Tony Cummings met up with the globe-trotting Irish singer DOMINIC KIRWAN

Dominic Kirwan

The smooth country-tinged music has taken Omagh-born Dominic Kirwan to Irish music stardom. After working all over the north west of Ireland with the Melody Boys, learning his craft in local bars and clubs, he went solo in 1984, recording his first single "Alice In Wonderland". After entering various TV talent searches he finally broke through in 1988 when he signed to Ritz Records. Since then he's toured all over the world, recording 15 studio albums plus two DVDs. His major sellers included 'The Music's Back' and 'My Kind Of Country'. Earlier this year Rosette Records released Dominic's 'Lord, I Hope This Day Is Good'. The album was a mixture of much loved hymns ("How Great Thou Art" and "The Old Rugged Cross") and the more inspiring end of popdom (Bill Withers' "Lean On Me" and Simon & Garfunkel's "Bridge Over Troubled Water"). Interrupting a massive UK tour which stretches through to October, the charming country crooner called in to the Cross Rhythms Stoke-on-Trent studio to answer some of my questions.

Tony: Tell me a little bit about your beliefs. Were you brought up in a Christian home?

Dominic: I was brought up very much in a Christian home. I've been through the Catholic education system in Ireland through the Christian Brothers. I'm very open-minded to the whole Christian faith. . . Let's face it, coming from Ireland. . . I can remember my father and mother - God rest them - speaking of their early days going to church and the priest in the pulpit slamming his fist down and going, you know, damnation. I just don't come from that at all, my mother and father never brought us through that, but we spoke about it. I read something recently where religion is a guide to the source, but it's not the source."

Tony: To some extent even our spiritual viewpoint is tied up with our environment, what we're brought up in, what we're surrounded by and of course, you were surrounded by a particularly virulent form of sectarianism.

Dominic: I was, but I was very lucky too. I came from a background with my mother and father and my grandparents: we weren't brought up like that. We were taught to love thy neighbour and it was like that. My father was a local bread man in the town of Omagh and he had his van and he went to the different parts of the communities and from a very early age I was going into Catholic estates, Protestant estates. The army were based in Northern Ireland at the time; Omagh is a very big garrison town. Part of my father's route was through the local base and so I was brought up with that background, to treat each person equally. I was lucky that way.

Tony: How did you get your start in singing?

Dominic: There was a Christian Brother in my home town, when I was six years of age, and he stopped my mother on the street and talked to her about me, suggesting that I had a voice that was worth listening to. Coming from a parochial background as I do, because Omagh in itself, it probably has a population of 25,000 now but it might have been about 18,000 when I was growing up, so when you grow up in that sort of a background and you're coming through the schooling system and the church, you're pulled into everything. So I was very much in school choirs, very much in school competitions, very much involved in church choirs, leading from the pulpit as in leading the church singing on Sundays. So I have that background but at the same time I was that youthful guy running around Omagh. The town of Omagh would have been very much steeped in what Ireland knew once as the showband era. We had some big showband stars that came from the town. So there was a lot of music. And then I was also a former Irish dancer as well, so that gave me a traditional background as well. It was very diverse, how I grew up and what I listened to.

Tony: Did you always have an ambition, 'I've got to make in show business'?

Dominic: That's a good one. I can't ever remember saying I wanted to be a professional singer. That is the gospel truth. I've always loved singing and I've always gone down paths. . . I always enjoyed music and I was always participating in different forms of music, even with local productions in the town and on an amateur basis as well. This is the path I was led down. A funny thing about my family, I've got four sisters and one brother. They were all sent to music classes, I was sent to Irish dancing and I'm the one that made a career in music. Now is that not talking about some sort of a path that I was led down? That's the way I look at it.

Tony: Presumably from an early age you've always loved country music?

Dominic: I've always loved country music, but again, I come from a family that were very diverse from my traditional background. There was the background of the showband era, my mother, God rest her, she would have been very much into we'll call it the John McCormacks or the Frank Pattersons of Ireland, which would have been very much that classical tenor approach. So you can imagine what the music was like in my home. I think it was more to do with the company I kept when I was growing up and the boys that I ran about with and their love for the music, so it has been infused. At the same time, if you look at my iPod today, I have something like 6000-odd songs, which you can never get a chance to listen to, but I promise you, everything's there; there's country music, classical music, traditional music. There's everything in it, so that still stays with me."

Tony: Are you one of these singers who are always thinking, 'I've got to get this song on to the next album'? Do you always have a store, like a squirrel storing its nuts, storing away songs for the next one?

Dominic: It's funny you should say that because 'Lord, I Hope This Day Is Good' came together a bit like that. I get an opportunity to do a lot of work and one thing that I do is that I meet the audience afterwards and, you know, get my photographs signed, autographs signed and the albums, or whatever. But in conversation your audience like to participate as well. So every now and again I'll get a suggestion for a song. I think maybe at times they think we're not listening, but I can go back to my dressing room and get a bit of paper and jot it down and stick it in my back pocket or put it in my bag or whatever. This album has actually come from that background because I'd built up a list of songs that people had suggested to me. Now, in fairness, a lot of the songs that we've ended up with I've actually loved as well myself, but that's really how it was built.

Tony: You have some songs on the album which are specifically Christian. You've got songs which basically are just addressing the human condition and speaking words of encouragement. It's a pretty wide selection.