The pandemic may have caused many people to underachieve but not the Irish musician and singer-songwriter Luka Bloom. He just released a new album, Out of the Blue, his third release since the pandemic-related lockdowns began in Europe and the USA last year.
Out of the Blue is Bloom’s first instrumental album and follows Bittersweet Crimson, released last July, and Live at De Roma, released in March 2020.
“I had no words for 2020,” Bloom tells me from his home in Ireland. “All my tours were cancelled. I found myself quietly playing guitar at home every day and remembering how joyful and healing that was for me as a kid at home. Making Out of the Blue was healing for me in 2020.”
The three albums released during the pandemic are “completely different records,” says Bloom who has released about 25 albums during his career. “One is a live gig, the next one is a studio recording of songs and the third is a meditation on guitar with some subtle overdubs, recorded at home.”
All three are available for download or on CD but only on Bloom’s website.
The live album was recorded at a November 2019 show in Antwerp, Belgium, and there were no initial plans to release the concert. “De Roma is my favorite venue anywhere,” Bloom says. “It was built in the beginning of the 20th Century as a 1,400-seat silent movie theater and, by the end of the century, became a top live music venue. The crew working that night never told me they were recording. We had a great show, and I quickly realized: This needs to be released.”
Bloom had every intention of making Bittersweet Crimson when he and three other musicians went into Windmill Lane Recording Studios in Dublin in mid-February 2020.
“I had written 14 songs,” he says, “and I decided to use three amazing gifted musicians and friends to record with me: Jon O’Connell on double bass, Robbie Harris on various percussion instruments and Steve Cooney, my guitar hero. Windmill Lane is an iconic temple of recording in Dublin, and, with my engineer Brian Masterson, I wanted us to feel the sense of occasion you get there. Do only one rehearsal to feel the structures of the songs, then just play and feel our way through the songs in a natural flow of listening and feeling each other. Therein lies the magic: Four people gathered around the heartbeat of a song, bringing it to life.”
Bloom calls Bittersweet Crimson a special record and one for 2020.
“It’s special to me because of the collective effort of the people involved,” he explains. “The songs were written in 2018 and 2019, yet feel incredibly pertinent to the year of 2020. I wanted a strong female singer to perform with me and found Niamh Farrell from County Sligo. The moment I heard her I hoped she would sing the songs with me. I did not know then that she is also a nurse in a busy Dublin hospital. She learned the songs during March 2020, between 12-hour shifts in the height of the COVID crisis. She recorded alone during lockdown, and I did not meet her until Aug. 8, when we had a socially distanced CD launch in Hotel Doolin in County Clare. This is a 2020 story.”
Why call the album Bittersweet Crimson?
“I had done a charity concert for Irish Seed Savers in 2019,” he responds. “They are devoted to preserving the biodiversity of Irish fruit and vegetables, and they do great work. At the concert’s end, a woman said that music and food are what bring people together most, so I decided to choose a food to write a song of friendship and love. Because the pomegranate comes from a part of the world sadly known for struggle and strife, Iran and Afghanistan, I chose this amazing fruit to write a song of love and friendship.”
Looking back now, one year after the album was recorded, is there anything Bloom would change about Bittersweet Crimson?
“I love everything about Bittersweet Crimson — the songs, the musicians, the studio, the engineer, the painting on the cover, the packaging,” he says. “I would change nothing.”
Asked about other artists’ albums that he loves, Bloom says his best-I’ve-ever-listened-to choices are only valid today, because his choices would change tomorrow.
“I was never a big Springsteen fan,” he says, “but I regard Western Star as a bit of a masterpiece — the songs, the strings, the singing. It is a very special recent recording.”
Bloom’s two other “best” albums are very different: The Pogues’ If I Should Fall from Grace with God and Miles Davis’s Kind of Blue.
“I toured with the Pogues as their opener when they released the album in 1988, and it was an unbelievably exciting time,” Bloom recalls. “The album was produced by Steve Lilywhite and has the best songs.”
Kind of Blue is a “masterpiece” that “opened the door into a brave new world for me,” Bloom says. “It leaves me speechless. Some albums are almost uncool, because they are so loved now. I don’t care. This is a delicious cliche. I will never tire of it. The man who gave it to me is a lovely harmonica player called Eamon Murray. Eamon is unwell right now; even speaking of this record makes me think of Eamon.”
The best concert Bloom attended was a Leonard Cohen show “about 10 years ago” in Dublin.
“It was Leonard’s comeback after being robbed by a manager and years in a Buddhist boot camp,” Bloom says. “Clearly, he was destined to tour again and had the most successful decade of his life in his 70s. It was very inspiring to this 65-year-old. That concert was deeply affecting for everyone who attended.”
The concert that most influenced him as an artist, though, was a 2000 show by Bob Dylan at Dublin’s Vicar Street, a venue that seats just 1,050 concertgoers.
“It was a small gig by Bob’s norms, and he played everything I wanted to hear,” Bloom says. “The band was his best, and I had great seats. He was the master and still is.”