Irish singer and songwriter Anthony John Clarke returns to the Mainstay in Rock Hall, MD on Saturday August 24 at 8:00 p.m. Tickets are $15. For information and reservations call 410-639-9133. Information is also available at the Mainstay’s website https://www.mainstayrockhall.org.
Irishman Anthony John Clarke is a serious singer and songwriter who is also an entertainer with the ability to captivate listeners, mesmerizing them with his humor, intelligent lyrics and musicianship. He says, “Once you let a song under your skin it’s harder to remove than a tattoo.”
He has played in hundreds of clubs and festivals in the UK, Europe, Australasia and, less frequently, in the USA but he is a favorite at the Mainstay. His finely crafted songs and stories are based on his experiences in his native Ireland and in the UK.
Mainstay Founder-Director Tom McHugh says “[his] songs range far and wide, covering the whole range of Irish…no human…joys and frailties. From a song about an innocent Irishman on the border who is earning a few pounds making a delivery, and is assassinated for it….to nuns singing karaoke…Anthony John will make you cry, laugh and think when he sings.”
Clarke was born in Belfast in 1956. He started songwriting at the age of nine but it was not until when he left Ireland for England as a young man that he actively pursued his passion for writing. Since then he has recorded twelve albums, three CD singles and published two songbooks.
He has made his mark on the British contemporary folk scene with songs like “Irish Eyes” and the beautiful “Seven In Ireland”. About the craft of songwriting he says, “The songwriter has a responsibility. It’s not enough to put a tune to some words or some words to a tune. The song is a vehicle for a notion that the writer has about something. If it wasn’t, then the song would have no beginning, middle or end. It’s not complicated. The notion is what starts the process and the completed song is the fruition. It invites others into the notion, the idea, the feeling, the celebration, the private moment. And if you can provide a laugh or two along the way it gets my vote.”
An accomplished entertainer, he often has pub audiences in Britain singing along with gusto to the choruses of such vastly different songs as ‘The Only Life Gloria Knows’, ‘Blame it on Dolores’ and ‘Tuesday Night is Always Karaoke.” He believes that “people don’t leave the house to be bored to death. You have a responsibility to entertain and avoid being self-indulgent. I avoid being professionally Irish as much as I can. Just because I’m an Irish songwriter doesn’t mean I can’t love the Kinks and the Small Faces.”
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