I think what’s happened nowadays is not as many people are artists on their own and do their own kind of thing and have really good songs. I think that’s what this album is about. They have twelve of the best songs we could think of, so that’s really what I came up like. When I was seventeen, eighteen in London for a year with producer Andy Wright, I worked out there for a year with Andy. He produced the likes of Natalie Imbruglia and Mick Hucknall and Simply Red, then I worked with BBC for a year back home in Ireland doing bits of Irish music, so it was written in Gaelic, which is the Irish language. It was music for them. And then I auditioned for Celtic Thunder when I was twenty years old, and I’ve been doing that now since I was sixteen. So I’ve been busy since I left school, really, I’ve just been engrossed in music, you know?
MR: And you’re the ripe old age of what, about twenty now, right?
KH: Twenty, I wish I was twenty. I’m actually twenty-six at the moment. I was twenty when I joined Celtic Thunder and I’ve been touring the States and Australia and Canada since I joined with these guys, so I’ve probably seen more of America than most Americans have seen over the past five or six years. So I wish I was twenty.
MR: Keith, beyond your history, your song choices indicate your working knowledge of classic songs and artists. For instance, “The Heart of Saturday Night” goes back to the album by Tom Waits The Heart of Saturday Night where every song is an amazing original and totally coverable because he was an incredible songwriter. You mentioned that your dad turned you onto Tom Waits, but how did you come across that song?
KH: Oh, “The Heart of Saturday Night,” to me, when it comes to Tom Waits, that was one of his more easy-going songs. The first album I heard of Tom Waits was actually The Black Rider, which is one of the more insane albums, and I was like fifteen when I heard that album and my dad had that CD in the car when I was fifteen, so that was the music that I really grew up with. Then my father put me into “The Heart of Saturday Night.” I’d been playing that one on my own in bars and clubs, so really we just picked songs on the album that I love to perform and that were proven, you know?
MR: You also did a cover by fellow Irishman Van Morrison, “Have I Told You Lately That I Love You?”
KH: Yeah, well that’s a beautiful song. I don’t think many people can argue that that’s an absolutely amazing song, and then when we had the idea to do it as a duet with Colbie Caillat, it completely fell into place and I’m so happy we’d done it. I’m a huge Van Morrison fan and I always will be.
MR: Your album features “The End Of The Innocence,” which Don Henley wrote as kind of a reaction to the Reagan years. It had more of a political message, but on the other hand, the song also resonates with everyone for various reasons. What does “The End Of The Innocence” mean to you?
KH: Well, I think that he mentioned what “The End Of The Innocence” means to most people when it first got released. To me, in simpler terms, it means kind of the same thing but on a different topic. The name itself–“The End Of The Innocence”–I think it means a lot of things have changed in comparison to the way people used to see them, you know? Simple things, like the way kids are, the way things happen at school, everybody’s just so different, nothing is innocent anymore, and I think to me, that’s basically what the song’s about. The chorus sort of sums it up for me.
MR: Keith, do you prefer roadwork, do you prefer studio work, is it equal?
KH: It’s both, equal. The feel on the road, I’ve been doing it for so long, gigging and stuff, that it’s actually very easy. For me, it’s pretty relaxing. Sometimes I have to fight myself to get on stage; I get nervous, but seldom do I get nervous. Being on the road’s quite easy, and I love being in the studio. I actually do a bit of producing myself, I work with my sister Rebecca Harkin; she’s a very fabulous pianist and singer and songwriter. I’ve been producing her album all year on top of everything else, so I love being in the studio and I love working with amazing musicians like Jochem van der Saag–he produced the album–getting to work in the same room as David Foster who recorded the piano on “Rosa” on the album… So just to be working with those level musicians and their craft is amazing, just to be in the same room with them.
MR: Let’s chat about “Rosa” for a sec.
KH: “Rosa”… I wrote all the words and a guy named Brian Byrne, an Irish guy, wrote the piano. It’s about my Goddaughter from back home and every time I’ve played this song, I haven’t seen a dry eye in the house, in the best possible sense.
MR: Sweet. Who are your favorite artists right now?
KH: I actually saw a band playing in The Living Room in New York after I played my launch date there, they’re called Barnaby Bright. I don’t know if they’re huge or what’s happened but I saw them and they were lovely, this husband and wife. I really enjoyed them. She had an amazing voice, she almost sounded like an Alison Krauss or a Joni Mitchell kind of thing going on. I like those guys, I don’t know if you’ve ever heard of First Aid Kit. I love Bon Iver… There are a few artists at the moment that I’m really interested in.
MR: Nice. If you like Bon Iver, do you like Fleet Foxes?
KH: Yes.
MR: Keith, you’re going to love Lord Huron, Ben Schneider’s group, a cool project. Being a fan of Bon Iver and Fleet Foxes, when I found this, I was like, “Oh, there’s even more of this out there, that’s great.”
KH: Perfect. That’s not a bad thing.
MR: All right, I have a traditional question I ask, which is what is your advice to new artists?
KH: Don’t stop. Just keep on going. As long as the gradient of work keeps going up and doesn’t come to a plateau or goes the opposite direction of the way you want it to be, even if it’s going slowly, if it’s going slow, it’s going good. It’s never easy. I’m twenty-six now, I left school at seventeen; it’s taken me nine years to get this album finished. You just have to keep plugging at it, there’s no easy way to put it. It’s never going to come overnight. It’s not easy work, you know. If you just work at it hard, something good will happen.
MR: Nice. You have this new solo album, you’re still with Celtic Thunder, what does the future hold for Keith Harkin?
KH: Hopefully, next year, I’m going to be doing more solo tours, I’ve been doing solo tours for the past three years now in the United States, as of February and March. I’m probably going to do a bigger tour with my own band, which is going to be amazing; normally I just do acoustic. My album is a great album, I’m not afraid to say it. A lot of work went into it, there are a lot of great players and good songs on the album, so if you like music at all, it’s a good album to have a good listen to, there’s a lot of stuff there that’ll keep you interested and for next year I just want more and more people to hear the album and enjoy it as much as I did.
MR: You’ve got it. We wish you very good luck with your new solo album and continued luck with Celtic Thunder, and amazingly popular band. You must have a lot of pride in all your hard work.
KH: Yeah, I mean Celtic Thunder, I’ve been in everything it’s ever done since the start. Only one show that I ever missed was the day of my album launch, the eighteenth of last month and that’s the only thing that’s ever happened in Celtic Thunder since it was invented that I wasn’t a part of. I’m more than proud of Celtic Thunder, and I’m more than proud of everybody that’s worked with me at Verve Records. I’m just really happy with everything that’s happening at the moment and everything that comes in the future is just a bonus.
MR: Right, with David Foster as Verve’s Godfather, you can’t go wrong.
KH: Well, hopefully so.
MR: All the best, Keith. Thank you for your time.
KH: All right, thank you very much.
Transcribed by Galen Hawthorne