Full Transcript for INTERVIEW: Damien Leith on his new show, 'Ireland Orchestrated'

like everyone. Everyone mentions that, take me back to Milltown in County Kildare. Are your family musical? 00:02:46 Speaker 1: Were you? 00:02:46 Speaker 2: Is it just part of the DNA of being Irish that you grew like my mum, her family's from Ireland, from Donegal and but somewhere I got lost in translation. We don't have any school set whatsoever, but I imagine that that's the family. Does does your family have that? Is it just born into. 00:03:03 Speaker 1: You now, we grew up on music. My dad always played guitar, always sang, my mother always sang. And actually even before Miltown we lived in Africa, and we lived in Africa for thirteen years, and throughout all that journey, the thing that kind of kept us close to Ireland was Irish music. Dad used to play it all the time, and we had a couple of cassettes of people like Foster and Allen and the Dublin Rs and those sort of acts and Thin Lizzie and so even though we were the other side of the world, that Irish music is what bound us together. And even actually as a family, my two brothers, my sister and myself formed a family band and we toured all over Ireland. 00:03:42 Speaker 2: Code Liife eli if eli. 00:03:45 Speaker 1: Af and well, people couldn't pronounce our names. 00:03:51 Speaker 2: You should see the text message is a get it's brutal. 00:03:54 Speaker 1: Well, there you go. You can relate with this. And the funny thing about our band Leaf was we broke up at one point and then we reformed and call ourselves Relief and people thought it was it was a gag and we hadn't even realized, you know, significant of the of the world we're like, yeah, yeah, we are relief so but yeah, anyway, happy times there were great. 00:04:15 Speaker 2: So living in Libya and Botswana, you might bring have you got a bit of Paul Simon and you you got that appreciation for African music, so you might do African music orchestrated in the next life. 00:04:26 Speaker 1: Sometimes you never you never know, although like I really we did grow up on a lot of that. I mean, especially wa Tswana and in South Africa. When Paul Simon came out with those with with Graceland, we'd all listened to it and went what we used to hear that just down the end of the road, you know, that was everywhere, especially in South Africa. It was all over the place. And then he turned it into an absolute smash hit. But and and he's a good writer as well. Lets and let's we'll keep it welcome him that much. He is actually very good. 00:04:55 Speaker 2: Oh yeah, he's amazing. 00:04:56 Speaker 1: You went. 00:04:56 Speaker 2: So every time we talk about there's such a connection that you field between Ireland and Australia, people just love it. We've all grown up. Even though if we don't have Irish heritage. Everyone knows Danny Boy. Everyone loves Danny Boy. Everyone sings along You Raise Me Up becomes a huge hit for so many different people, so that becomes part of the psyche. The Fields of ath and Rye is a song that I was not all that familiar with. But we've got a great band here in Adelaide called Kelly's Wake, who almost a show tradition. They pop in every Saint Pat's Day and they play it for us. It's when you've got so much great content, Damien to choose from. 00:05:32 Speaker 1: Yeah, look, we've got all in all, we're planning about twenty six twenty seven songs because we've gone a little medley in there as well. So we've tried to go from from all stuff right through to new stuff. So we do have the black Velvet Bands, Danny Boys, you know, all those big ones. 00:05:46 Speaker 2: Goal with beer, all the molly. 00:05:49 Speaker 1: Yeah, we've got all them. But then on the flip side, we've also got Fields of ath and Rye, fairy Tale of New York, The Bloorer's Daughter by Damien Rice. You know, so we kind of give a hint to go big girl, you know, from ps I Love You. You know, we've tried to join it all together so that you know, anyone who comes to the show gets a taste of all of Ireland. It's not just the traditional, it's not just the diddly eye as some people say. It's a bit of everything. 00:06:18 Speaker 2: Do you find when you're speaking to audience members, Oh, you can see them from the stage. It tugs on heart strings, whether it's a family member, a parent, a grandparent, Like, there's something about the Irish music too that just makes your heart swell. 00:06:30 Speaker 1: Oh, absolutely, it's you know. I was reminded when we played in camera. I was looking into the room and I saw people crying, and then about five minutes later I saw them clapping and stomping their feet. So I think that's the extremes of Irish music. I think all through the years people in Ireland it's been that tradition of telling stories through music. And it can be a positive story or a negative story, whatever it might be, but it's told through music, which makes it really great to perform live because that's one thing that we do in the show. We do these big ballads and these beautiful heartfelt songs, but we do throw in a famous real like Drowsy Maggie or a Cash or something like that links it together and lifts the room back up again, so we don't leave them in that sad safe we bring them back off again. 