20 Years Of Classic Songs.

Internationally acclaimed Irish singer-songwriter, Luka Bloom, has enjoyed twenty years of success since the release of his classic record Riverside. To celebrate its’ anniversary and his achievements over the past twenty years, Bloom has revisited his stunning repertoire and re-recorded material from his past twelve albums to create Dreams In America; a commemoration of his career so far, from when he immigrated to America in the late eighties to the present day. "I was aware last year that 2010 was going to be the twentieth anniversary of the release of Riverside, and I just wanted to mark the moment so to speak. It just gave me cause to pause for a little while and reflect on what I’d been doing over the years and the nature of the records and songs I’d made," explains Bloom.

Bloom describes the record as a celebration of his songs without the nostalgia.

"Usually around this time in a singer’s career what happens is the record company decides to list tracks off old albums to honour history and just release them as they are and call it a ‘best of’. I’ve always found that to be completely inappropriate, kind of boring and perhaps a bit of a rip-off. I wanted to make a record that acknowledged the history of my work but would be relevant to 2010."

With an extensive back-catalogue to choose from, Bloom found that there were original recordings that didn’t do the songs justice. "In a studio with lots of technology and musicians I sometimes feel the core of a song can get a little bit lost in the production and arrangement. I thought it would be really good to revisit the point I was at when I was actually writing them and give more raw interpretations of them."

Recorded in his living room, Dreams in America is an intimate portrait of Bloom’s career to date. The production of the album is all in the sound of the vocal and the guitar; you can hear the guitar-strap creaking off the wood and his fingers banging off the body of the guitar. "I’ve come to find I can get a really good sound in my home," explains Bloom. "That’s the main criteria for me: number one, the sound and number two, the feeling that the songs themselves are at home. I think that comes across in the performance of the songs; there’s a real feeling of intimacy about the record and I attribute that to the fact that it was recorded in my home."

During the process, Bloom found there were songs that took on different meanings with the benefit of hindsight, while others were tragically prophetic such as ‘Bridge of Sorrows’. ‘Bridge of Sorrows’ was inspired by the tragic phenomena of young people, young men in particular, committing suicide in London and Geneva, which I wrote in 1991. Sadly this has become a terrible phenomenon in Ireland in the last number of years. I hadn’t been singing that song for a while, and it’s strange to me how that song has taken on a whole new meaning for me, because when I wrote it I wasn’t really thinking about Ireland at all."

Throughout his career, from playing small residencies in Dublin to moving to America and gaining international acclaim, Bloom has experienced many milestones, but admits the biggest highlight of his life over the past twenty years is the fact that’s he still doing what he loves most: singing and writing songs. But just as Bloom loathes nostalgia, he also doesn’t believe in regrets. "I think they’re highly overrated," he laughs. "Regrets deny experience. I think that everything is experience and everything is to be learned from. So even things I embarked upon which didn’t work out, I’ve learned from them. I’ve done certain tours that didn’t work out, I’ve made one or two records that didn’t do as well as I had hoped, I worked with people I kind of wish I hadn’t worked with. But I don’t attribute blame to any of that. I am a great believer in learning and moving on and growing." Pausing, Bloom reflects, "It is the nature of life that we make mistakes, so why would I regret something that I’ve learnt a lot from?"

Bloom also looks back fondly on his visits to Australia over the years. "I will never forget my first ever performance in the southern hemisphere in January 1991 when I played the Enmore Theatre in Sydney and it was completely sold out. I had no idea what to expect and I just couldn’t believe the welcome and the warmth. That moment there opened up a whole new world to me; the world of singing and performing in Australia which ten years before that would’ve been unimaginable to me," explains the Kildare native.

Bloom plans to travel to Australia in March next year, which will mark his tenth tour here. "Every time I come it’s slightly different but there’s a lovely warm glow of familiarity. It’s a good country to sing in; people love singers, they love the stories behind the songs, and it’s also an incredibly beautiful country to visit. I’m very privileged to have an audience that likes it if I come and sing for them, it’s my favourite country in the world to travel to and sing in."

Bloom speaks with genuine appreciation towards his fans, particularly those that share their experiences of his songs with him. "People are very generous that way, they’re are surprisingly and shockingly effusive in that way." Bloom explains, "Sometimes people will write to you, or meet you after a show, and they’ll speak about a certain song and what it meant to them at a certain moment in their life, and to me that is the highest aspiration of any song. The whole purpose of songwriting is about communicating with people; it involves employing the language of the heart to connect with people. That’s what my job is all about."

Dreams In America is out now through Shock Records.

By Stephanie Bourke

ENDS