00:07:18 Speaker 2: Well, it's the perfect mix because I think about your time on Idol too. I think you had it one just when you walk through the door, you know, because you're so likable, and then you just had talent on top, which was even better. Because everyone loves Irish, you know, we love Irish people, we love the Irish culture. I'm not non drinker. I love the Irish pub culture. I like the idea of arms around each other and it just resonates so well, it's sort of handing glove with us here in Australia. You've got Suell and Cusack with you too, who's been on our show before. What a talent she is. How's her voice? 00:07:50 Speaker 1: She is fantastic And we have got a couple of really special moments in the show. We actually brought out a single together called Isle of Hope, which is a

gorgeous tune, and that's how we met. But we do dissect the whole, you know, situation of who actually wrote loch Loman versus Red is the rules because we all know you'll take the higher road now I'll take the Low Road. Everybody knows that song, but there is an Irish equivalent to it called Red is the Rules, and we picked them up against each other in the show for the audience to decide. You know, who was it who had it first? The Irish of the Scottish. But we have a lot of fun. She's an incredible singer. I'm just a lovely person. 00:08:31 Speaker 2: It's going to be such a night out the seventeenth of May, Her Majesty's Theater. Damien Lathy's my guest. The show is called Ireland Orchestrated, which I'm sure people are going to get along in huge numbers before I let you go. You're a busy man, though, Damien, like you don't just you're not just entertaining the messages with your voice. Published another book? You enjoying that being an author? 00:08:52 Speaker 1: I love it. Yes, Actually my first love, believe or not, I was writing. It was way before I was ever into music. I was into writing and yeah, I brought out my first kid's novel. So it's a it's a novel with a massive name, The Extraordinary Misadventures of Lake and Birdie and the Remarkable Fortitude. They say that it needs to be seventy thousand words. I was like seven words under that, and I said, let's just extend the title, let's make them bigger. But no, it's a story about two sisters who are orphans and have got to go through the ups and downs of trying to beat Miss McGregor. She's a cruel, horrible woman who decides to adopt them and treats them terribly. But it's a dark kind of it's it's funny at times. It's a very royal dialsque. But now I'm very proud of the book. It came out earlier on this year and it's getting great, great reviews, so I'm thrilled. 00:09:49 Speaker 2: The other thing I want to mention too, is that you're an ambassador for Parkinson's, which again is such an amazing thing. I know you had the tragedy with your father some twelve years or so ago. Now that must be important to you too. 00:10:02 Speaker 1: Yeah, oh no, look absolutely, it was roughly this time last year Dad was admitting into a hospital and sadly he didn't come out. He was diagnosed with Parkinson's only five years ago. And we all thought, and I think a lot of people do when it comes to Parkinson said, you know there's going to be twenty years and everything's going to be, you know, be slow. But the thing we discovered very fast is that Parkinson's is extremely complex and it doesn't matter who you are or what your makeup is. It can attack you in different ways. And my poor dad, he'd absolutely got annihilated by it. So I got in touch with Parkinson's Australia. I start looking on the website and I personally think that they're fantastic. They've actually got information that really helps rather than going to a million different websites and sometimes being led down the garden path or let down, led astray at a time when you really just want answers, you know. So I think they're fantastic and I'm really proud to be in a bassador and anything I can do to spread the word and to make life a little bit easier for not just somebody with Parkinson's, but somebody who's caring for somebody with Parkinson's because it's hard. Yeah, well done. Well. 00:11:11 Speaker 2: We're always happy to promote that to We do a health segment. We talk about a lot on the show, So that's incredible what you're doing away Damien, You're always fun to see. We get to see you again here in Adelaide, and thank you because I know the Roy Orbison show was so popular, so I'm sure Ireland Orchestrated will be as equally popular, if not more so. Seventeenth of May, Her Majesty's Theater is where you need to go. Tickets available at ticket Tech. As always, lovely to have you on the show, Damien, we'll see in a couple of weeks. 00:11:37 Speaker 1: Thank you very much. Always a pleasure. 00:11:38 Speaker 2: Thank you the great Damien Leith. 00:11:40 Speaker 1: My guess